Morey: How it all began

I've had a connection with Morey since before he was born. My family raised his mom, Cleo, a golden retriever, from an 8-16 week old pup. I've also known his dad, black lab Jammer, since he was a pup. I worked with Jammer for 6 months and considered keeping him as my service dog, but instead he became a breeding dog. Enter Morey!

Morey was born on October 17th, 2008. His puppy name was "Little Boy Blue" because his puppy collar was blue to distinguish him from his siblings. Morey was part of a program called Puppy Prodigies, which starts training puppies when they are only a few weeks old. By the time Morey was 8 weeks old, he was already doing behaviors like "sit" "down" "up" "under" and "touch" to prepare him for his future career as a service dog. My mom was one of the people who trained the puppies and "Little Boy Blue" was one of her favorites!

Morey's next stop in his education was prison (ICAN uses offenders in prison to train service dogs; benefiting the dog, the offender/trainer, and the person who receives the service dog when training is complete) . This was where he spent most of the next two years of his life, learning all the tasks and behaviors necessary for service work. He was renamed "Sagamore", but called "Morey" for short. He looked a lot like ICAN's Executive Director Sally Irvin's personal dog Maury and the picture shows Maury and Morey together.

Since I was working for ICAN at the time, I saw Morey throughout his training. Last spring, I had the opportunity to take him for a few weeks to give him a "test drive". He accompanied me to school and work and I enjoyed having him. I was asked several times if I wanted to keep him as Jessie's successor, but because of the uncertainty of my plans after graduation, I decided to say no and he was scheduled to be partnered with someone else.

I went to the prison before I moved to Texas to say good bye to the dogs and offender/trainers. Morey came right over to me, did a very nice "heel" next to my wheelchair, and looked up at me as if to say "Ok, let's go!" His trainer and I were both surprised by this unexpected behavior and she half jokingly asked "Are you sure you don't want him?" I laughed and said no again, but I did wonder if I was making a mistake.

Fast forward to December. I'd been living in Texas for 3 1/2 months and unexpectedly got an email from ICAN saying that Morey's future placement wasn't going to work out and asking if I would like to have him as my service dog. I could hardly believe it! At first I was concerned about the logistics of adding a dog to my life, but everything seemed to fall into place and I knew that it was no coincidence that I was being given a second chance at having Morey.