An Army Veteran and Her Service Dog, Moxie

My name is Christy Gardner and I’m from Lewiston, Maine.

I served in the US Army for a few years and served overseas and I was injured in the summer of 2006. I had a brain injury and a spinal cord injury, I lost two fingers and ultimately ended up losing both legs as well.

But when I was rehabbing on active duty, they thought that a service dog would be very beneficial to me, between the seizures I have from the brain injury and the physical assistance that I needed as well as PTSD support, and I got my friend Moxie right away.

Moxie is a mobility assistance and seizure alert dog with the seizure alert response training. She is trained to get assistance so she can open and close the doors and ring the neighbor’s doorbells, and she’s trained what two neighbors to go to.

She can fetch my cell phone, regardless of where it is. She’s trained to call 911 on the landline. She’s also trained for mobility assistance, so she can fetch my wheelchair; she can fetch virtually anything I ask for. She knows over 160 commands.

Right now we also have two other service dogs in training here. That’s one thing Moxie and I do as puppy raisers. Douglas, he’s actually almost 11 months old right now and hopefully going to be Moxie’s successor dog. And Gidget is 15 weeks old. She’s a Yellow Lab puppy, and she’s in training to be a PTSD service dog for another veteran in New England.
Moxie is incredible because when I was hurt, the doctors went through a three-page list of stuff they said I’d never do and I wasn’t allowed to live on my own, I couldn’t drive. Because of the seizures I wasn’t supposed to cook, because I could catch the house on fire or I wasn’t allowed to bathe alone because I could drown in the tub if I had a seizure, things like that.

So Moxie was trained to take care of me for all of that. As our bond grew, working together more and more and how we relied on each other for everything, she’s just incredible. She just does everything I could ask for and even the things that I can’t put words to. She just knows and she’s there. She’s so intuitive.