Red Deer Victim Services showed its appreciation yesterday for Notre Dame High School students, who are fundraising for a victim services dog.
 
As part of this year's grad service project, students are hoping to raise $30,000-$50,000 to be put towards the care, training and insurance of the animal.
 
Grade 12 student Isabella Schoettler says they chose the project after learning the city does not have one of its own and often has to borrow one from Camrose or Olds “there’s something about just seeing and hearing about these stories on how these people are affected, and that by being able to support this we could reach out to all different types of people no matter what their tragedy was, that we could help all the different types of victims in Red Deer and Central Alberta, and that really appealed to us”.
 
Program Manager for Red Deer Victim Services, Constable Holly Erb says there have been challenges not having one of their own Victim Services dogs “we have found that their dogs have already been pre-booked in other jurisdictions so then our clients don’t have access to that. Usually we find that our clients that utilize the dogs are children and people that have experienced significant persons crimes, like a sexual assault or homicide, and we have found that those clients have been the ones that have lost out”

So far students say they are close to reaching their goal and will be finishing up fundraising around the first week of March.