Joanie, a two-year-old yellow Labrador retriever, is not your average friendly pooch.
She can turn light switches on and off, according to a release from Canine Companions for Independence, a non-profit provider of trained assistance dogs for children and adults with disabilities.
She can open doors and close them. She can pick up dropped objects.
And since February, she’s been sharing her skills with Thomas Hastings, an 11-year-old boy with special needs, and his family in Windsor, Conn.
“Joanie is a very special dog and we hope to have many wonderful years with her,” Brad Hastings, Thomas’s dad, said in the release.
That’s a sentiment shared by the Mona Overturf, a Williamsburg resident who first met Joanie when she when she was eight weeks old.
Mona Overturf and her husband Jim trained Joanie until she was about 18 months old, teaching her basic commands and socialization until she was ready for advanced training at CCI’s Northeast Regional Headquarters in Medford, N.Y.
“You would tell her to do something and she would do it right away,” Mona Overturf said in a phone interview. “It was a game to her.”
Even as an active puppy, she had a lot of discipline and she enjoyed the training, Overturf added.
“Joanie is just an exemplary assistance dog,” she said.
After Joanie finished additional training as a skilled companion, she was matched with Thomas. The Overturfs went to the graduation and met Thomas, who uses a wheelchair much of the time.
“He’s just a fantastic little boy,” Overturf said.
And at the ceremony, they turned Joanie over to her new companion.
“The puppy raisers are all smiling on the way up,” she said. “A lot of them are teary-eyed on the way back.”
For more information about CCI, go to cci.org or call 1-800-572-BARK.
WYDaily archives were used for this article.
