Golden Indigo need your help — Updated

UPDATE: It looks like some pretty amazing folks have made some huge donations to get this team on their way. Amazing what a little television coverage can do in the matter of a mere day or two. People do have big hearts once they know of a situation, which is what has occured in this situation. I only wish there were more stories like these that got on the news.

Disabled Woman Fears Losing Best Friend – Service Dog Diagnosed With Cancer
By Jim Boyd, Special Correspondent

BOSTON — Alice Savasta, 39, of Worcester, Mass., feels she can’t get by without her best friend. That friend is Indigo Savasta’s golden retriever. Indigo is a service dog who helps provide Savasta access to the outside world. The 7-year-old golden retriever opens doors, turns on lights and even fetches the phone for Savasta, who has degenerative muscle weakness and needs a wheelchair to get around.

Last month Savasta and Peter Picard, who describes himself as Savasta’s good friend, took Indigo to the vet where they received a devastating dose of bad news. “Indigo was diagnosed with cancer,” said Picard. Doctors said “there is no treatment that can be done. Indigo only has (at) most 4 months to live,” he added.

Doctors at the Tufts New England Veterinary Center in Grafton, Mass., diagnosed Indigo’s condition as hermangiosarcoma of the heart. They confirmed the grim prognosis. According to the veterinarians, surgery is a possibility, but in their opinion Indigo still would only survive for six months.

Savasta doesn’t know where to turn. “Alice, like most disabled people, is on a fixed income and cannot afford the extra medical expenses for Indie,” said Picard. Even the cost of burial when Indigo passes will be a difficult financial burden for Savasta, said her good friend. And the cost of a new service dog is out of reach.

Indigo has been Savasta’s companion for 5 years. She got him from NEADS (National Education for Assistance Dog Services). a nonprofit organization based in Princeton, Mass. NEADS trains rescued and donated dogs and puppies to help deaf or physically disabled people to lead more mobile, independent lives. The cost to replace Indigo is nearly $10,000.

If you would like to help, please check out this fundraising page.

Update: Much more money than was requested has been donated!

NEADS is a wonderful organization, recently initiating the Canines for Combat Veterans program. We have done stories about that in the past, but here is a wonderful clip about it. How amazing it is that they are performing this special mission and providing useful rehabilitation to prisoners as well.

Dave is one busy dude

Dave the Math Dog visits Dexter students

A special visitor in Dexter left students thankful there were no snow cancellations.

Dave the Math Dog, who has appeared on The Late Show with David Letterman, sporting his personalized blue bandana and followed by his two sons performed for students from both Southwest and Central Elementary schools Monday morning.

The special assembly brought in over 1,000 students and faculty members to see some of Dave’s out of the ordinary pet tricks.

Dave is a seven-year-old Golden Retriever owned and trained by Frank and Debbie Ferris of Lerna, Ill. But, Dave does more than just sit and roll over, he can do mathematics, understands sign language and understands numbers in five different languages. “When Dave was about five, my wife was watching a show on the Discovery Channel about the things dogs take in from their surroundings,” Frank Ferris said. “After the show she sat down and asked him seven or eight times how many fingers she was holding up and he never missed once.”

That’s when, Ferris said, they decided there was something special in Dave that they should share with others.

Now Ferris and Dave travel around and give motivational presentations to young students encouraging them to stick with mathematics. “Before today our biggest audience was 720 students in Ripley, Tenn. last year,” he said of the size of Monday’s audience.

How all of this works is Ferris writes a problem on a small dry erase board, he then shows it to the dog. Dave then uses his paw to count out the right answers. And they aren’t all small problems.

Twelve-year-old Jennifer Aslin, who worked as Ferris’ assistant during the show, walked around and took random numbers from students and then wrote the problems out on the board. She would then take the board to Frank who would ask Dave the problem. Dave answered problems ranging from the most basic addition all the way up to problems involving exponents and square roots.

Ferris said he really has no explanation for how or why Dave understands math, and he seemed to even have the staff and administration stumped as to how he does it.

Golden Panic Attack and Rehab

A Golden girl is scared of everything. Environmental sounds, cars, and dogs. She is shy and hypersensitive. The film shows the beginning and the changes. The trainer is from Bucharest, Romania.