Hi, my name is Josie Paulin and I'm a new amputee. I have spent the last year grieving the loss of my leg and the knowledge that I will lose my other in a few years. The blow to my independence left me in a severe state of grief.
As a dog lover, I immediately began to research how to get a service dog for myself and I realized that this wasn't a possibility for me living on a fixed income. The upfront cost in Canada was 30,000 and there was a 2-4 year waitlist. I was discouraged and my depression worsened over the few months while I wondered how I would reclaim my life. It has been a long journey with many physicians to learn how to cope with these circumstances and I thank them all.
The last piece of the puzzle was a new addition to our family: Bear.
Bear is a Great Pyrenees with a temperament of a gentle giant, and he is a perfect fit into our home. After speaking to vets in my community, I learned that it was possible to train Bear as a service dog myself with the help of professional trainers.
However, it still is a 20,000 dollar cost over two years.
This is where I will need your support. I hope to raise at least $10,000 in order to afford this training for Bear, but also to increase awareness of the lack of service dog training in New Brunswick.
New Brunswick can do better than this. I hope you will follow our journey in making it possible for individuals to use outside province service dog trainers. Let's all get on board with training your own service dog and with Breaking BEARriers.
You can join our new journey on these platforms:
X (formerly known as Twitter): https://x.com/GreatPyrene
