Hello. I'm a seventeen-year-old American teenager with brown hair, pale skin, an allergy to peanuts, and an allergen alert dog named Chuck and nicknamed Poodleface. Chuck was trained for me by a place in Texas. One of his trainers, who has her own blog http://istdogs.blogspot.com/ referred to me several times as Chuck's "forever girl," prompting my screen name, ChuckForeverGirl.
Chuck is a white standard poodle who accompanies me everywhere as my service dog. Because of my severe allergies I can't touch anything contaminated with peanut residue such as dust or oil without suffering an allergic reaction, which is where Chuck comes in. His job is to quietly and unobtrusively sniff things and to then alert if he smells any peanuts. Unlike a drug dog or a bomb dog, Chuck doesn't alert by barking and scratching. He just calmly sits down (usually with a wag of his tail) and then points with his nose when I ask him to show me.
My parents got Chuck for me when I was fourteen. I wasn't very happy about the idea of having a service dog, something I'll talk more about later. At some point someone told me that I was going to be an ambassador for peanut dogs and I should wear the title proudly, but I soon discovered it's difficult to be an ambassador to something most of the people around you don't think needs to exist. At the time I just wanted everyone to leave me alone. Now that I'm older I think I'm finally ready to be an ambassador, and to share my experiences if it'll help raise awareness.
I suppose this blog is going to be similar to the blogs I've come across of mothers with peanut-allergic children, except that instead of only blogging about my allergy I'll also be discussing my service dog. My hope is that this blog will be a good resource or reference for others with dogs and/or allergies like mine.
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