Helping Paws n.g.o.

When we started Helping Paws, nobody in this country knew what an assistance dog was and what such dog could do for a disabled person. We didn't even know. We also failed to realize that n.g.o. meant non-governmental organization and that in order to train such dogs, we had to start one.

It Started with a Puppy

When my husband Jim and I bought Barkley, a cute little Labrador puppy bred by Hana Pirnerova in 1996, we didn't know he would change our lives. Because Hana is a proper breeder, who likes to know how her puppies are doing, we stayed in touch, wrote occasional letters and Christmas cards. Then one evening in the spring of 2000, I received an unexpected phone call from her.

She explained to me, that her friends the Tomasu family, had been training guide-dogs for years and now they'd heard it's possible to train dogs for people using wheelchairs. They knew similar dogs were being trained in the US, but they had no idea what these dogs could accomplish or how it was all organized. She knew I spoke English and she knew I had some disabled friends, so I was her obvious choice.

Reaching Out

I got on the Internet and soon realized the dogs are called assistance dogs and can understand as many as 90 commands. They open and close doors, switch lights on and off, pick up items dropped on the floor, retrieve mobile phones, carry small items in backpacks, alert deaf people to sounds, even learn to alert their epileptic owners to approaching seizures. The list seemed endless, the job seemed huge.

I contacted American trainers and non-profit organizations and asked them for help. We soon received books, videos, sample forms, training instructions and a great deal of encouragement from people in the US and other countries. Thank you all! We did not receive any encouragement at home in the Czech Republic, though. Everyone told us we were nuts, that we didn't have a prayer of getting sponsors, that Czech disabled people would be unwilling to go through the necessary training and tests.

The Pilot Project

Despite all that, we started a Pilot Project, training our first five dogs to prove that it could be done. We were lucky to find suitable adult dogs and willing people who helped us in the beginning. While our trainers tried to explain to a dog that he could actually flip a light switch, I set out to do the paperwork. I translated some of the materials we received, created a website and put together the first flyers introducing the project. I prepared the paperwork for starting a non-profit organization, got all the stamps, wrote by-laws and coordinated volunteers. Helping Paws n.g.o. was then officially approved, in February of 2001.

Being so busy, my translations were delayed and I soon realized that the trainers had completed training our first dogs without the American manuals. They only needed to know what the dog was capable of doing and took it from there. We held several meetings with disabled people to learn their needs and listened to individual needs of our first clients. As a result, in May of 2001, our first four clients officially received assistance dogs and one handicapped facility received a fully trained therapy-dog for permanent use.

The dogs were amazing. They all had complete command of space orientation, perfect behavior in public places and smoothly and effortlessly responded to commands from even severely disabled clients. On top of the "normal commands," such as retrieving items dropped on the floor or opening doors, each dog learned to handle tasks specific to their client.

For example Barney, a huge Golden Retriever, was paired with Misa, a tiny 8 year-old boy suffering from muscular dystrophy. Sometimes Misa's head drops forward due to weak neck muscles and he might possibly suffocate. To the great relief of Misa's parents, Barney was trained to gently nudge Misa's head back into the wheelchair's headrest. Labrador Lord was trained for a young mother with multiple sclerosis. Lord shops in their local wheelchair-inaccessible shop for her. He climbs the stairs with a backpack, money and a shopping list, coming back with a backpack full of groceries. I wish Barkley could do that!

The estimated value of this Pilot Project was about a million Czech Crowns (nearly $60,000), created by four people, plus a handful of occasional volunteers. We never gave it a thought; we just did what was needed. Major thanks for this goes to my husband, who supported me during the first years when I worked for free, pretty much full-time. I gave over my director's seat to Hana Pirnerova in 2002 and she proved to be an excellent fundraiser and director.

Helping Paws in Action

To say that all this makes me happy sounds like a cliché, but it really does. I'm very proud of Oli and Jirka Tomasu, our genius trainers. I'm super proud of Hana, who handles all the paperwork, learned to work on a computer and found sponsors! For me, the job was relatively easy, because I was always an "office mouse," but Hana is a "dog person," professional breeder and puppy-raiser, so she really stood up to an enormous challenge. Her husband Petr came a long way too, first thinking it was just another crazy idea of his wife’s and now training dogs alongside Oli and Jirka.

In May 2011 we celebrated our tenth anniversary with a special concert by the Cechomor band (www.cechomor.cz), who also launched their latest CD at the event. Helping Paws has grown into a strong organization of professionals, including an occupational therapist, a psychologist, a fleet of puppy-raisers, three full-time trainers and one director, Hana, without whom it never would have happened. She once told me that, back in 2000, it took her four months to get enough courage to pick up the phone and ask me for help. Nowadays, she knows how to ask for help and gets it.

Thanks to her fundraising efforts, Helping Paws have placed over 115 assistant and therapy dogs of the highest quality. They changed lives of many more people through their network of dog-facilitated therapy volunteers. They also altered lives of many people on the outside, who decided to contribute or help us. When I ask them about their motivation, I always get the same answer: "I want to do something meaningful, something that will make a difference." Then I realize, again and again, that they came to the right place - Helping Paws does make a difference, to all of us.

I recently had a conversation with someone who felt that they "need to do something big" by the time their next round-number birthday comes up. That concept felt foreign to me. "Don't you feel that way too?" they asked and I surprised myself with the answer: "No, I already did it. I started Helping Paws. We already made the impossible happen. Everything else from then on is just an added benefit, something else fun or useful I can do."

Thank you Barkley! Thank you all, guys!

More at: www.pomocnetlapky.cz (the English section is minimal, but pictures say it all).