Saturday, May 11, 2:30—5:00 p.m., San Juan Island Yacht Club
Orcas Islander Sherry Vinson and her Summit Assistance dog.
Summit Assistance Dogs is changing lives four paws at a time by providing highly skilled mobility, hearing and professional therapy dogs for people living with disabilities.
Islanders are invited to an open house to meet and greet Summit Assistance graduates and their dogs, and to enjoy some wine selections and appetizers on Saturday at the San Juan Island Yacht Club.
Assistance dogs empower people with disabilities to lead lives of greater independence by performing tasks that otherwise would require a human caregiver. Among the many tasks these dogs can perform are opening and closing doors, picking up dropped items, retrieving an emergency telephone, helping take clothes off and alerting a person who is hard of hearing to important sounds like a smoke alarm, a phone ringing, or a child crying.
Perhaps more important than the tasks performed is the relationship itself. A dog’s capacity for unconditional love is a wonderful gift that helps reduce depression, loneliness, and anxiety. Through partnership with an assistance dog, people often experience a joy and confidence that can change their lives.
They have matched 58 highly skilled service dogs to people with various disabilities, training the dog and the person to work together as a team. Located in Anacortes, Washington, they offer this life-changing companionship to applicants throughout the Northwest.
Summit Assistance Dogs is thrilled to announce their newest project—providing Service Dogs for Veterans! Summit is looking forward to receiving applications from men and women who have served in our Military and are in need of a service dog or therapeutic home companion to provide support for mobility and hearing disabilities, and/or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. If you have friends or relatives whose lives could be enriched by a canine helpmate, contact Summit to begin the application process. As always, these dogs will come to applicants at no charge.
If you have any questions or want to learn more about how you can support Summit Assistance Dogs or apply for a service dog. Call (360) 293-5609 or e-mail info@summitdogs.org.
Summit Assistance Dogs is a non-profit organization founded in 2000 in response to the overwhelming need for more trained service dogs. More than 55 million Americans live with various disabilities, and the national average waiting time to receive a service dog is two to five years.
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This is a great program. I once worked in a real estate office in California with the man who, as a boy, had played Timmy on the Lassie TV show, and he was very much involved with a similar program in Santa Rosa. Later I stayed at a B&B in the Napa Valley where the owners had a golden retriever puppy they were socializing for the program. I hope your organization receives the strong support it deserves.