THSD

One of the coolest animal organizations I know of is Texas Hearing and Service Dogs. They adopt all of their dogs from animal shelters and rescue organizations and train them to be either Hearing or Service Dogs for deaf or physically impaired folks. A Hearing Dog is trained to alert by touch and help out with normal every day sounds like telephones, doorbells or smoke alarms. Service Dogs do things like open doors, pick up things, turning on lights, etc. You can see some of the really interesting ways these dogs help out on their website. They’ve broken ground on a brand new training facility in Dripping Springs, just south of Austin.

They do all of this for like, totally free. People in need can apply to get a Hearing or Service dog for $25, which is about $17,475 dollars less than what it takes to train them.

In order to continue to provide this awesome service, THSD relies on lots of fantastic fundraisers to help. One of their most well known fundraisers is the Mighty Texas Dog Walk coming up in a couple of weeks. I did this the first year they had it and it was… um, well… you know that saying about how if you’re not the lead dog, the view never changes?? Yeah, it was like that. But they’ve had a few years to perfect things and it’s gotten a lot better. This year’s Dog Walk is April 8th. They’ll have a microchipping clinic there and lots of fun events.

If you’re like me and can’t make it due to the other 5 million things you have going on that day, you can go to several other upcoming events.

Tuesday, March 28th, they’re having Heavy Petting (heh) and Shoppers Night at Bookpeople. 10% of your purchases go to THSD (plus you can pay to pet some awesome dogs). And on April 2nd, if you buy tickets through the THSD website for the Texas Rollergirls Derby bout, $2.50 of your ticket price goes to the THSD organization.

And hey, if you need to borrow a dog for the Dog Walk, let me know, I got plenty.