March Profile

Sensa

Sensa was placed with a young diabetic as a pup and stayed with him for 4 months. During that time she alerted for him at least 50% of the time, but the demands of caring for her all the time became too difficult for such a young person. The decision was made to send her to me and as she hadn’t been desexed, she will become the first dog in PFD’s formal breeding programme.

Sensa is continuing her training and will gain her Public Access Accreditation when appropriate. As I am not diabetic and do not understand the logistics of taking a dog with me everywhere, as our PFD clients have to do, I am taking Sensa with me as much as possible to learn and put myself in the same position. In this way, Sensa is training me as well, and helping me to understand the difficulties and limitations of having the dog accompany me everywhere.

PFD is also utilising her as our Public Relations Dog. We are going into shops, businesses, restaurants, accommodation and doing presentations and helping to educate the public on the rights of access of Assistance Dogs in the community.

So far Sensa has attended a meeting with the Orange Branch of Diabetes Australia Xmas party and presentation and also accompanied me to a dinner with Orange North Rotary Club. We have stayed at a caravan park and played on the beach, and she is learning very quickly and is quite good for a young dog.

Once she is accredited, Sensa will be put into the breeding programme and help provide the much needed pups for our clients, but she will always remain my special companion and you will see her out and about when she’s not attending to puppies. We may even try a few breed shows and she is my “study case” as I do my Dog Behaviour and Training course this year. So, I’ll be keeping her very busy!