Service Dog for Silas (Josie and the boy)

For the past few years, our family has been doing research into getting a service dog for our sweet Silas. Si is funny, brilliant, and talented. He also has what is considered high support severe autism. We felt a service dog, besides giving him companionship and a true friend, would help in issues of elopement, anxiety, socialization, and independence, 
Service dogs for Autism are often upward 15-20 thousand dollars with 2-3 year waitlist so we turned to researching other ways to have a puppy trained. It all was a bit overwhelming. Finding the right puppy at the right cost with the right potential... seemed like too much us right now. Then... along came Josie. A close family friend gifted us this puppy... a lab/golden mix, which is a wonderful service dog breed combination.
we soon realized that Josie has amazing potential to become at least a highly skilled companion dog for Silas if not a full blown service dog. 
We found a passionate trainer (Matt with Allegiant Canine) in the area willing (assuming she can make it all the way to the end of the process) to finish Josie as an autism service dog for $3500...
compared to the original $15,000 we were looking at this is phenomenal and very exciting!
$3500 for training a dog when you are pouring money into therapy and medical bills for a special needs child is still a lot of money-
we are looking to raise funds to aid in training this pup and continuing her health care and boarding through her life in service br />we would also like to donate to another family who might be on a similar path:)