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)