Hello, my friends, and welcome to the Live Inspired podcast with John O'Leary Monday Morning

Moments.

We record these each week so that you and I can begin our days and our

weeks in awe and on fire with a burst of inspiration. To get us inspired for this week, you're

going to learn about my friend Holly Schultz and her dog, Sugar. Let me tell you more. As an empty

nester, Holly revisited a calling she had first heard as a

busy mom to young kids. With no time, though, as a young mom, years later with her children grown,

she finally had the opportunity of volunteering at a local service dog non-for-profit.

Dabbling first in fostering service puppies for the organization,

Holly found the separation anxiety when the dogs went to their forever homes just too much to bear.

But caring for the mother dogs who delivered those puppies,

well, that became Holly's sweet spot and eventually led to one specific mother

dog who was helping to change lives in ways that Holly could never have imagined.

Sugar. Sugar is an adorable yellow lab. And sugar came into Holly's life in 2015 and has been a permanent member of the family,

a fixture in the family home ever since. Sugar's puppies have become certified seeing-eye dogs.

They have gone on to start puppy raising ministries inside of prisons, and her little puppies have even gone

overseas to start the very first service dog programs in Japan. And while her progeny go on

to live their best lives around the world, Sugar and Holly are quietly spreading joy in their

hometown of Fritley, Minnesota. After her puppies were

dispatched to their respective missions, Sugar received training as a therapy dog. She now walks into

some of life's hardest moments. She does this in hospitals, in memory care centers,

within courtrooms, and in special needs classrooms.

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