Anni's Ark

My senior year of high school was very interesting, mainly because, about halfway through, I found the cutest puppy that has ever and will ever exist in a paper garbage bag inside a dumpster. He was about 3 or 4 weeks old, so I had to bottle-feed him every 3 or 4 hours. That being said, at a fresh 19 years old, the best solution was obviously to sneak him into high school with me. Not only did I hide him from Hoover High, but I hid him from my parents for about 2 months; I couldn't accept the "no," so I didn't ask. By the time my parents learned that I owned a dog, Gus and I were inseparable and had spent every possible moment together since I found him. After high school graduation, my mom took me on a trip to Hawaii, and I cried the entire way there because I didn't want to leave my puppy. I was then accepted into The University of Montevallo and moved into a dorm; my parents would not allow me to hide Gus from the dorm advisors, so he stayed with them for about 6 months. I did not handle this well and used this as an excuse to move into my first apartment. Over the next several years, I decided to have Gus professionally trained as a service dog to facilitate my disability of PTSD. Gus was trained to search my house and car for intruders, recognize self-harm, then interrupt and redirect, and circle me to create a barrier between other humans and me.  Those are the three main tasks he was trained to do, but I don't think I can list all the things he did that made my life easier, whether he was trained to do them or inherently knew.