Planet Dog Foundation announces grant recipients

The Planet Dog Foundation (PDF), Planet Dog's non-profit arm, is proud to announce the recipients of their Fall grant cycle. Grants ranging from $1,000- $10,000 have been awarded to Dogs for Diabetics in Concord, CA; Guiding Eyes for the Blind in Yorktown Heights, NY; Texas Hearing and Service Dogs in Austin, TX; Channel Thirteen/ WNET TV in New York City; Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, VA; and Freedom Service Dogs in Lakewood, CO.

The mission of the Planet Dog Foundation is to promote and celebrate programs in which dogs serve and support their best friends. "The quantity and quality of grant proposals has increased with every cycle, and these programs rose to the top of an excellent field of applicants," says Kristen Smith, PDF's Executive Director. "It is clear to us that there is a need for canine service funding, and we are excited to do our part to help fill the void," adds Smith.

Based in Concord, CA, Dogs for Diabetics will use the $10,000 PDF grant to help train insulin-dependent clients and diabetic alert dogs to work together as a team to assist in managing the clients’ diabetes. The dogs are paired for free with the diabetic client and are trained to scent and alert on hypoglycemia (low blood sugar), primarily in Type 1, insulin-dependent diabetics. Because children have a particularly hard time managing diabetes, dogs are trained to alert parents at a drop in blood sugar, even during the night while the family is sleeping. These dogs, working at a 95% accuracy rate, prevent precipitous drops in blood sugar, and the dangerous seizures that sometimes follow.

Guiding Eyes for the Blind in Yorktown Heights, NY has been awarded a grant of $38,000, spread out over 3 grant cycles and 13 months, to build a branded Planet Dog outdoor play and exercise area to provide natural outlets for dogs natural desire to chew, play in a pack and stay physically fit. It will be equipped with toys, a bubble machine, outdoor gym sets, pools and other recreational items. This play area will reduce stress, help with overall fitness, improve socialization, provide exposure to various sites, sounds and textures, and provide sufficient exercise and play for dogs to compliment the rigors of a very hi-intensity guide dog training protocol.

Texas Hearing and Service Dogs, based in Austin, TX, trains shelter dogs to become Hearing and Service Dogs for Texans living with hearing impairments or mobility challenges. They use only dogs that are not rescued from shelters. The $10,000 PDF Grant will help them to rescue 20 dogs each year and place an average of 15 with partners in need. Those who can’t be placed are adopted into permanent loving families and all dogs are provided free of charge.

Thirteen/WNET TV in New York City has been awarded $10,000 for a collaborative between The New York Public Library System and Channel 13 WNET, the PBS affiliate in NYC. The READ program utilizes a team of 7 dogs to improve children’s reading and communication skills, targeting special needs readers. The program features a popular national PBS show, Martha Speaks, about a dog (Martha) who eats a bowl of alphabet soup and learns to speak. The program will target 250 struggling readers through the New York Public Library system, and the PDF grant enables them to expand from 8 branches of the public library to 11.

Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters in Norfolk, VA will receive $1,000 in support of its Buddy Brigade Pet Therapy program. This all volunteer program has 50 volunteers who make 3,000 visits each year to inpatient and outpatient children. The dogs help the kids conquer fear, and feel more at home in a scary environment. The PDF grant will fund the majority of expenses for this broad reaching all volunteer program, including their Buddy Brigade Trading cards, a series of trading cards featuring all the dogs in the system, which are a huge hit with kids in long term care.

In addition to the newly selected grantees, PDF is renewing support for Freedom Service Dogs, of Lakewood, CO. Since the first PDF grant in 2007, FSD has experienced marked success, placing 50% more dogs than anticipated and reaching an all time high in terms of productivity. PDF hopes that one more year of funding ($5,000) will allow them to institutionalize the changes that have fostered this increased efficiency and make that added success permanent. The mission of FSD is to rescue dogs from shelters and train them to assist people with disabilities, increasing their independence and peace of mind. All of the dogs involved in the program are rescued from Colorado shelters, and provided free of charge to their clients. Dogs that do not excel as service dogs are fully trained and placed in adoptive homes as therapy dogs or pets- they have achieved a 100% placement of their dogs after training.

Planet Dog is a socially responsible, globally recognized designer and developer of innovative, high quality, award-winning dog products. A percentage of every Planet Dog purchase goes directly to PDF to support the grantmaking program. Since January, 2006, the Planet Dog Foundation has donated more than $400,000 in cash grants and product donations to non- profit organizations across the country.

"As a small company doing big things, we are proud to support like-minded organizations that will most benefit from our support," says Alex Fisher, Planet Dog's Founder. "From the beginning, we knew we wanted to build a socially responsible company that not only enhanced the lives of dogs and their people, but one that also improved the world around us by giving back," adds Fisher.

To learn more about the Planet Dog Foundation, and all grantees, visit www.planetdogfoundation.org . To learn more about Planet Dog, PDF's corporate partner, visit www.planetdog.com.