By Greg Nikkel
A sold-out supper fundraiser held by the Roemer family on Friday evening helped bring them closer to their goal of raising $30,000 towards the cost of training a specialized service dog for son and brother Nathan.
The lasagna supper was donated by Prairie Sky Co-op and was served by volunteers from the Legion Hall, which hosted the event, with about 170 people in attendance. The funds raised came from the sale of supper tickets, a silent auction as well as from the 50-50 raffle, which reached a prize payout level of $2,500 by the evening’s end.
The silent auction raised about $4,000, and the total from all of the fundraisers and donations were about $16,000, with other donations yet to come, including from Nathan’s class at St. Michael School, which raised just under $900 for a pie-throwing event.
The supper fundraiser event was the brainchild of Michelle Roemer to help her younger brother, and family members and several friends put on the supper event. Their mother, Joyce, gave an update about service dogs and the role that this dog can play in Nathan’s life. Nathan has been diagnosed with Partial Trisomy 13q with Partial Monosomy 11q, which is a chromosonal abnormality. This has led to Nathan's developmental, physical and behavioural issues that mimic autistic behaviour. He has not, however, been diagnosed with autism, which means the family has to pay out-of-pocket for treatments or for a service dog, as they are not eligible for resources that are made available to those with autism.
In an interview, she noted that training and matching a service dog to the recipient is a two-year process, and they are roughly halfway through that process now. Nathan will be getting a Golden Doodle, a cross-breed dog named “Scooter”.
Explaining to the capacity crowd, Joyce said service dogs can be used for a wide variety of purposes, such as for the visually impaired, or for those with medical conditions such as diabetes, or with conditions such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) or other trauma, as well as for those with autism.
The Roemer family did extensive research into this possibility, and found two places that provide this specialized kind of training of dogs, one in Dayton, Ohio, and the other in Winnipeg, the Manitoba Search and Rescue society (MSAR).
“MSAR was one of the first organizations to provide dogs for veterans and First Responders, as the founder was a First Responder who had a dog trained in PTSD in Canada,” said Joyce, noting that MSAR has been featured on numerous news shows like CTV’s W5, on CNN and Animal Planet.
She explained that there are different levels of training for a service dog. After the initial level of training, they are then trained for public access, which can take anywhere from six months to a year to complete. Dogs and their handlers have to pass a four-day test before they are allowed to move on to the next level, where the training is more specialized. For an autistic child, for example, the training is to teach the dog to stop the child from bolting, and to look out for the child’s safety.
The Level 3 training is required for a service dog to earn a vest, and the dog and handler must score at least a 90 on the exam to be certified. The dog then will have to recertify every three years after that.
Joyce said the family has been in the process of securing a dog for Nathan for about four years now, and have been on a number of trips to Winnipeg to make sure that Nathan would be a good fit for a service dog, and then to meet the dog being trained for him. The Roemers talked to other families who have a service dog, and were told of the huge difference that such a dog can make in the life of the child and of the family as a whole.
“It’s wonderful to give a child a gift like this, and it’s wonderful all of you have helped with that,” said Joyce, noting that Michelle did much of the work to organize the evening and set everything up, with help from many family and friends.
“The response has been beyond anything we could’ve imagined, from individuals, businesses and schools, and even from people I don’t even know who provided donations and bought supper tickets,” said Joyce.
“I don’t think this kind of response could’ve occurred anywhere else. Weyburn has really come together and supported this. I can’t say how overwhelmed we are. We are very grateful and humbled by the generosity everybody in the community has shown us.”
Some of the donations provided before the supper included money raised by the Twins baseball team, which donated about $2,600, and the Weyburn Fire Brigade donated $2,160 and gave Nathan a tour of the Fire Hall.
Joyce indicated that the dog, Scooter, will be coming to visit Nathan in Weyburn for a little while, and in August Nathan will go to Winnipeg to train with Scooter, as part of the process of training and matching the dog with him.
