Approved! (July 2014)

Hip Hip Hooray!! My proposal was approved!  I could have a therapy dog accompany me to work at the Long Term Care facility in which I worked.  Next steps were to find a breeder and decide on a breed.

I love dogs (and cats!) so choosing a pup to be my 'partner' wasn't going to be easy.  Although my search was narrowed by the sheer fact that some breeds are better than others when it comes to pet therapy work.  As mentioned in an earlier post, our previous dog was a rescue from the SPCA and I did consider this as an option, initially.  However, from research I'd done I felt it was necessary to have a puppy and know the history of the parents temperaments.  Kijiji was another place I looked for a pup both registered and not.  I also spoke to my vet and contacted various registered breeders who's listings I'd found through the CKC.

I spoke to Allison at KENRO about her soon to be born litter of Golden Retriever Puppies. I'd met one of her Golden's when she came to my workplace to give a presentation on Animal Assisted Interventions/Pet Therapy.

Me and one of the KENRO Golden's
www.kenrodogtraining.com

 Golden's are fantastic dogs and very commonly used for therapy work.  I learned that there are 'field' lines and 'show' lines of breeds such as Golden's and Labs and that the higher energy field lines were usually a bit too active for therapy work.  Food for though for sure!

In the end, after researching various breeds, I choose my original desire and decided on a Bernese Mountain Dog .... or a "Berner".  Berner's are loving and loyal like Golden's.  Berners are also commonly used in therapy work due to their calm nature.  They are typically big dogs but have a reputation of being known as "gentle giants".

So, I'd decided on a breed but the task of finding an available puppy was not quite as easy as I'd expected.  There are no registered BMD breeders in Saskatchewan that I could find.  My next best bet was a breeder in our 2 neighbouring provinces of Alberta and Manitoba.  Honestly, I felt like I'd called them all!  Most breeders either did not have puppies at the moment, were not expecting puppies for a while or if they did the pups were already spoken for........