Source #3
Dogs help disabled farmers keep working
By Kansas City Star, adapted by Newsela staff 06.03.15
With her dog Sweet Baby Jo at her side, Alda Owen, 63, who is legally blind, checks on a herd of Angus cattle on her farm near Maysville, Missouri, in DeKalbCounty. Sweet Baby Jo is a specially trained border collie, who keeps the cows in check while Owen is in the pasture with them. Photo: Tammy Ljungblad/Kansas City Star/TNS
DeKALB COUNTY, Mo. — As Alda Owen works with the cattle, Sweet Baby Jo plops down.
On her belly, ears up, the border collie is wide-eyed and ready to jump up.
“She don’t like ’em getting too close to me,” said Owen, age 62. As she speaks, the Angus cattle herd crowds around her on her farm in northern Missouri. When Owen was 10, she lost a lot of her vision from an infection.
Not long ago, Sweet Baby Jo came into Owen's life from a project called PHARM Dog, for Pets Helping Agriculture in Rural Missouri. The dog changed Owen's life.
A One-Of-A-Kind Program
Plenty of other programs train service dogs, but this one may be the only one of its kind in the country. It is specifically for farmers who do not want to give up farm life because of disability or sickness.
Like Alda Owen.
“I can get out and help Rick now,” she said. Rick is her husband who works on the farm with her. “I can get the cows in the lot while he goes gets a bale of hay.
And there’s Jim Harig down by Eminence, Missouri. He could hardly get around his place because of nerve damage. Now he holds onto a harness on the back of his yellow Labrador, Dixon, so he can get out and check his sheep and horses.
Dixon can carry buckets, fetch tools and open gates.
“If I had to sell my animals, I think I’d lose the ambition to live,” Harig said.
Both Owen and Harig are still on their farms, and so are about 10 other farmers with PHARM dogs.
Dogs Help Keep Farmers On Their Farms
Jackie Allenbrand, who started PHARM, says many people ask her why these people do not just leave farm work. Why don't they sit on the porch or move to town?
“But here’s the thing about farmers — and I’m married to one — they’re stubborn,” Allenbrand said. “It’s what they do. Most were born into it, and they don’t want to give it up.”
Troy Balderston, who got a PHARM dog to help him work with his cattle from a wheelchair, put it this way. “I don’t know anything else.”
Allenbrand got the idea for PHARM Dog while she was with another program that helps farmers overcome disabilities and keep working.
The big challenge was money. She did not have enough money to buy dogs and pay for their training.
That is how she came to meet Bobby Miller, who trains border collies, like Sweet Baby Jo. A bumper sticker on his pickup says, “My border collie is smarter than your honor student.”
Trainer Agreed To Help
Allenbrand pitched her idea to Miller. That night, he told his wife, "This thing might be a good place to put a dog or two and my time,” Miller said.
So he called Allenbrand to say he’d like to help, and she soon showed up with an old wheelchair.
“She told me the dogs needed to get used to it. So I’d sit in that thing and pups would climb on my lap,” he said.
Jim Harig, age 70, keeps horses, donkeys, sheep, mules and alpacas on his farm. Every morning, he gets out and checks on them all with Dixon. The dog is like a four-legged cane.
“All he cares about is helping me,” Harig said.
Founder Wants Program To Grow
On a recent morning, Owen jumped into her vehicle and took off up a gravel road to visit her cattle. Sweet Baby Jo rode in the back, face in the wind, excited to be going to work. She looked at the cattle gathered under trees.
“I couldn’t be out here if not for” Sweet Baby Jo, Owen said.
Allenbrand wants PHARM Dog to grow. She would like to expand with more dogs and send them into more states.
“If I can do anything to help these farmers stay put, that’s what I want to do,” she said. “Same for everybody involved in this — we’re all farmers ourselves.”