Posts tagged "service dogs"

Good news for Scooter Givens of Hillsboro, Ore. -- the 10-year-old autistic boy no longer has to leave his service dog, Madison, at home when he goes to school. After a three-year battle with the Givens family, Hillsboro School District officials have decided to allow Scooter to bring Madison to class at Patterson Elementary for a trial period.

According to KATU Hillsboro, the debate over this pup hinged on whether Madison was, in fact, a "service dog" or a "therapy dog." Though the distinction may seem minor from the outside looking in, the service dog factor is apparently no small issue in the eyes of the law.

Though service dogs are covered by the Americans With Disabilities Act, therapy dogs aren't. And after evaluating Madison's specialized training, as well as the potential costs of a federal civil rights lawsuit, the Hillsboro School District caved.

After looking at the important safety role that Scooter's best friend plays in his life, we think the term service dog clearly applies. For example, Madison has been trained to detect Scooter's sometimes violent tantrums and prevent them before they start.

"Madison's trained to touch him or nuzzle him and kind of distract him from that," Scooter's mom Wendy told KATU.

It's no wonder that Labrador retrievers have been the most popular dog breed in the United States for the past 19 years straight. They are sweet, family friendly and super trainable. To prove our point, here are videos of Labradors that have learned to perform common tricks, compete in athletic competitions, assist humans and even save lives.

Gordon tears up the course in this agility competition. Too bad we can't crank the
trance music at the actual agility events, since it certainly heightens the drama!

In this special series, Paw Nation shadows Billy Ma as he attends the Canine Assistants Training Camp, meets his new service dog and learns how the dog can help him by turning on lights, pulling his wheelchair and, hopefully, becoming his best friend. To read part one click here.

MILTON, GA. - It's the second day of camp. A dozen dogs are lined up in cages in the Canine Assistants classroom, waiting to get matched with the children they'll go home with at the end of two weeks. If all goes well, the dogs will love and protect these children for the rest of their lives.

Ever since the dogs were 3-day-old puppies being carried around in baby slings to get exposed to new sights and sounds, these specially bred retriever mixes have been prepped and trained for service. Now, at 18 months old, they're ready for their biggest test.

After two years of waiting, Billy Ma, 11, has traveled with his family from Ohio to the service-dog headquarters north of Atlanta. Some children wait five years or longer for an assistance dog. Billy has been placed on a priority list because he suffers from Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a muscle-wasting disease that affects mostly boys.

In this and upcoming articles, Paw Nation shadows Billy Ma as he attends the Canine Assistants Training Camp to meet his new service dog and learn how the dog can help him by turning on lights, pulling his wheelchair and, hopefully, becoming his best friend.

MILTON, GA. - On a sweltering morning in July, the service dogs are pacing in their cages while the lucky dozen children who have made it off the assistance dog waiting list make their way to the first day of training camp. Some with wheelchairs or walkers, others leaning on their parents, the kids have traveled from as far as California to the Canine Assistants headquarters north of Atlanta.

One of the younger recipients is 11-year-old Billy Ma, a smiling boy with glasses from Columbus, Ohio. He was born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a devastating genetic disease that causes progressive muscle deterioration. Doctors say he will stop walking in a couple of years, and the disease will eventually attack his heart and lungs so a service dog will become increasingly helpful -- and necessary -- in his life.

How the Dogs Can Help
From the time they are newborns to about 18 months old, the golden and Labrador retriever mixes at Canine Assistants are prepared to be service dogs. They can open doors, turn on lights, tug off a child's socks or push a button to call 911. A lot of them can sense a seizure before it happens, and go get help. Many of the dogs can even push dirty clothes into a washing machine and take clean clothes out of the dryer with their paws.

"Dogs have basically one purpose in life, and that is to make us happy. They're very easy to teach," says Canine Assistants founder Jennifer Arnold, author of the new book "Through a Dog's Eyes" and the subject of a PBS documentary by the same name. The documentary will have its second airing Sept. 8 at 8 p.m. EDT on PBS.

While the tasks are impressive, Arnold and others tell Paw Nation that the truly magical thing about assistance dogs is what they do for a child's spirit. Just by being there, the creatures are able to make a child's feelings of fear, isolation and loneliness disappear.

In January, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Veterinary Medicine quietly embarked on an important new study to investigate a curious phenomenon: trained service dogs suddenly quitting early on in the job for no apparent reason. Until now, the issue had not been examined.

