If you are a pet/dog lover, this video will make you melt.
The story of Ricochet the surfing dog was featured on SportsCenter on Sunday night. Ricochet is a female golden retriever born into the “Puppy Prodigies Neo-natal & early-learning program” with the intention of becoming a service dog for a person with a disability. Early in life, she could help pull down zippers on a person’s jacket, pull a laundry basket, and do much more. But at 16 weeks, Ricochet stopped responding to the training and didn’t want to do more. One video says she was dropped from the program because of her instinctual fascination with chasing birds. However, Ricochet and her trainer finally found something she could do well — help people surf.
They began setting up fund raisers where Ricochet helped people surf by standing towards the back or on the sides and balancing the surf board. Her first fundraiser was with a quadriplegic named Patrick Ivison, and she helped raise $10,000 for him.
In the SportsCenter feature video, Ricochet can be seen helping three people with disabilities surf: Ivison, a young boy with brain damage from a fatal car crash, and a boy with autism.
Below you can watch a 2009 video of Ricochet that has amassed over four million views on YouTube:
And my favorite image from the ESPN story:
