ohmidog!

Reverend Richard Herrin — after a four-year stretch without one — now has a service dog to help him serve God.

Herrin, a Baptist minister who has cerebral palsy and uses a wheelchair, lost his most recent service dog in 2008.

After moving from Texas to North Carolina earlier this year, to be closer to family, he began looking for funding to help cover the $25,000 expense of getting a trained service dog and bringing it home.

His new community kicked in $6,000 of that — through a campaign drive headed by a Moravian church in Winston-Salem.

Herrin went to North Dakota in July to pick the dog up from the Great Plains Assistance Dogs Foundation Inc., the Winston-Salem Journal reports.

Now, Dakota, a 3-year-old black Lab, is at his side, helping him with everyday tasks and in his ministry.

Due to the costs, Herrin had gone four years without a service dog since his last one, a golden retriever, died when he was living in Texas.

Not long after moving to North Carolina, Herrin visited  Trinity Moravian Church, several blocks from his house. The secretary there referred him to the Rev. Russell May, interim minister at Bethania Moravian. May coordinated the fundraising effort, and Trinity Moravian accepted the checks and sent them on to North Dakota.

The dog’s main job is to pick things up and give them to Herrin. She’s learning to help Herrin take off his shirt, and has mastered bringing items to him from the refrigerator. She has also chewed up the television remote, but that’s part of the learning curve, say Herrin and his wife, both of whom are professional dog trainers.

“The dog has to know who you are,” Herrin said. “Can they look into you? Can they trust you are going to be honest? Are you going to be who you are? Without building a relationship, you might as well hang it up.”

On top of the chores a service dog helps with, he says, ” the value is the relationship with it.”

Dakota has made several visits to Herrin’s church, Southside Baptist, but Moravian congregations and others are pulling for him as well.

“The support of the Winston-Salem community has enabled him to get a tool that will challenge him, and that empowers him,” May said. “This is not simple charity. They have given him a responsibility, too… He wants to do ministry. This dog will help him in that.”

(Photo: Andrew Dye / Winston-Salem Journal)

No one is sure how she got there, but a legally blind 5-year-old girl’s therapy dog showed up on her family’s front porch in Kansas, two weeks after she was stolen.

According to KSN, Andrea Taylor, who has cerebral palsy, couldn’t stop smiling.

Millie, a pit bull trained to serve Andrea  as a therapy dog, was found outside the family’s home in Hutchinson by Andrea’s father around 3:30 a.m.

Andrea’s mother said her daughter woke up, came out to the living room and upon seeing her dog said, ’”There her is. It’s my Millie.”

Millie had been missing for two weeks. She was seen jumping into a white car in front of the family’s Hutchinson home.  A reward of $450 was being offered for her return. 

Andrea’s mother, Lana Taylor, believes pressure from the media and the Reno County Sheriff’s Department led whoever stole the dog to have a change of heart.

Millie had scrapes and scabs around her face, neck, and belly, leading Taylor to believe she might have been taken by dogfighters.

Hutchinson police say they are continuing to investigate the case.

Taylor said the first thing Millie did upon her return was to go to Andrea’s room: “She went right to Andrea’s bed, put her paw up on the bed, and sat there …”

A blind, five-year-old girl’s therapy dog was apparently stolen from her front yard in Hutchinson, Kansas.

Millie, a pit bull trained as a therapy dog, was given to Andrea Taylor, who also has cerebral palsy, in March.

Less than a month later, someone in a white car stopped in front of the home, called the dog, and drove away with Millie, KSN reports.

The sheriff’s department is investigating.

“She absolutely loves Millie,” said Lana Taylor, Andrea’s mother. “She has always been a good night’s sleeper. She’s not sleeping at night, she’s crying all night long.”

The dog enabled Andrea to have more independence, her mother said, but since she was taken, Andrea spends a lot of time staring out the front window.

Anyone with any information with any information about Millie’s whereabouts is asked to call the Reno County Sheriff’s Department at 620-694-2735.

The family is offering a cash reward for Millie’s return

The owner of a western wear shop in North Carolina has apologized for kicking a 5-year-old girl’s service dog out of his store — but not until after threats of a boycott and lawsuit surfaced.

“I had no intentions to offend anyone, but if I have I apologize for it,” said Robert Bryant who owns the Western Shop in New Hanover County, N.C. He said he wasn’t famliar with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Bryant’s raspy “apology” — you can see more of it here — was in stark contrast to what he reportedly barked at the girl and her mother: “Get that (expletive) dog out of my store.”

Bryant said the dog smelled bad and he didn’t want dog hair on his merchandise, sounding much like the Colorado attorney who was hit with $50,000 in fines this week for banning a woman and her service dog from his law office, for fear it might soil his new carpet.

Ellie, a golden retriever, belongs to 5-year-old Amanda Ivancevich, who has cerebral palsy and is missing the left side of her brain. She relies on the dog to get her through the day and alert her family to pending seizures. Her mother, Susan Ivancevich, said it was Amanda’s first trip outside in a year.

“I’m a law abiding citizen, yes,” said Bryant. “I had no intentions of offending this child. I love children.” He also pointed out repeatedly that he runs a “Christian business.”

Since learning more about what the law says about service dogs, Bryant says he would act differently if Ellie walked into his store again.

After Susan Ivancevich posted a comment about the incident on Facebook, dozens have come to her support, and some have vowed to stop patronizing Bryant’s shop.