Service Dogs

We offer you an alternative to waiting many years to get a Service dog or getting a dog that may not be trained to suit your needs. We can also offer you a way to keep the Service dog you have in working shape.

Advantages of training your own dog.:

1. If you have your own dog, you can begin to train it immediately.
2. This may be cheaper than getting a program trained dog.
3. It has the same access rights as any dog from a program.

Disadvantages:

1. You have to train the dog.
2. If you're training a puppy, you must wait for it to finish growing before teaching some tasks.

There is a growing need for Service dogs out there, but the services are unregulated.

I get many inquires about dogs that are not doing their job after being in the assistant programs. All dogs need to have behaviours rewarded in order for the behaviour to not extiquish itself. If you know how to keep the behaviour active you can do this yourself instead of sending the dog back for a refresher course.

I must warn you that training your own Service dog is a challenging task. It is also very rewarding because you now know how to keep those important tasks in your dogs repetoire.

Therapy dogs are not Service (or "assistance") dogs.

Service dogs are vitally important to those people with disabilities who are fortunate enough to have these wonderful animals. Service dogs include guide (or "leader") dogs for the blind, hearing dogs who alert their owners to sounds, mobility assistance dogs which may pull a wheelchair or directly support a person, seizure alert dogs and others.