Service Dog Tripp needs our help!

Hi, my name is Casey Buckley. I am the owner of WPCreativepets Dog Training and have been training with Dominique & Tripp for over 3 years, the last year as a service dog. Tripp is a multipurpose service dog. He is training for Balance & Mobility, Psychiatric Service, and Allergen detection. Dominique is an amazing person who has done so much for her community, advocacy, social justice, and community gardening and is instrumental in bringing and protecting green spaces in Philadelphia. She is also disabled. She struggles with Rheumatoid Arthritis which causes severe joint pain, stiffness, swelling, weakness, fatigue, anemia, and exhaustion. This is extremely debilitating. In addition, Dominique is a CPTSD warrior who deals with flashbacks, dissasociation, panic attacks, anxiety, and fear of being in public spaces. Having also faced tremendous grief and loss in the last two years with some of the most crucial elders in her life. Dominique is humble and does not like to ask for help but she needs it desperately at this time. The sideling of her service dog for medical reasons has had a huge impact on her life and the cost to determine what is wrong is outside of her ability right now.

Tripp her service dog has been trained to help mitigate these disabilities. He offers balance and mobility support on bad flair days, retrieval of objects, and things Dominique needs that she may not be able to get out of bed and get, he helps with crowd management, grounding, flashback and dissociation interruption tasks, and interrupting repetitive behaviors and anxiety management. Dominique needs to avoid gluten at all costs and we are starting allergen alert work with Tripp for gluten detection. Gluten can cause her to have immense flares and be sick for days.

Unfortunately, Tripp has had a few medical problems recently that are quite costly. Most recently he had a paw infection, but the most serious thing right now is that he has become lame in one leg. This has the potential to wash him from service work if we can not get him into the vet to get the proper tests and diagnostics/treatment for him. These tests from Xrays, MRIs and bloodwork tests can often cost over 2000.00 minimum. Right now we are asking for $1,500 to at least allow Dominique to get Tripp to get some X-rays and determine the cause of the lameness. We have already started a Lyme protocol but it does not seem to be responding.

Tripp has been sidelined from service work until this can be resolved and we can determine what we need to do moving forward. This is a message from Dominique and how not having her service dog will greatly affect her life.

"Tripp was rehomed twice and finally found his forever home with me 6 years ago. Since then he has grown into my life and family as a core member. Tripp became my service dog two years ago when I started experiencing mobility issues and is also being trained to be a psychiatric dog. Aside from his duties, he is just an overall joy in the lives of everyone he encounters. Tripp has had a rough few weeks with several vet visits and health scares. He first had an infection in his toe which required an X-ray to rule out any broken bones and went on antibiotics and pain meds. Most recently, Tripp has had weakness in his back legs and had to go back to the vet to rule out Lymes. He is currently on a new course of meds but will need more follow-ups and imaging done. I simply cannot afford to do it all at once. Tripp has not been able to train during this time which put me in a difficult position as I've needed him for mobility work. If you know me or Tripp or have met us and feel moved to support please do. He passed his Canine Good Citizen test and has been doing public access training to prepare to accompany me to Iowa for my grad school clinics. If I am not able to get Tripp to this milestone, all of the hard work that we've done will have been lost and I am not sure how I will be able to cope emotionally, mentally, or physically without his assistance. This last month has been especially difficult for me and I am trying my best to do things without his assistance while he heals. We are asking for donations to cover vet and medicine costs in the amount of 1,500. "

Please consider donating to help out both Dominique and Tripp to continue on their journey!