Support Milo's Journey to Recovery and Independence

My name is Milo, I'm seventeen, and I need thirty-two thousand dollars for a psychiatric service dog. I know that's quite a lot of money, so here's my story.

I've struggled with my mental health and psychiatric conditions since the fifth grade. Since the third grade and up until the eighth grade, I lived in a house with my mother and her partner who were abusive to each other and myself. This domestic violence put my safety at risk numerous times and will have lifelong effects on my mental health. Due to this violence, I have developed a slew of mental health conditions. These include PTSD, Bipolar Disorder type 2, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and I was born with ADHD.

When I was in the eighth grade, I finally got help and was removed from my mother's custody. This took several people, including lawyers, therapists, and child protective services. I had three separate court dates to establish a protective order against my mother and her partner that will last until I am eighteen. Since then, the effects of the abuse have been evident. I've had three psychiatric hospitalizations; I take three different medications, totaling five pills a day, all to manage my mental health; I'm in therapy three times a week: talk therapy, EMDR therapy, and equine therapy; I need to go to a specialized school; I need an Individualized Education Plan; and at one point, I was in therapy nine hours a week in an intensive in-home therapy program.

When I was a freshman in high school, before I went to my specialized school, I almost failed out. I had no vision of the future and very little ambition. Today, I'm going to graduate high school a semester early. I want to go to Virginia Commonwealth University for Elementary Education and get my Master's. I'm a junior in high school and an active member of my school's theatre department, a member of the National Honor Society, and I continue to advocate for people with disabilities. I even got to go to the Virginia Senate for my advocacy for the Ehlers-Danlos Syndromes, another genetic condition I have. I have ambitions and a bright future ahead of me; I just need help and anything helps.

Some of the tasks that the service dog would perform include,

Creating space in a large crowd, providing deep pressure therapy, interrupt flashbacks, interrupt panic attacks, and help pull me out of a crowd by making me walk faster (momentum pull).

The first eight thousand will go to the down payment for the dog. The next twenty-two thousand goes to the training. Finally, two thousand goes to the travel costs to go to California where the non-profit, Doggie Do Good, is based. I need to raise this money in six months. Even a dollar helps.