Don­nie Kan­ter Winokur doesn’t mind being upstaged by chil­dren or dogs espe­cial­ly her son Iyal and his ser­vice dog Chancer. Inter­na­tion­al­ly renowned as a writer speak­er and human rights advo­cate Don­nie has inspired enter­tained and edu­cat­ed a glob­al audi­ence for over three decades. Don­nie’s mem­oir Chancer — How One Good Boy Saved Anoth­er is her first full-length book. A native of New Jer­sey Don­nie stud­ied the­atre at Catholic Uni­ver­si­ty (“because being a nun was out of the ques­tion”) before trans­fer­ring to Emory Uni­ver­si­ty in Atlanta where she grad­u­at­ed with a degree in psy­chol­o­gy. There her pas­sion for dra­ma evolved from reper­to­ry the­ater to com­mer­cials and voice-overs. After hon­ing her skills writ­ing and pro­duc­ing adver­tis­ing cam­paigns for clients through­out the south­east she then cre­at­ed award-win­ning projects for Dis­cov­ery Com­mu­ni­ca­tions The Smith­son­ian Insti­tute and Broderbund/​Random House. In Chancer — How One Good Boy Saved Anoth­er Don­nie shares her jour­ney to adop­tive par­ent­hood along with her son’s dev­as­tat­ing diag­no­sis of fetal alco­hol syn­drome (FAS) the most involved expres­sion of fetal alco­hol spec­trum dis­or­ders (FAS­Ds). She brings you into the world of devel­op­men­tal dis­abil­i­ties with her poignan­cy unashamed hon­esty and often-irrev­er­ent humor espe­cial­ly for a rabbi’s wife. After an exhaust­ing pur­suit of med­ica­tions ther­a­pies and inter­ven­tions only left Iyal more frus­trat­ed — and their fam­i­ly more des­per­ate — Don­nie tried some­thing out­side-the-box. Con­se­quent­ly in 2008 Iyal obtained an intel­li­gent and irre­sistible nine­ty-pound gold­en retriev­er named Chancer the first cer­ti­fied FASD assis­tance dog in the world. Since then Don­nie has authored two award-win­ning children’s books (one with her daugh­ter Morasha) and con­tributed to nation­al and inter­na­tion­al mag­a­zines and jour­nals includ­ing Reader’s Digest Guide­post Marie Claire and Adop­tion Today. In 2012 Donnie’s sto­ry was fea­tured in ​“Won­der Dog” for The New York Times Mag­a­zine and became one of the ten most shared and searched for arti­cles that year. A dynam­ic and in-demand speak­er Don­nie is com­mit­ted to pre­vent­ing what she calls ​“the per­fect storm ” the failed oppor­tu­ni­ty for our jus­tice sys­tem to sup­port chal­lenged indi­vid­u­als in dire need of com­pas­sion and pro­tec­tion. She remains a ded­i­cat­ed cham­pi­on for shift­ing our cul­tur­al par­a­digm and chang­ing pub­lic mis­per­cep­tions about mar­gin­al­ized indi­vid­u­als. Don­nie and her hus­band Har­vey the found­ing rab­bi of a Reform syn­a­gogue live north of Atlanta with Iyal and their daugh­ter Morasha. Their fam­i­ly cur­rent­ly includes Chancer now in semi-retire­ment and his suc­ces­sor Quinn also trained as an FASD ser­vice dog. Autumn their cat tol­er­ates the canines while enjoy­ing an occa­sion­al swat.