This day has been 20 months in the making- the day I picked up my boxer baby who will train to be my service dog. To understand the importance of this day, you must understand why this specific dog is so important to me. On November 4th, 2016, we lost our 6 year old boxer to cancer. We had fought the cancer for 6 months and she finally succumbed to the terrible disease. Lilly was an unofficial service dog for me. She was my constant companion because I work from home. Lilly knew when I was struggling and would stay close to me or push against me to get me to sit down and pet her. She would crawl up and sit on top of me when the cluster headaches were bad almost like she knew that I would sit still and not move with her sitting on me. Lilly was very important to me and her loss was very hard on our entire family. I knew that one day I would want another boxer and this time I would want to train the boxer to be an official service dog.
About 6 months after Lilly passed I had found a breeder that I wanted to go with and I put a deposit on a litter. I was very specific. I wanted a sealed brindle female boxer. I love the reverse brindle like Lilly, but I didn’t think I wanted to have the exact same color on our new puppy. I didn’t want the new puppy to replace Lilly and this to me meant she couldn’t look like Lilly. A sealed boxer is a black or mixed black and white boxer. We went through 3 litters before they finally had a boxer puppy that met my requirements. Every litter- they would let me know they had other options but no sealed female. I was becoming impatient.
At the beginning of June, the breeder contacted me and sent me 4 photos of the puppies from the May 29th litter. One single flashy, sealed female boxer was born and she was all mine if I chose her. I did not even hesitate. I showed my wife and sent the e-mail stating that I absolutely wanted her and I could not wait to bring her home. Her name was going to be Luna. I had picked out the name months ago when I made the deposit. I would pick her up July 24th, she would be 8 weeks old. I would get 1 set of photos of Luna at 6 weeks and they would let us know if there were any complications. That was the longest 8 weeks of my life.
July 24th, 2018: Pick-up day. I could not sleep the night before because I was so excited! My son, his girlfriend and I went to pick her up. I got there 45 minutes early and had to wait in my truck until it was 10:00 A.M. When they brought Luna to me, I knew the wait was worth it. Luna and I instantly bonded. She was the baby I had been waiting for so long. Luna and I will start puppy training in 4 weeks and continue for the next 2 years training her to become the service dog I know she was born to be. For now, we are bonding and getting her adjusted to our other dogs and the family. She is the perfect fit for our family and we couldn’t be happier we waited for Miss Luna Perez.
-Juan Perez, Assistant Director of the Heroes Thanking Heroes program
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