Via Community News Service, a University of Vermont journalism internship, in partnership with Vermont Public.
MILTON — Nineteen-year-old Abby Fisher and her service dog, Levi, do just about everything together. Like, when Abby graduated from college this spring, Levi wore a matching cap and gown.
Abby trained Levi to alert her before seizures. And last year, Abby introduced Levi to dock diving. It’s a competitive sport for dogs: Abby throws a toy into the water, Levi runs down a dock and leaps after it, and the longest jump wins.
Turns out, Abby and Levi are really good. They’ve started competing nationally.
“It’s her favorite thing in the world,” Abby said. “As much as she loves being a service dog, dock diving is her thing.”
🎧 This story was produced for the ear. We highly recommend listening to the audio. We’ve also provided a transcript below.
Abby Fisher: I’m Abby Fisher, and we took Levi, my service dog, to go dock diving on the lake.
So dock diving was kind of an accident for us. Like, I knew it existed, but I hadn’t really looked into it. And then my friend and I were at the lake, and we threw a toy in, and Levi just jumped.
And then I took her to a big dog show called the Kentuckiana Cluster. And I was like, ‘I’ll let her try dock diving while she’s there, and that’ll be her first competition.’ And she jumped exactly 10 feet, one inch. And then as we were leaving that day, I got an email, and it said, ‘Congratulations, Levi has been invited to compete in regionals.’
I’m very competitive. And like, I used to be a big, big soccer player. I played soccer for eight years. I can’t do that anymore. So I kind of live vicariously through her. But she’s cool with it, so it’s okay.
And a lot of it is just how happy she is when we do those sports. I mean, it’s fun for me, but it’s like her life. That’s her favorite thing in the world. I feel like, as much as she loves being a service dog, dock diving is her thing.
I have a lot of different types of seizures. But what my dog can do is she can detect when my heart rate spikes, which happens before a seizure, so she can detect that spike before a seizure, and she will hit me with her nose to tell me. She’ll also do this with blood sugar, because if my blood sugar drops, it will trigger a seizure.
I wouldn’t have been a normal adult without a dog. Like I wouldn’t be able to drive, I wouldn’t be able to go to work by myself or school. I definitely wouldn’t be flying or traveling anywhere by myself. So that is all stuff that I would never have even dreamed of doing before having a dog.
It is really fun, and it’s worth it. I mean, she takes care of me. I take care of her. She’s the reason I can do all the fun stuff I do in my life. So she gets to have fun, too.