Woman needs service dog but can't raise money

By ELIZABETH CAMPBELL

liz@star-telegram.com

Connie Hughes relied on her service dog, Sandy, to make her life easier.

Hughes, diagnosed with a rare debilitating condition, resistive sympathetic dystrophy, trained the dog to alert her when it appeared that she was going to have a life-threatening seizure.

"He would step on my feet and look intently into my eyes. He would alert me and make sure I was on my side," Hughes said, adding that she could choke if she were lying on her back while having a seizure.

So it was only natural that Hughes wanted to replace Sandy with another service dog after he died in January.

But the 61-year-old Arlington woman, besides dealing with the loss of her canine companion, soon discovered that her efforts to raise money to obtain a $20,000 service dog may put her Social Security benefits at risk.

"I was told that if you are able to fundraise, then you are able to hold down a job," said Hughes who is paid $449 in supplemental security insurance benefits a month and cannot work.

A spokesman for the Social Security Administration office in Fort Worth said the benefits that Hughes receives are given to those who are disabled or who are over 65 and have few assets.

"If she were to collect the money herself, she would be ineligible for SSI and for Medicaid," said Tom Clark, a public information specialist. "If she has access to funds, that is considered to be a resource. If she has someone to help her and put the money in an account that she doesn’t have access to, then her benefits won’t be affected."

Hughes said finding someone to take on fundraising is tough because most of her friends also receive SSI benefits.

Close partnership

In 1990, Hughes, who was not disabled then, found Sandy abandoned on her front porch. Hughes was caring for her bedridden father when she realized that Sandy was trying to tell her when her father needed help.

She enrolled in a program funded by the state — but which no longer exists — that provided videotapes and other material for training service dogs. Hughes trained Sandy to alert her when her father was in pain or if he was in danger of falling out of bed.

After her father died in 1998, Hughes began having her own health problems. She began having seizures and pain throughout her body after an emergency hysterectomy, and she was then diagnosed with her rare condition.

Sandy quickly became her helper and companion, putting his paws on her when he sensed she was going to have a seizure.

Hughes said Sandy would also fetch things she dropped and alert her when the doorbell rang.

But when the dog was diagnosed with oral cancer in February 2008, Hughes couldn’t afford the $27,000 to treat him.

"It was heartbreaking because you depend on him in many, many ways as a friend and a family member," Hughes said.

Getting a dog

Hughes is applying to Paws With A Cause, a school in Wayland, Mich., that trains assistance dogs to work with those who are hearing-impaired or have other disabilities.

Portasue Hendrickson, director of administration for the organization, said people who apply for dogs are not required to raise money, but the wait could be as long as several years while money is found. The sponsorship level is $20,000, but people wanting a dog are not required to pay, she said.

Paws With A Cause uses golden retrievers and Labrador retrievers because of their calm personality and temperament. Smaller dogs such as terriers are also used for people with impaired hearing, Hendrickson said.

The dogs are custom trained for a person’s needs, she said.

Hendrickson said many variables are involved in getting a service dog.

First, a suitable match must be found, and the dog goes through four to six months of training. Even then, the dog may not be able to handle the stress and rigorous training, and the process begins again. Over the years, training has gotten more complex, and the dogs learn more tasks, adding to the time it takes to train them.

She added that schools that train dog guides for the blind have been around longer and have larger endowments than do schools that work with people who have other disabilities.

Even though Hughes has a struggle ahead, she isn’t giving up on getting another dog to help her be more independent.

"Our dogs are our guardian angels; they watch out for us," she said.

ELIZABETH CAMPBELL, 817-390-7696

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