Sami

 Please Welcome Sami!

Miss Sami will be coming home to join our family on Saturday



This Saturday, we are going to have a new member of our family!  Please meet Sami!  We will be picking her up in Marietta this coming Saturday.  She is a yellow lab and the last of her litter to find a home.  I'm so pleased she'll be coming to ours!  Eli is so excited, he willingly cleaned his room to get ready for her!

I started searching for a new dog about a year ago. Well, sort of.   Our first dog, Charlie, died in 2004.  Ash was seven and Eli was two, so neither of them really remember her all that well.  Charlie was Ben's and my "baby" before the human babies came along.  We had her over ten years.  Seven of those years Charlie was diabetic and Ben gave her insulin shots twice a day. Eventually she developed cancer in her esophagus and we had to put her down because she was suffering.  If I allow myself to think too long about her, the pain of losing her will overwhelm me.  I don't seem to have any "online" pictures of her, or I would share her sweet face with you.



Sunrisa (Sunni) with her Kong chew toy.

We got our next dog from a local rescue program.  Sunni was such a sweet girl!!  She'd been rescued and then gave birth to a healthy litter of 7-8 puppies shortly after her rescue.  When we met her, all the puppies had found homes, but Sunni had not.  I don't know if the poor girl had ever been inside a house before.  We brought her into our home in 2007 and gave her love and worked with her for over two years, trying to acclimate her to living in a house.  She was very high strung, and Eli was terrified of her at first because she would knock him down on a regular basis.  Her energy and size was just overwhelming for him. 

Sunni was extremely clever, but not what I would call a very smart dog.  She repeatedly got herself into some serious predicaments.  She was like an escape artist, often escaping from her crate when we weren't home, and the door would still be latched.  She would find ways to get to things that should have been well out of her reach.  She apparently could fly and beam herself anywhere she wanted to be.  She had a dangerous taste for chocolate.  We never once willingly gave her any, but she found ways to get it that would require levitation, and thumbs.  Or magic.  We often referred to her as Houdini-Dog. 

 However, she was as sweet a dog as they come, which is why we invested over two years of effort into trying to make it work. The longer we tried, the more destructive she became, ruining clothing and blankets, toys, school projects, Christmas presents and two $130 crates, because we couldn't leave her free to roam the house when we weren't there.  She wasn't trustworthy, and she wasn't happy living in a house.  We live right on a busy state route highway, so we couldn't let her roam outside.  And she was completely capable of escaping any sort of harness or fenced-in closure...it just wasn't safe to leave her unattended outside. 

We loved her so, but she just wasn't cut out to be a house dog...and it wasn't fair of us to try to force her to be.  We had to make a hard decision, put her happiness first and find her a better arrangement that would make her happy.  It was a process, because we were not willing to let her go back to the rescue place, nor were we willing to let her go to just anyone.  Finally, a friend who had a lot of property said he'd 

Just one example of something Sunni destroyed.

love to have a dog.  Sunni would have a lot of space to run, which is really what she needed, and so she moved in with him, and it's been a match made in heaven!  She went to live with him at the end of 2009, and up until about a year ago, I'd not been interested in ever having another dog.  Sunni had sort of "done me in"!  And I swore I'd never have a "big dog" ever again.

In late 2010/early 2011 after Sunni had been gone for a little over a year, both Ash and Eli started longing for another dog.  Ben was retiring in the spring of 2011, so we urged them to wait.  Then summer was going to be upon us, and Ben didn't want the responsibility of a new puppy to keep him from doing stuff with the boys all summer.  So we waited again.  Once in a while, I'd check out dogs online and I even contacted a few of the numbers.  I was amazed at how many people post dogs on there, and then won't call you back!  Why bother advertising your dog for sale if you aren't going to call someone back?!  But anyway...


By then the holidays were upon us and a new puppy to manage would have been difficult.  All this time, I didn't feel any desire or longing for a dog anyway, so even though the boys were chomping at the bit, I really was indifferent to finding a dog.  It just didn't feel right.



My good friend Mari trains assistance dogs and she is excellent at what she does!  Mari came to visit a few weeks ago and brought one of the trainees, Sly, with her.  Sly was here to Wow! an Animal Behavior class and he ended up Wowwing! me instead.



Not sure who is actually giving the lecture...Sly or Mari?

 Sly was such a good boy!  He is being trained to be a working dog, and he was exceptionally well behaved.  Although I swore I'd never have a big dog again, I instantly fell in love the the big guy!   

I started doing research on Assistance Dogs for Eli, because some organizations do train dogs to give assistance specifically for children with autism.  The dogs help with behavior and emotional outbursts and any number of other things.  The research I read said that children responded exceptionally well to the dogs, and were far more accommodating in being "guided" by the dog than another person.  

I was very interested in what I found, and thought I would share it here, in the event someone else is looking into an assistance dog for their child.  Please note, I'm no expert...just a mom who did some reading and this is what I learned in the brief time I was researching the subject.

Organizations such as the one Mari instructs for give their trained assistance dogs free of charge to those who qualify to receive a dog.   

Not so with the organizations which train assistance dogs for autistic children.  Those dogs ran around $13,500.  They often use Labs for the dogs they train because they are smart and have good temperaments.   Once you pay that money to the organization for a dog, you are then placed on a waiting list and will wait approxiamtely a year before a dog becomes available.  You are required to go for training yourself, which makes a lot of sense.  You are acquiring a working dog, not a pet...you have to know how to work with it in order for it to be effective.  You do not gain ownership of the dog, however...even after paying all that money.  You are required to financially support the dog - food, shelter, care - but the organization retains ownership, and I read that they will come for home visits once or twice a year to see how things are going.      

That was my basic understanding of the Assistance Dogs programs for Autistic kids. Now, if Eli was severely autistic with far more challenges than what he faces day-to-day, I would certainly be willing to invest in a working dog to help him!  We would have to have community fund raisers to raise that kind of money, but I would gladly do it, if I thought it was necessary.  

In Eli's case, however, we decided that a pet was more our speed.  Eli can definitely use some comfort when his emotions overwhelm him, but what dog doesn't get in your face and lick you and make over you when you're upset??  Every dog I've ever had has comforted me when I've been upset.  I think Eli will benefit from just having a pet.  Sami will probably love on Eli and comfort him anyway, when his emotions are running high.  Maybe the next round with the Full Moon will go more smoothly with her in the picture!  We'll have to see!  We will get her involved in the obedience classes next September (she'll still be too young for the one's in April), and we'll all learn mutual respect, dog and humans alike.  We can all learn from each other, just as we do every day on this journey!  

Can't wait to snuggle this little girl and let her know she's loved!

All I can tell you is that Eli is so excited, he's counting down the days until we bring Sami home.  Ben, Ash and I are really excited too.  So is my sister, Rachel!  Exactly one week after her wedding, she's driving down from Columbus to go with us to pick Sami up!  I guess my new brother-in-law knows where he stands now!  (Just kidding Kevin!)   The timing was absolutely perfect, and I really believe it's a God-Thing that Sami came in to our lives.  As I mentioned before, I've been half-heartedly searching for nearly a year for a dog, and nothing had worked out.  Nor did it feel right to me.  After I began to research and realized that a Lab would be a good breed for our needs, a friend and co-worker suddenly shared that she had a friend who breeds them, and they had one yellow female left who had not yet found a home.  A few emails later, we had plans to pick our little Sami up on Saturday!  God's timing is always right, and when He intervenes, everything just falls into place exactly how it's supposed to be.  I'm glad I didn't reach any of those previous people who had dogs for sale!  Obviously, it wasn't time yet. 

And clearly, it is time now!