"We're studying seeing-eye dogs and a population of assistance dogs to try to find out why they don't seem to want to do it anymore," the study's lead researcher, Dr. James Serpell, tells Paw Nation. "They just seem to stop working, meaning they stop doing what they're trained to do."

The study will take three years and is funded by the Morris Animal Foundation. "We are working very closely with three organizations," says Dr. Serpell. "The sample size we're aiming for is a total of 800 dogs that are already out working as guide or service dogs." The breeds of dogs being studied include Golden retrievers, Labrador retrievers, German shepherds and Labrador/golden-retriever mixes.

The rates at which service dogs stop working vary by organization. "Twenty percent is the highest figure I've seen, yet not all organizations would say 20 percent," says Dr. Serpell. "But all have early-retiring dogs that return within the first year or two or three years."

The need for service dogs is huge, as is the cost. University of Kentucky sophomore Logan Bright knows this, and wants to help by starting a club at her school under the 4 Paws for Ability organization.

"I have a strong passion for showing people that community service is more than work; it can be fun too," Bright told Paw Nation. While at Wittenberg University in Ohio (which she attended before transferring), Bright had learned about the program, which lets students who live off-campus bring home five-to-six-month-old puppies in order to help ready them to be service dogs for the disabled.

According to its Web site, 4 Paws for Ability "say[s] yes when many more traditional assistance dog placement agencies say no." The students keep the puppies for a semester, during which time 4 Paws for Ability provides food, toys, medical expenses, a crate, and a service vest.

Each caretaker's main responsibility is to socialize the puppy in different situations. The dogs must learn to be around both people and other animals, indoors and outdoors. The puppies are potty trained and able to sit through class before students take them home.

For now, only Bright and one other student are signed up for the program, and in order to be an official club at UK, at least five students are needed. We only wish this had been an option while we were in college -- doing a good deed by keeping a puppy, with food, toys and medical expenses covered by another organization? Sounds ideal!

When Seattle-area resident Kim Pouncy's dog, Mack, kept waking her up in the middle of the night, she thought the 3-year-old Labrador was having behavioral problems. But when the midnight nudges became simultaneous with Pouncy herself feeling dizzy and weak, she realized there was more to it. Mack was alerting her owner to a drop in blood sugar.

"I'm a Type II Diabetic," Pouncy told Paw Nation, "and I'm dependent on insulin. It's hard to say how long it took for me to catch on that Mack was alerting me. I didn't realize when she was doing it during the day, but when she did it at night three or four times, I finally got it because she would wake me out of a sound sleep."

Diabetes alert dogs are appearing more and more all over the country. Dogs4Diabetics, Inc. (D4D) began almost seven years ago, when its founder began researching the possibility of training dogs to detect type-1-diabetes-related hypoglycemia, and to physically alert diabetics to a hypoglycemic situation.

According to former D4D board member Martha Hoffman, the organization has seen great success in matching people with their talented and trained alert dogs. "The program is effective and genuine," Hoffman tells Paw Nation, "and all the dogs are tracked by their accuracy as measured by their partner's blood-sugar readings."

Hoffman confirmed that along with D4D's training to alert to lows, the dogs began independently alerting to lows before they happen. The dogs seem to recognize when blood sugar is starting to drop, way before a meter reading shows a low. This helps people avoid the low, and better prepare before onset.

While scientists have not yet defined all of the elements that compose the warning process, diabetics agree that alert dogs are in tune to the physical, emotional and physiological changes that occur during the complex prelude to diabetic symptoms.

Al Franken, newly sworn in to the Senate last month after getting elected in November, has already successfully passed his first piece of legislation, apparently wishing to make up for lost time. The Democrat's bill introduces a pilot program to help provide dogs to vets.

No, not that kind of vet.

The bill, called the Franken-Isakson Service Dogs for Veterans Act, will help provide service animals to wounded US war veterans. The program seeks to accomplish a number of goals, such as pairing at least 200 service dogs with wounded vets, half of which will be soldiers who suffer from mental-health disabilities, not just physical disabilities. It also will be part of a scientific study to further discover the therapeutic benefits of these service animals.

Franken penned an op-ed in the StarTribune describing the inspiration behind his bill. In January, at President Obama's inauguration, Franken met Capt. Luis Montalvan, a veteran who had been an intelligence officer in Iraq. Capt. Montalvan had survived an attempt on his life, but was suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder. "Luis explained that he couldn't have made it to the inauguration if it weren't for his dog," Franken wrote.

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