Meet Ravi

Meet Ravi, a two-year-old Doberman pinscher who is here with me to hopefully be a service dog. How Ravi came to be with me is a bit of a complicated story that starts in a dark and hopeless place for me. On January 17th, 2015 a small black ball of fluff came into this world. She was the culmination of a dream, from a wonderful breeder from health tested parents. She came home with me in North Carolina from Washington state that March, not long before my own birthday. She grew into a quirky, brilliant, vivacious soul who brought smiles to so many people. This October she passed away suddenly. It wasn't fair, it was a horrible hand to be dealt and I will miss that beautiful soul for a very long time.

A couple of days after Remy passed a friend contacted me about a group of young adult Dobermans that had landed with her dog's breeder. Dogs between 10 months and 2 years old from solid bloodlines. They had not been socialized and due to their breeder's health they hadn't had exposure to a lot of things but several of them seemed promising and worth looking at. I wasn't ready for a dog. I didn't want another dog but the reality was that a service dog allows me to live as close to a normal life as my disabilities will allow.

It was almost two weeks before things could line up for me to go look at all of them but when I did one of those young dogs was a stand out both in size and structure as well as temperament and worth a longer look. I took him with me to a pet-friendly location to see how he coped with people and the kinds of things that a service dog will see on a daily basis. It was clear that he lacked socialization and at first, he is hesitant, but overall I would consider him cautiously curious.

Right now he is a blank slate, he has little to no training and has had little to no exposure to people and environments outside of a kennel. But the reverse side of that is that he also doesn't have any bad habits that I'm going to have to work out. He has so far not tried to mark indoors, he has pretty decent natural leash manners and if he's a bit reserved about people he is willing to approach and is tolerant and even enjoys getting attention from a wide range of strangers. So far he hasn't shown any hesitation to one segment of the population than another.

My hope is that I can take two negatives and build a positive out of them, that I can help him and he can help me and together we can help each other and become more than the individual parts.

For Remy, In Memory 

01/17/2015 - 10/10/2018