Here is a picture they took of me with Chance the first day we went down to meet him. He is going to spend the night and will write more about it later.

Taken at project pooch

from Project Pooch

Project POOCH, Inc. ®, is a non-profit, 501c(3) organization that has successfully paired youths incarcerated at the MacLaren Youth Correctional Facility in Woodburn, Oregon, with homeless shelter dogs for over a decade.

Youths (guided by professionals) learn to train the dogs, groom them, and find them new adoptive “forever homes.”

After visiting we found "Chance" a yellow lab. CHANCE is really sharp - he got 6 A's and 2 B's on his intake report card from the Humane Society. He is now on the way to graduating at the top of his Canine Good Citizens class. Chance loves people and other dogs, but will do best in a home and no cats or chickens or other birds. He needs a home where he can have plenty of exercise daily and will be able to spend lots of quality time with his adopters. He has been neutered, micro-chipped, and vaccinated. (he passed his Canine Good Citizens report on Saturday).



On saturday Chance is coming for an hour visit and if that goes well he will spend the night and if that goes well then we can adopt him. He was very friendly and started licking my face when we first met.

My therapist asked me to join the mailing list on Psych Service dogs from

Psych Dog . org List Serv

This was the email I sent to the woman.

I have invited her to respond to the blog posting if she chooses. And will not censor her responses if she chooses to do so.

EDIT: This is out of order of the exchange, but her last response in email
so much hostility. unfortunate and unnecessary. i wish you the best my dear :)

---
I would like to join your list serve. I am a student at Portland
State University, after transferring from the University of
Massachusetts. My therapist and I have been working together on
getting a service dog for me to work with and it seems that having
contact with others who have gone through the experience would be
helpful.

I am partly deaf and do not use the phone directly, though that may
change some with the new hearing aids I am getting soon. You can
leave me a message at 888 804 4527 (a number that works for me for
hearing people to leave a message, send a fax or it can be called
with a TTY). And I will return your call via a relay service, if
you haven't worked with relay please don't hang up as it isn't a
sales call, there are just pauses while the operator relays
information back and forth.

Thank you for your time,
Julia


---

Her response

---

Hi Julia,

Thanks for writing to us. I need to share that we had a 'security
issue' recently and, while I am happy to follow the procedure outlined
below, I would also like your home telephone number. When I call the
home telephone number could you arrange for a hearing person to answer
the phone? I wish to verify that it is indeed your home phone number
and this cannot be done through TTY. Although this request may sound
a little weird, even slightly rude on my part, I feel the need to be
very cautious in light of the recent 'security issue'. I hope you
will understand and be flexible with me.

Thanks, Joan

---

My follow up to that

---

Not only is that rude it is disciminatory. I am forwarding this message on to my therapist who recomended I join your list to show why you are not allowing me to join.

Sadly I first I misread the message and thought it was from the place I am adopting the dog. As the adoption is happening through a facility that works with youth in the correctional system. What didn't make sense is they have adopeted dogs out to the school for the deaf and are familiar with relay and tty.

If your list has problems with deaf people using service dogs then perhaps it is not the right place for me. The idea of a service dog for someone with psych, vision, hearing, mobility, etc issues is to reduce barriers and if you choose to erect new ones to even discuss the subject then I would ask you to look at your motivations for doing so.

j

---

And lastly her response

my motivations are exactly as i explained. you can turn this into a 'discrimination' issue if you want to. i explained quite simply that we had a security problem recently. i am not going to get into the details of that situation. on account of this security breach i must employ strict standards for screening newbies. your phone number is 888. that could be anywhere. i have to know for sure that you are who you say you are. i'm not going to apologize for this. it is what i must do to keep my community safe.

The number of places that simply won't work with people with psych disabilities or worse multiple disabilities is very frustrating. It is almost as if the amswer is don't even try.

There is always completely doing it on your own, but I lack the ability or resaources for that.

Feeling very alone and unwanted