A love for dogs inspires a mission of independence
When your father’s job is to manufacture pet care products, you’re destined to become an animal lover. Growing up, my family always had dogs. My earlierst memory is of Chester, our basset hound who had 14 puppies. I was four years old at the time, and couldn’t have asked for better playmates.
Throughout the years, my mom would often come home with a pup she’d found on the street. That’s how our three-colored shepherd mix Samantha joined our family. The only time I didn’t have a dog in my home was when my husband Rick and I lived in an apartment during the first two years of our marriage. Pretty soon after we closed on our first home, Abigail Rose, a four-year-old labrador retriever joined our family. She would play frisbee for hours. No matter how tired she was, she always carried her neon pink and green frisbee home from the park, letting it dangle from her mouth. She was the second mother to our first born, Jordan. When we first brought Jordan home from the hospital, Abby would position herself between me in the rocking chair and Jordan’s crib. No one got near the crib unless Abby approved.
Our family has welcomed other labs since, mostly through adoption from Labrador Retriever Rescue of Florida. Henry, Maggie and Peppermint. The only lab we didn’t adopt from Lab Rescue was eight-year-old Betsy, after my mother saw an ad in the paper for a middle-aged yellow lab that needed a home. We loved her for four years until she passed away. After Betsy, who was a pup sibling to Henry, we always had two dogs, except when Peppermint came to us. She saved us from our grief after a 2008 fire destroyed our home. Losing our home was traumatic, but it was easy to replace materials things and rebuild our home. Irreplaceable were Henry and Maggie, who were rescued from the burning home, but had sustained too much damage to their lungs. Despite the best in veterinary care and as many prayers from family and friends, they died. We lived in a comfortable rental home, and luckily a sympathetic landlord. Just one month after we moved into the rental, our landlord Ronnie Shalom permitted us to adopt a new pup from Lab Rescue. When we went to New Port Richey to meet Peppermint, it was love at first site. There was no doubt she would be going home with us, and she knew it. She’d found her forever home and settled right in, riding in our son’s lap the entire way home.
As a stay-at-home parent while Jordan and Samuel were little, I always searched for educational, fun outings for the kids. Southeastern Guide Dogs’ 23-acre campus is just 20 minutes from our home, an easy drive south from St. Pete to Palmetto. The organization used to host Puppy Hugging, which was open to public for one hour a few mornings a week. What a great way to spend a morning, sitting on the floor in the kennel playing with 6-week-old puppies. Since then, Southeastern has refined their training and education programs, so puppy hugging doesn’t happen in the same vein. But those mornings spent with these future super heroes instilled in our family a passion for their mission. In 2009, our daughter was tasked with finding a service project for her 2010 bat mitzvah. That began our family’s journey as puppy raisers for Southeastern Guide Dogs. We are now raising our 11th guide dog puppy, Hannah, and are a three-dog family. Two of our pups in training were career-changed for minor health issues, which means that sometimes raisers adopt the pups they raised. Christie and Jake are the eighth and tenth pups we’ve raised for the organization.
Follow each of our pups is on Instagram at @christiekriseman, @raisingjake and @hannahintraining. Watch this story from WTSP- 10 News about our puppy raising journey.