| NAME: | Ricochet |
| SPECIES: | Golden retriever |
| DATE: | August 2009 |
| LOCATION: | San Diego, California |
| SITUATION: | Teenage quadriplegic wanting to walk |
| WHO WAS SAVED: | Fourteen-year-old Patrick Ivison |
| LEGACY: | The world’s only tandem-surfing therapy dog and renowned viral-video star |
That’s okay. Most dogs don’t.
But Ricochet’s owner, Judy Fridono, was bitterly disappointed. From the moment the golden retriever was born on January 25, 2008, Judy wanted her to be a service dog for people with disabilities.
Ricochet began training at only thirteen days old—before her eyes were open—and for the next three months, she seemed like “a true prodigy,” Judy said.
However, Ricochet loved chasing squirrels . . . and seagulls . . . and every other furry or feathered critter that crossed her path. They don’t call the breed “retrievers” for nothing.
“I tried for months to make her something she wasn’t but finally had to release her from the program,” Judy said. A dog who can’t resist chasing birds “could be harmful for someone with disabilities.”
Like many a Southern California dropout, Ricochet preferred surfing to working, so . . . wait, what?
When did she learn to surf?
“I do not train dogs to surf,” Judy protested. “Ricochet learned on her own!”
Yeah, but . . .
“I was working with her at balance and coordination,” Judy explained. “We started on a body board in a paddling pool, and from that it went into surfing.”
In fact, Ricochet loved surfing so much that at around fifteen months old the red-haired retriever entered her first surf-dog competition and came in third.
Why hang ten when you can hang twenty, amiright?
Ahem, anyway . . . Judy knew the surfing life wasn’t going to be enough. “I still wanted her to do something meaningful with her life,” she said. “So I thought about fundraising.”
But what sort of fundraising can you do with a lazy, misbehaved, soggy rag of a surfing dog?
Then, in August 2009, Judy and Ricochet met Patrick Ivison, and everything fell into place.
SURFING TO WALK
Patrick Ivison was then fourteen years old. He’d been a quadriplegic and confined to a wheelchair ever since he was fourteen months old, when a car unexpectedly reversed into him. Trapped under the car, Patrick suffered an irreversible spinal cord injury.
However, like Ricochet, Patrick unexpectedly learned to surf, and he loved it. He’d been doing what’s known as “adaptive surfing” ever since he was about eight years old, using a customized board on which he’d lie on his belly and hold up his head and shoulders with his elbows.
Further, Patrick had recently made himself a pledge: He wanted to walk across the stage at his high school graduation in three years. To accomplish that, he needed a very expensive program of physical therapy, one that his family couldn’t afford.
Ding! A light bulb went on over Judy’s head: Ricochet and Patrick could hold a surfing demonstration, raising awareness about adaptive surfing and raising money for Patrick’s physical therapy.
Ricochet made the decision easy. Patrick’s mother said, “Patrick and Ricki, when they first met, it was like instant love. They instantly clicked. She just met him, and she would run and leap and jump into his lap and sit there.”
For the demonstration, the plan was for Ricochet and Patrick to ride the same waves on their separate boards. They did this, cool enough, but then “Rip Curl Ricki,” as Judy liked to call her, decided to mix things up: On the beach, she jumped onto Patrick’s board, straddling him over his back, and looked at everyone as if to say: Come on, dudes, who doesn’t want to ride tandem!?
None of them had ever done tandem adaptive surfing before, but Patrick was game. So the crew set up the pair for a wave and pushed them into it.
“It worked the first time,” Patrick said. “I was kind of surprised. I didn’t expect it to go as well as it did.”
Now a whole string of light bulbs went on over Judy’s head.
Ricochet and Patrick kept at it and did more fundraising demonstrations.
Patrick said that Ricochet “knows how to balance. It’s kinda crazy. We were about to fall one time, and she just steps on the other side of the board and evens us out. I barely know how to do that. I said, ‘What are you talking about? You’re not supposed to be a better surfer than me.’”
Of course, no one surfs without a few spills.
“When you fall off you are at the mercy of the wave and it takes you wherever it wants,” Patrick said. “A lot of people would be scared, but I kind of like it.” And each time they fell, Ricochet would stick right by Patrick’s side.
Within months, Judy and Ricochet had raised $10,000 for Patrick, and one of Ricochet’s corporate sponsors awarded Patrick a $90,000 three-year grant, which covered Patrick’s physical therapy expenses.
Flash forward three years later, and Ricochet watched from the front row as Patrick received his high school diploma—using a wheeled walker to walk himself across the stage.
