The National Service Dogs’ Easter egg hunt brought families and their pets to the Calaway Park lawn on Good Friday for the organization’s largest fundraiser of the year.
“All the funds that are raised today go to supporting National Service Dogs programs which is raising and training specialty trained dogs for people with special needs,” said organizer Alison Archambault.
“National Service Dogs receives no government funding so all of the work that goes into breeding, raising and training are over 700 service dogs comes from events like this.”
Many of the participants preregistered for the event and collected pledges for the NSD.
“This is our primary fundraiser. We’re grateful for the support of Calgarians and southern Albertans to be out today helping us with this,” said Archambault. “Our goal at all of our hunts across the country is $100,000 and we’ll certainly know in the coming week if we’ve reached that target.”
Service dogs are trained for one of the following disciplines:
- Autism spectrum disorder
- Canine assisted intervention
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
- Individuals with special needs
Archambault says the cost of breeding, raising and training service dogs is substantial and the program exists because of private donations as the organization does not received any government funding.
For more information, visit National Service Dogs.
