Hi, I’m Jen Bye. I’ve had a great many challenges for most of my life. Some have been emotional, as I suffer from PTSD, and many more have been physical, including debilitating migraines and degenerative arthritis in my right knee and hip.
Sometimes it has felt like one thing after another, but I am intent on living a happy and fulfilled life. The most recent physical problems came up after a serious car accident a couple of years ago. It reached the point where I sometimes have to crawl to make it up the stairs in my home.
It’s frightening to lose mobility and independence. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do.
That’s when I found Amazing Tails and the miracle of service dogs.
Amazing Tails is able to train one of these remarkable animals in half the time most of most training organizations, and at half the cost.
But it is still far more expensive than I can afford.
Please donate to Amazing Tails and share my story with other people who can help.
Thank you.
“I Feel Trapped in the House Most of the Time”
Jen Bye had a really good life in Los Angeles. She had a great job in the building industry, was a musician with lots of gigs and married a good man who loves her.
That’s when health problems intervened, completely changing her life, making the smallest tasks difficult and potentially dangerous.
Now living with her husband in Lake Arrowhead, a mountain community about 90 minutes outside Los Angeles, Jennifer said a PTSD/anxiety disorder from a childhood experience began to take over about a decade ago.
Then she started suffering from a migraine disease and fibromyalgia, a mysterious autoimmune disease that impacts people in many debilitating ways.
Then things got worse.
“I got laid off in 2010 from my job when the economy was bad, so I started working part time as a trail guide and a working musician,” she said.
Then Jen developed an extremely painful case of degenerative arthritis in her right knee and hip, severely limiting her mobility.
“I couldn’t continue,” she said. “Now I am waiting on my government disability to come through and have gone back to school to study sociology and psychology. I want so much to get back to work.”
But the approval of disability benefits can take forever to wind through the federal bureaucracy. As she has been waiting, things got still worse when Jen got into a head-on car collision in 2015.
“That exacerbated everything,” she said. “The PTSD got worse, as did the migraines and my arthritis. It got to the point where I couldn’t get around. I sometimes have to crawl up and down my stairs on bad days. It becomes almost impossible to get around. I feel trapped in my house most of the time.”
Then a friend with Parkinson’s disease got a service dog and Jennifer saw it transform her friend’s life.
She found that most organizations charge around $20,000 and it can take two-plus years to get a service dog.
“When I discovered Amazing Tails, I found out that it cost half that much and took half the time,” she said.
So now Jen is waiting for Amazing Tails to find the right dog for her, and she’s also hoping her disability insurance kicks in, allowing her to afford the cost.
There are so many people like Jen who need the help provided by a service dog. Please help Amazing Tails by donating what you can.
If you are fortunate enough to live life with few health issues beyond the occasional cold or pulled muscle, it’s difficult to understand how close you are to losing all independence due to an unforeseen illness or injury.
For millions of people with significant health problems, the simplest tasks are ordeals. Every step, every movement, every choice must be considered with the utmost care and caution.
For many people, a service dog is the link to living a better, safer, more independent life.
That’s where Amazing Tails, LLC comes in.
Since 1999, Amazing Tails has been identifying and training dogs that perform life saving services for their human partners.
These dogs help people walk with stability. They open doors for people using wheelchairs. They warn those with hearing problems that fire alarms are wailing. They alert those who suffer from seizures that one is coming, minutes before it does.
They bring independence and security to people’s lives in a way that nothing else can.
Amazing Tails does this at a minimum of cost for those who need help the most, but who can usually afford it the least.
These amazing animals are expensive, costing more than $10,000 per dog, including identification, extensive customized training and top care.
Please donate to Amazing Tails to help Jen and so many folks who are in similar challenging circumstances in their lives.
Thank you for your support.