THE WORLD’S FIRST SURF ICE DOG
What do you know? Ricochet wasn’t such a slacker after all.
“It’s what she chose to do; she jumped on the board and went surfing,” Judy said. “It’s her instinct and what she loves. She has total control and is good at what she does.”
However, Judy admitted to some doubts the first time Ricochet rode with disabled groms, or novice surfers.
“In fact, that first day I remember saying to the team, ‘I will just have to trust my dog,’ because we have never done this as outreach. None of the kids had ever surfed, so pretty much everyone put their trust in the dog, and she went for it.”
As Judy explained, “Her balance is so good she helps to stabilize the board for the kids who’ve never done it before. And it makes them feel good to know that Ricochet is there with them, keeping them company.”
Judy dubbed Ricochet a “SURFice dog” (a “service” dog who surfs, get it?), and Ricochet rode the waves as a tandem adaptive surfer in support of a succession of causes—in addition to continuing to surf competitively against other dogs! Before long, Ricochet was a media and Internet sensation, with videos of her wave riding going viral. By 2014, she had helped raise over $300,000 for 150 different organizations and brought the joy of surfing, and of canine companionship, to countless disabled and handicapped people for whom mobility is a constant struggle.
For Judy herself, who has wrestled with chronic arthritis ever since she was a teen, this lesson struck close to home.
“Ricochet has taught me to focus on what I can do, rather than what I can’t.”
RIDING THE WAVES BACK TO SHORE
Most recently, Ricochet has expanded her therapeutic repertoire. She has joined an organization that pairs therapy dogs with veterans suffering from PTSD. One aspect of the program is for dogs to accompany vets into public spaces, such as shopping malls and grocery stores; the dogs help the person stay calm and avoid the triggers that might spark an anxiety attack. They help them ride a different kind of wave, so to speak.
Ricochet teamed with retired Staff Sergeant Randall Dexter, who battles PTSD. “Before I met her I was very isolated, and became depressed and suicidal,” Dexter said. “But when I met Ricochet, I finally had a new sense of hope. I definitely feel that Ricochet saved my life.”
Once rejected as a service dog, Ricochet is now a certified therapy dog, one who has become as comfortable on dry land as in the water.
“There is something special about her,” Judy said. “She bonds with people instantly. She has this sixth sense about her that is able to touch people’s hearts. The only thing I do is make one decision—to allow her to be who she is without any expectations. It’s all her leading this entire journey.”
Or as Judy puts it: “She is an ordinary dog with an extraordinary spirit.”
DEFINITIONS: SERVICE AND THERAPY ANIMALS
Animals help us in an ever-growing variety of ways, and the terms used to describe them can get confusing. Very few terms are standardized, and new ones pop up all the time. Here is a quick overview of some major categories:
Service Animals
In 1990, the US government passed the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which legally required all businesses and public institutions to allow service animals. In 2011, the ADA further specified that only dogs are considered “service animals” under federal law. Other animals who perform services, like cats, monkeys, and miniature horses, have limited or no federal rights.
To quote the ADA: “Service animals are defined as dogs that are individually trained to do work or perform tasks for people with disabilities. Examples of such work or tasks include guiding people who are blind, alerting people who are deaf, pulling a wheelchair, alerting and protecting a person who is having a seizure, reminding a person with mental illness to take prescribed medications, calming a person with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) during an anxiety attack, or performing other duties. Service animals are working animals, not pets. The work or task a dog has been trained to provide must be directly related to the person’s disability.”
Dogs who help partners with emotional or mental issues are also called “psychiatric service dogs”; they are trained to recognize and respond to a person’s specific behavior (like Chancer, see page 160). In public, all registered service dogs wear identifying vests.
Therapy Animals
Though not defined federally, several states legally define therapy animals. Typically, this refers to animals brought to public institutions like hospitals and schools, or to disaster sites, to bring cheer and emotional healing to a range of people. This includes “comfort dogs” who help survivors in the wake of public tragedies as well as “animal-assisted therapy,” in which an animal is present during therapy with a counselor (like Fonzie, see page 109). These animals are often trained, but they don’t perform specific tasks related to one person (and thus are not legally “service animals”).
Emotional Support Animals
Animals who provide necessary emotional or mental help solely by their presence are called “emotional support animals” (ESAs). These animals are not trained; they only provide companionship for a partner with documented mental health issues. They are considered neither pets nor official service animals. However, when properly registered, ESAs have the right, under federal law, to be allowed in any residence and on airplanes.
Companion Animals
Quite simply, this is another term for “pet.” It confers to no legal status, but today it is often used to describe the animals, trained or not, who share our lives and homes.