Hi! I'm LeiLoni,
A mental health and service dog blogger. Passionate about mental health challenges for young adults and how service dogs can benefit them.
I struggle with clinical depression and anxiety and became suicidal due to bullying at my local high school. I am getting a service dog named Cali to help me manage situations that cause anxiety.
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In 2020, at the age of 15, I became suicidal. Kids at school had been telling me to kill myself, and I started to believe maybe that would be better. One night, police showed up at our door around midnight. One of my friends had called 911 worried about my safety. Since then, I have been home schooled, am in therapy, and am doing much better. Recently, I started look into getting a psychiatric service dog to help me manage my anxiety and depression when I head off to college. I found a non-profit organization that trains service dogs and have begun the process of being paired with my sweet girl Cali. Cali will help me in many ways by performing tasks such as deep pressure therapy, bringing me water and medicine, alerting me to sounds in busy places, standing behind me to give me more space in crowds, and alerting me to self-harm and unwanted behaviors I do not notice, such as scratching the back of my hands or rubbing a hole in my pants.