Atlanta Pet Partners Therapy Team Junebug and Alice Dukes have been very busy since passing their Team Evaluation earlier this year. Actually, they have been busy since Junebug came to live with the Dukes family. The little Maltese mix goes just about everywhere Alice goes.

Alice homeschools her son Anthony and is a coach on his archery team. They homeschool, carschool, independent class study school, and anything-to-learn school.  In the 18 months they’ve had Junebug, she goes with them to classes, meetings and team practices. They wanted her to be a happy, friendly dog and that’s exactly what she is. She loves children, other dogs, seniors, people that are disabled and people that are differently-abled. When given the command, “go see”, she’ll run to whomever Alice points to, bouncing and wagging her tail. She also loves to learn tricks and behaviors like, giving high fives, turning circles, jumping hoops, and running her homemade agility course.

Junebug has also become the unofficial mascot of Anthony’s archery team, for the Archery Learning Center in Snellville, Ga. Everyone there knows her. Junebug even has her own Facebook group: “Jumpin’ Junebug the Jolly Dog” and she just recently got her own Pet Partners business card, complete with the Pet Partners logo!

She loves to be read to, so she is a great dog for Read With Me. Clients are amazed when they see how she watches kids turn the page and studies their faces as they read. During one particular touching visit, a little girl with a pronated hand (turned in because of type of cerebral palsy) was reading to Junebug and wanted to turn the page on her own but appeared to be struggling. As a page slipped through her delicate fingers, Junebug put her paw on the page, as to stop it from completely falling flat.

“She wants to turn the page, she wants to help,” the little girl said happily.

Her mother said, “Oh, she just wants to play”.

The little girl looked at me and I winked at her, because we thought different. 😉

Story provided by: Alice Dukes