Service dog brightens home life: Golden-Newfie starts as a new service dog – Martinsville Bulletin

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Kay and Ed Spencer said they are grateful for friends and sorority members in the Martinsville area for raising $25,000 to get Luna, a service dog, for Kay, who has Parkinson’s disease.
Kay Spencer says Luna, a Golden Retriever-Newfoundland mix trained as a service dog, has greatly improved her quality of life as she deals with the limitations imposed by Parkinson’s disease.
Lovable service dog Luna is helping improve the life of her owner, Kay Spencer, and along the way has become a well-loved member of the family.
Spencer and her husband, Ed Spencer, have been living in the for over 40 years, presently about a mile across the state line with a mailing address of Eden, N.C. They met in seminary a little over 45 years ago.
Kay Spencer leaned over to her husband, chuckled and said, “I have known you forever, haven’t I?”
When Spencer was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease, a progressive nervous system disorder that affects movement, she had to quit doing many of the things she previously enjoyed. That meant no more playing the organ or piano or singing. She retired from her job as a music specialist at Leaksville-Spray Elementary School in Eden, N.C., sooner than she had planned.
Having Parkinson’s disease has greatly changed Spencer’s life, affecting her balance, speech, and mobility. That’s where Luna’s job begins.
Luna is a Golden Retriever-Newfoundland mix, weighs around 68 pounds and is about four feet long, including her tail span. Luna’s size helps the dog take care of Spencer, even allowing Spencer to rest her full weight on her shoulders to regain balance.
Some other things Luna does for Spencer include getting clothes out of the dryer, opening the refrigerator, opening doors, alerting Spencer when her medication wears off, turning lights on and off and pushing the automatic handicap button that opens doors. Luna follows around 80 commands, including verbal cues that Spencer uses to communicate what she needs.
Spencer said that she knows that Luna is “capable of learning a lot more,” and if the training for new skills wasn’t too complicated, she would do the training herself.
‘Family feel’
Spencer got Luna on Oct. 18 from Educated Canines Assisting with Disabilities, or ECAD, a nonprofit organization located in Winsted, Connecticut. She said she had started looking for an organization to help her find a service dog in 2019, and while there were closer options, the “family feel of them” was a better fit.
ECAD trains service dogs for people with a wide variety of disabilities, including post-traumatic stress disorder, Parkinson’s disease, quadriplegia and mental health issues. Spencer said she remembered seeing ECAD rig up a magnetic leash contraption to a wheelchair for a quadriplegic woman who could not hold the dog’s leash.
ECAD takes the process of setting up people with service dogs seriously, Spencer said. Since taking Luna home, Spencer has had to send in reports and forms frequently, and won’t officially own Luna until two years after they first got her.
Luna went through about two years of training to become Spencer’s service dog, and Spencer spent two weeks in Connecticut to get her training before she could take Luna home.
In the first two weeks Luna was in the Spencer’s home, Ed was not even allowed to interact with Luna. This was to ensure a strong bond between Luna and Kay and to make sure that Kay was Luna’s main focus, Kay Spencer said.
Now that Luna is familiar with the Spencers’ routine, she recognizes Ed as one of her handlers and knows that he is part of the team, Spencer added: Luna is protective of the couple, and now looks after both of them.
Getting Luna was not a cheap process. The cost of obtaining a service dog varies depending on how the dog needs to be trained, and ECAD has some fun ways to raise money to offset the costs, Spencer said. When they get new batches of puppies to begin training, they host a livestream and auction off the naming of the puppies to the winners of the auction.
However, beyond ECAD’s fundraising and what the Spencers could pay, $25,000 of Luna’s cost was still lacking.
Many friends in Eden and Martinsville and members of her sorority of teachers, the Alpha Alpha chapter of Alpha Delta Kappa, donated to ECAD in Spencer’s name, but one friend crossed the finish line with a substantial donation.
At the last couple thousand, Spencer said, Randy Robertson called and asked how much was left. He then paid the last of the cost that let Spencer bring Luna home.
Spencer said that this support was an example of why she and her husband have no plans to leave Martinsville even though many family members have asked the pair to move closer to them.
Along with having spent the majority of their lives here, Spencer added, the couple would like to stay in a community where they have put down roots and a place where they can walk down the street and run into someone they know.
More importantly, in Martinsville, they already have a home that suits them and a yard that suits their furry friend Luna, Spencer said.
Editor’s Note: This version of the article corrects the Spencers’ address.
Luna follows around 80 commands, including verbal cues that Spencer uses to communicate what she needs.
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Kay and Ed Spencer said they are grateful for friends and sorority members in the Martinsville area for raising $25,000 to get Luna, a service dog, for Kay, who has Parkinson’s disease.
Kay Spencer says Luna, a Golden Retriever-Newfoundland mix trained as a service dog, has greatly improved her quality of life as she deals with the limitations imposed by Parkinson’s disease.
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