How To Get A Service Dog For Free

Hi friends and family!

Thank you for taking the time to stop by and read about our GoFundMe for our son Landen. Landen is our sweet, gentle-hearted, smart, 6-year-old son. He has a rare chromosome disorder, global developmental delay, and Autism. He officially got his Autism diagnosis about a year ago and we have been doing all we can to find ways to support him and learn as a family. We have been researching the benefits a service dog could bring to our son and our family and feel strongly that it would benefit him greatly. We have made the decision to start fundraising and saving to get a puppy and then use Dog Training Elite to walk with us through service dog training and certification. The training we will be purchasing and what they will do can be found here:

We have seen some of the ways a service dog could specifically help Landen. Landen can get over-stimulated, which could look like getting overly silly, giddy, not listening, flopping on the floor, or in other ways having a meltdown. A service dog would be trained to apply deep pressure therapy during meltdowns and sense when Landen needs him. It would be his close companion. Other ways we know a service dog would help is with redirecting repetitive behaviors. For example, in grocery stores or shopping Landen gets overwhelmed by everything and starts scripting or non-stop repeating words. By Landen holding onto his service dog and the dog being trained to redirect repetitive behavior, it grounds him and helps him focus on the task at hand. Landen lacks a sense of danger and in some instances the dog would help anchor him from danger. As we do our absolute best to ensure all our children are always safe, this would help ease any stress and lead Landen away from harm. At night Landen struggles to stay in bed and wants to be put back to bed often. The dog would be trained as a sleep companion and help him to sleep through the night. All of these would be life-changing for Landen and help ease stress our family sometimes faces from these challenges.

Here in San Antonio, we have found a wonderful dog training company, Dog Training Elite, with over 40 years of experience training dogs. This company specializes in training service dogs in Autism support and would train our dog to meet our family's specific needs for Landen. They will come out to our house every week to train us and the dog together and support us through the entire process. They even offer unlimited lifetime follow up training for any issues that arise for the lifetime of the dog. We have decided on the route of hiring this company as they are more affordable than buying an already-trained service dog that ranges from $20,000-$50,000, or a free service dog with wait times currently at 4-5 years. The trainers will even work with specific breeders and help us to choose a puppy with the right temperament as a service dog.

Our goal is to raise enough money to cover purchasing the puppy and paying for its training which is about $1,500 for the puppy and $6,000 with our discount for the service dog training program. We know there will be additional expenses in owning the dog and vet expenses that we are preparing to add to our budget as well. We plan on doing family fundraisers on top of this that we will update how much we raise from those, as well as save our own money for the total expenses. We know it will be a lot of work for all of us raising a puppy and going through a year's worth of professional training, but we believe this could be the piece of the puzzle we are missing that helps both Landen and all of us!

We have a vision and belief that this is something both Landen and our whole family need and we can envision how this dog will bring out even more joy and peace in our son and family. We can see Landen bringing his dog on the bus and to school, making new friends, and having the confidence to socialize even more with his new best friend along his side everywhere he goes.

If you feel led to help in any way, you will be contributing to this vision and dream we have for Landen and our family. We appreciate your time to read this. Please feel free to share our fundraiser for Landen and thank you for partnering with us as we plan to add a special dog to our family within the next year. We will update with progress and photos of the dog throughout the whole journey!

Love,

The Wiley Family