Emily Lezon

Hi, my name is Emily Lezon. I want to speak about my experience with Canine Companions.

One day in 2014, I was invited to an event at Ritter Public Library. I went to the event. Needless to say, I have always been very afraid of dogs. I saw all of the neat things service dogs can do and knew they could help me. A few months later my mom signed me up to try to receive a service dog in Columbus.  We started working with our local Canine Companions puppy raisers (Stacey and Patty) to get over my fear of dogs. In October of last year, I got a letter stating that I was on the waiting list. I was so excited. We then waited for months until we got the call to come to Columbus at the end of October of 2016 for a two-week training.

 
Training was hard and long, but it was fun with the nice people I met. After working with about eight dogs, I was matched with David. He was the biggest dog in the class.

We have been really busy since we graduated on November 4th. As I am an intern at the YMCA and am concentrating on all that I have to learn this year, David does not go with me yet. David has worked the door with me at basketball games, goes to cheerleading practice, attended three cheerleading competitions, accompanied me on my at birthday trip, experienced holidays with both sides of our family, and we just got home from a two-week trip to Florida. David is a wonderful traveler and made my trip even better. He rode beside me all of the way to Florida. We are continuing to work on all of our commands and David is really good at picking up all of the things that I drop. I love my life with David.