July Volunteer of the Month

Congratulations to Beth Bartoli, the July Volunteer of the Month! Thank you for helping #DogsChangeLives! Read her story below about her volunteer experience.

Guest post by Beth Bartoli, volunteer with Susquehanna Service Dogs

I have been an SSD volunteer since December 2017, when I started raising SSD Felix. She is the first dog I have raised, but I plan on continuing to raise dogs for SSD. 

When she was almost two years old, Susquehanna Service Dogs selected Felix as a breeding dog, which also gave us the opportunity to train her as a demonstration dog for SSD. She started classes to become a demonstration (or demo) dog. Felix has been a demo dog for almost a year now, and we have done various “meet and greets” in the community to demonstrate what service dogs can do to make a difference in people’s lives. So far, Felix’s favorite job has been to visit patients at Harrisburg Hospital. She seems to really enjoy visiting with people there, getting and giving love and making people smile. 

Felix just had her first litter of puppies (4 males and 3 females) on June 17, and she is a great mom. They are currently being cared for at Warrior Canine Connection, and we have been able to visit Felix and the puppies once a week since we are her breeder caretakers. It has been wonderful to be able to visit with Felix and to watch her puppies grow. It will be exciting to see these puppies grow hopefully into service dogs, too. We are hoping to raise one of them when they are 8 weeks old. 

I got involved with SSD after reading about how service dogs can make such a big difference in people’s lives, and help them become more independent. My family loves dogs, and we felt like raising a service dog would be a great volunteer experience that we could do together. All members of my family have participated in training Felix, going out in public with her, practicing good behavior at home. 

It is so rewarding to see the dogs being paired with a partner who has specific needs. Hearing the stories from partners about how much a dog has changed their lives is amazing, and I know that the work put into raising a service dog is worth every minute.