I got Lizzy Mae Klint, an Australian Shephard, blue merle female puppy around Thanksgiving 2021. Bringing her into our home with two small rescue dogs was interesting, but she was accepted for the “most part”. And still is again for the “most part” LOL. Now, early in July of 2022 she is going on ten months old and has begun her training as my service dog. As of this writing she and I have had two individual training classes with our instructor Amber.

Lizzy is still growing; she is up to around 35 lbs. now. However, she is still filling out and will probably gain a little more weight and height. However, the smallest dog in the house, Sophie runs the household! Sophie even has her own dresser drawer of shirts, but that’s for a later blog. I chose Lizzy and her breed for a service dog after practically a year of research. I wanted an adventure dog, one that I can take on camping, climbing trips, etc. and has the energy to keep up with me on a mountain bike.

As for the service dog part, knowing that Australian Shepard’s are an unusual pick, but I have run across examples where they were successful trained as service dogs. They are extremely smart and pick up things very quickly, however they have a ton of energy, as I have come to learn. In my case she will be trained to help pick things up for me and to early detect when I will experience low blood sugar levels with my diabetes. With my CRPS and chronic pain I can get dizzy bending over at times to pick things up. Also, she will provide a great deal of help for me a night when my pain is most severe. She so far has proven to be a very loving dog with a great stubborn streak. Oh yes, she feels very strongly the need to dig up our backyard, I guess she is hinting at wanting a pool, right. LOL