Annika's Story

At age 12, my parents had reached their wits end, and realized that I could majorly benefit from having a service dog. We applied to some organizations, but got turned away repeatedly and were back at square one. After a few months of no hope in sight, enter Sherlock, whom I got at eight weeks old, and started training him while learning as I went. The perks of being home-schooled, were that I had lots of time to focus on Sherlock and his training. It was a bumpy road, I followed a lot of YouTube tutorials, asked friends from Instagram for advice, and read A LOT of Facebook group posts..

At two years old, I felt Sherlock had completed his training journey, and he worked as my full time service dog, when he was certified through the BC Guide Dog and Service Dog Test multiple times. Sherlock worked until late 2021 when he started retirement due to chronic anxiety.

​

As I got older, I realized there was a major gap in the service dog industry for specifically Autistic teens and adults, and started dreaming of creating something to help. I never really thought much more than that for many years, focusing on a real career. I hopped from job to job, working in church ministry, as a dog groomers assistant, as a behavioural interventionist with autistic kids ad teens, until I realized something;  needed to do something else or I wouldn't be happy. In a bit of an impulsive moment,  reduced my hours as a BI, and opened Sherbert Service Dogs.

 

Longtime family friends approached me knowing I worked as a BI, and had self trained my own service dog, and wondered if I could help them train their own. I thought about it, and this seemed like the perfect shift I was looking for, and I took that chance and began training service dogs!