July 2020 Dog of the Month – Baylee

We are proud to introduce our July 2020 Dog of the Month, Baylee! Her owner sent us the information below, and we hope you enjoy learning about this service dog as much as we did.

“Baylee is my service dog.  She knows that I am Deaf.  I communicate in American Sign Language (ASL) with her.  She acts like she is Deaf because she uses her eyes more than her ears to alert and respond to me. Baylee looks at me and pays attention to my every move.  She knows ASL and can understand it extremely well.  She pouts when she receives no communication from me. I got her from Nebraska on May 9th, 2017. She melted my heart. I previously had lost my best friend Amber (an Aussie Shepherd) to cancer on June 4th, 2016, and my entire world was upside down.

I cried in my car where Amber and I used to ride together for some months. I had a second US District court date scheduled but I learned that Amber had about two weeks to live and that was about same time for my court date.  I was discriminated by the district’s school system for not providing an ASL interpreter at my job. I was the only Deaf teacher of Deaf students in the county in northern Virginia. After losing my job based on false info docs against me (they did it on purpose so they could fire me and save money from not hiring an ASL interpreter for extra salary) and it was successful.  As a result, I lost my job and eventually lost my house, in addition to losing Amber at about same time too.  My heart was in a million pieces. Amber was precious. Without her, I feel empty.  I had to force myself to look for a new baby.  It was very hard.  I fell in love with Baylee’s mother –she was unique.  Baylee resembles her mother with her small frame and silky hair, and even her facial expression and features.

Baylee is a celebrity in my Deaf signing community because she knows ASL and has traits of Deaf Culture.  Plus, I run a small business named ASL Rose. We advocate,  research, publish, and distribute bilingual educational materials. For example, Deaf Cinderella was published last year, and it is one of the first ever Deaf fairy tales that was published! I use it as one way to campaign for raising money so one of my old school’s buildings can be purchased and preserve the history of Deaf schools and Deaf leaders who started these schools in 1800s.  

I hope to purchase it and it was the very same building that I first entered when I was five at Georgia School for the Deaf in Cave Spring, Georgia. I am fighting to save it and Baylee is always with me in my pictures and videos about that campaign.  Only $3,200 has been donated, but we need about $247,000!

Everyone loves Baylee! We ended up having our pictures featured on a poster for the Georgia census 2020 and on a TV commercial for it, too.

I had bought DGP for Amber for some years.  I need to get DGP for my Baylee and two other dogs (one is a 16-year-old deaf and blind senior border collie, and one is baby Aussie shepherd like Baylee) too. I am poor after what happened at my job. I had to live in a RV for almost two years, and Baylee has been such a joy in my life during these hard times! We finally moved into a small house in my hometown. I am so excited that Baylee is the July 2020 DGP Dog of the Month! I am so thankful for that!”