Please help me afford a service dog
Donation protected
Hello!
My name is April Daniels, and I have PTSD. If you’ve heard of me, it has likely been seeing my name on protest signs around the country. Riffing on Niemöller’s famous poem, “First they came…” I tweeted “First they came for the Muslims and we said “not this time, motherfucker.’”
The other thing I’m known for is being the author of DREADNOUGHT, a YA novel about a transgender superhero. The point of writing this book was to create the story I wish I’d had when I was 15, sometime that might help young, scared trans girls feel like things were going to be okay. Early feedback suggests that my effort to create something that might help somebody someday has been successful.
Which brings us to the reason I have started this fund raising drive. As much I like to help others, right now, I'm the one who finds herself needing help.
Due to some intense abuse when I was younger, I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Although my condition was only recently diagnosed, I have had it for coming up on twenty years now, and it has gotten decisively worse in the last few months. What had before seemed like a general malaise and ill health became, when diagnosed, an all-pervasive illness which seems to dog my every step. It makes functioning at even a basic level a struggle. Sleeping, focusing, even eating—everything is harder now. On top of that I also get flashbacks, bouts of hypervigilance, and light sensitive migranes that can make it agony simply to open my eyes.
I can barely get through the week, and every weekend is an exercise in triage, as I decide which chores are going to go undone simply so that I will have enough time to sleep and recuperate from the stresses of the work week.
This is an unsustainable situation that is consuming my life and will destabalize my living and working arrangements if it continues untreated.
My therapist and I have agreed that a service animal would go a long way to ameliorating a lot of the worst symptoms of my condition.
A dog would provide me with a feeling of safety and connection, which would allow me to begin to relax and not be so on edge all the time. Further, a trained dog would be able to recognize when I'm having an episode and interrupt me before it became severe enough to ruin my day, or my week, or my life.
This would improve my quality of life, as well as free up mental and emotional resources that I currently use to cope with the symptoms and allow me to use them to focus them on addressing root causes instead.
That’s where you come in:
Service animals are expensive.
They are really unfortunately expensive and I have had no luck whatsoever with finding a non-profit group that can place a service animal with me on a free or sliding-scale basis. The search for a dog has been long and difficult, and has itself now become a significant cause of stress and distraction for me, during an already fraught and difficult period.
Partially because of this stress, and partially because any non-profit that was available to help me would have a years long waiting list I can’t afford to tough it out through, I have decided to attempt to fund my own service dog.
I am asking you to please donate to my Go Fund Me campaign to help me afford to buy a Labrador puppy and pay for training to get him or her up to the standard required of a service animal. Hopefully, I will have a puppy who can start training by mid-June, and then have my service dog by this time next year.
This is a big ask, so I’m going to break down the costs and explain each of them.
$2800 - Labrador puppies cost between 1500 and 2800 dollars right now. The cheaper end of that spectrum are puppy mills. I haven’t given up on finding a good deal, but I’m not willing to support unethical breeding, so I need to be ready to pay an adoption fee somewhere in the upper part of this range.
$4100 - This is the service dog training cost at the low end, as per the price estimate provided to me by PAWS Training Centers.
+ $3150 - Or, $7450 total for training. This is the middle range of what PAWS says I can expect for total training cost.
+ $4030 - Or, $11,480 total for training. This is the high range of what PAWS says I can expect for total training cost.
You'll notice this is a heck of a lot more than I have listed as the goal. That's because I want to emphasize smaller, more manageable goals, and see what I can accomplish that way rather than ask for the deluxe package up front. I recognize and appreciate the generosity of everyone who contributes, and I don't want to give the impression that I am cavalier with anyone's money.
Q. Have you considered a shelter dog?
A. Yes, I have considered adopting a shelter dog. Unfortunately, this is not a good option for me. Yes, some shelter dogs have been adopted and gone onto great careers as service animals, but those stories typically involve experienced trainers working for a nonprofit whose entire mission is rescuing and retraining dogs. I’m doing this at the end of my rope on a DIY basis. It’s not fair to me or the dogs to try and pretend I have the wherewithal to do that kind of thing. Puppies are the easiest to train, and so I’m getting a puppy.
Q. Why not an emotional support animal instead of a full service dog?
A. This was the plan, initially. However, as I worked through trying to adopt a support animal, I discovered that such a dog would not meet all of my requirements. Oh, it would be better than nothing, certainly, but what I really want is a dog I can count on to recognize when I’m having an episode, and do something about it. That’s not what emotional support animals do, and so I am hoping I can get a service dog instead.
Q. Why not train the dog yourself?
A. The most important thing about training an animal is consistency, and I can barely be consistent about getting my laundry done on time. This is not laziness, this is what life contending with heaping mountains of anxiety and fear that consume virtually all of my mental and emotional energy is like. Right now, even accomplishing basic life tasks is something I have real trouble with. This, incidentally, is also why I need the dog in the first place. As it is, I’m simply not healthy enough to handle the training on my own. A professional trainer to do the foundations, and then show me how to do the refresher training on my own is the best way forward right now.
Q. What if we donate a lot of money, and the training turns out to cost less than the amount donated?
A. The excess will be kept aside as a medical fund for any future costs to cover the dog as she gets older. I intend to buy a healthy puppy from an ethical breeder, but all animals generate medical expenses sooner or later.
And…and that’s it. Please know I would not ask if this were not urgent.
Thank you for considering my request.
My name is April Daniels, and I have PTSD. If you’ve heard of me, it has likely been seeing my name on protest signs around the country. Riffing on Niemöller’s famous poem, “First they came…” I tweeted “First they came for the Muslims and we said “not this time, motherfucker.’”
The other thing I’m known for is being the author of DREADNOUGHT, a YA novel about a transgender superhero. The point of writing this book was to create the story I wish I’d had when I was 15, sometime that might help young, scared trans girls feel like things were going to be okay. Early feedback suggests that my effort to create something that might help somebody someday has been successful.
Which brings us to the reason I have started this fund raising drive. As much I like to help others, right now, I'm the one who finds herself needing help.
Due to some intense abuse when I was younger, I have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Although my condition was only recently diagnosed, I have had it for coming up on twenty years now, and it has gotten decisively worse in the last few months. What had before seemed like a general malaise and ill health became, when diagnosed, an all-pervasive illness which seems to dog my every step. It makes functioning at even a basic level a struggle. Sleeping, focusing, even eating—everything is harder now. On top of that I also get flashbacks, bouts of hypervigilance, and light sensitive migranes that can make it agony simply to open my eyes.
I can barely get through the week, and every weekend is an exercise in triage, as I decide which chores are going to go undone simply so that I will have enough time to sleep and recuperate from the stresses of the work week.
This is an unsustainable situation that is consuming my life and will destabalize my living and working arrangements if it continues untreated.
My therapist and I have agreed that a service animal would go a long way to ameliorating a lot of the worst symptoms of my condition.
A dog would provide me with a feeling of safety and connection, which would allow me to begin to relax and not be so on edge all the time. Further, a trained dog would be able to recognize when I'm having an episode and interrupt me before it became severe enough to ruin my day, or my week, or my life.
This would improve my quality of life, as well as free up mental and emotional resources that I currently use to cope with the symptoms and allow me to use them to focus them on addressing root causes instead.
That’s where you come in:
Service animals are expensive.
They are really unfortunately expensive and I have had no luck whatsoever with finding a non-profit group that can place a service animal with me on a free or sliding-scale basis. The search for a dog has been long and difficult, and has itself now become a significant cause of stress and distraction for me, during an already fraught and difficult period.
Partially because of this stress, and partially because any non-profit that was available to help me would have a years long waiting list I can’t afford to tough it out through, I have decided to attempt to fund my own service dog.
I am asking you to please donate to my Go Fund Me campaign to help me afford to buy a Labrador puppy and pay for training to get him or her up to the standard required of a service animal. Hopefully, I will have a puppy who can start training by mid-June, and then have my service dog by this time next year.
This is a big ask, so I’m going to break down the costs and explain each of them.
$2800 - Labrador puppies cost between 1500 and 2800 dollars right now. The cheaper end of that spectrum are puppy mills. I haven’t given up on finding a good deal, but I’m not willing to support unethical breeding, so I need to be ready to pay an adoption fee somewhere in the upper part of this range.
$4100 - This is the service dog training cost at the low end, as per the price estimate provided to me by PAWS Training Centers.
+ $3150 - Or, $7450 total for training. This is the middle range of what PAWS says I can expect for total training cost.
+ $4030 - Or, $11,480 total for training. This is the high range of what PAWS says I can expect for total training cost.
You'll notice this is a heck of a lot more than I have listed as the goal. That's because I want to emphasize smaller, more manageable goals, and see what I can accomplish that way rather than ask for the deluxe package up front. I recognize and appreciate the generosity of everyone who contributes, and I don't want to give the impression that I am cavalier with anyone's money.
Q. Have you considered a shelter dog?
A. Yes, I have considered adopting a shelter dog. Unfortunately, this is not a good option for me. Yes, some shelter dogs have been adopted and gone onto great careers as service animals, but those stories typically involve experienced trainers working for a nonprofit whose entire mission is rescuing and retraining dogs. I’m doing this at the end of my rope on a DIY basis. It’s not fair to me or the dogs to try and pretend I have the wherewithal to do that kind of thing. Puppies are the easiest to train, and so I’m getting a puppy.
Q. Why not an emotional support animal instead of a full service dog?
A. This was the plan, initially. However, as I worked through trying to adopt a support animal, I discovered that such a dog would not meet all of my requirements. Oh, it would be better than nothing, certainly, but what I really want is a dog I can count on to recognize when I’m having an episode, and do something about it. That’s not what emotional support animals do, and so I am hoping I can get a service dog instead.
Q. Why not train the dog yourself?
A. The most important thing about training an animal is consistency, and I can barely be consistent about getting my laundry done on time. This is not laziness, this is what life contending with heaping mountains of anxiety and fear that consume virtually all of my mental and emotional energy is like. Right now, even accomplishing basic life tasks is something I have real trouble with. This, incidentally, is also why I need the dog in the first place. As it is, I’m simply not healthy enough to handle the training on my own. A professional trainer to do the foundations, and then show me how to do the refresher training on my own is the best way forward right now.
Q. What if we donate a lot of money, and the training turns out to cost less than the amount donated?
A. The excess will be kept aside as a medical fund for any future costs to cover the dog as she gets older. I intend to buy a healthy puppy from an ethical breeder, but all animals generate medical expenses sooner or later.
And…and that’s it. Please know I would not ask if this were not urgent.
Thank you for considering my request.
Organizer
April Daniels
Organizer
Beaverton, OR
