There is a sudden rise in people
wanting/needing therapy dogs. We have a few sources to thank for that. The
first is that information is so accessible that people understand their own
needs better. The second is that we better understand how dogs can play a role
in a wider variety of contexts, such as psychiatric needs or handicap
accessibility. The third, and I think most off base, is the jealousy a dog
lover feels when they see another person with their dog in a public place.
Don’t get me wrong, I think it’s awesome
that dogs are becoming more incorporated into people’s lives. Having a tool
that doubles as a companion is really awesome. Part of what Concentric Dog
stands for is attempting to incorporate dogs more into the community. The
trouble with all of this is that everyone thinks their dog is cut out to be a
therapy dog (which by the way is not a service dog) or some sort of service
dog. Service and therapy dogs require a certain temperament, disposition,
training, and most of all, competency from the handler. Willing your dog to be
a service or a therapy dog is not enough and most dogs, along with handlers,
are not cut out for it.
The reason I say most handlers aren’t
cut out for it is mostly because there are rules and protocols to follow when
training service and therapy dogs to perform their work. Most handlers do not
want to follow these rules with their dog for one reason or another. And that’s
totally fine. Service dog standards are quite high compared to a house pet and
it’s hard to meet those standards. So here is where the handler can make a good
decision for him/herself, and by proxy make a good decision for the dog, and
avoid training to make a service dog out of a house pet.
Let’s remove the human side of the
equation though because honestly, people love their dogs more than they do
themselves and won’t consider what’s in their interest before their dog’s. What
criteria should your dog meet before attempting some sort of service/therapy
work?
The Humane Society of Southern Arizona has a visitation program that I like. They have partnerships with
different hospitals and organizations that need therapy dog visits. These dogs need
to walk loose leash, avoid eating food off the ground, sit, down, and stay.
Those are just the commands for therapy work, which again is not service dog
work.
For a therapy dog’s temperament, which
in most aspects are also ideal points for a service dog, he should be as
unreactive as possible to noises, to unwanted attention from hospital patients,
and be comfortable being handled by anyone. We can summarize all of these main
points by saying the dog should be calm, cool, collected, and confident.
Now imagine we’re in the grocery store
shopping for the week. You bend over to check the price of beans and all of a
sudden a pit/shepherd mix has his nose in your butt and a paw on your foot. You
turn around and glare at the handler to which he responds, ”Sorry about my
service dog.” My first instinct in this case would be to ask what service the
dog is providing and the normal response I get is that the dog is a psychiatric
service dog. Awesome! Someone who needs help has found a way to get the help
they need. In this instance though, they aren’t doing anyone but themselves a
service.
The point of bringing a service dog into
public is so that the person using the service dog can function more suitably
in a world that is not designed around their particular handicap. The dog
should be such a seamless extension of the handler that no one should even
realize the dog is there.
When a handler does not put in the time
to train their dog, and when the dog does not respond to that training, it is a
bad decision to try and force that dog to be something it is not.
In my time volunteering with Guide Dogsfor the Blind (GDB), I have heard a lot of their staff talk about whether or
not a particular dog was meant to be a guide dog. Keep in mind, GDB breeds
their dogs specifically to be guide
dogs, and yet they end up with dogs who just, for one reason or another, would
not make good guides.
This same sort of scrutiny should be
applied to yourself and your dog when you are considering taking the plunge
into therapy/service work. If you want to put in the work of training your dog
and finding the right certifying organization, then that’s amazing. There is an
obvious need for working dogs in many different fields. You can find trainers
everywhere that can work with you on techniques for calming your dog’s
temperament and helping with reactivity.
You should not look at this as an
opportunity to just bring your pet dog into stores. Poorly trained dogs, or “service”
dogs, in stores impair the ability of those with real service dogs to receive
proper care and access when in public.
Please, just know your dog and know
yourself. A trainer can only do some much. Sometimes when you want a therapy or
service dog, you get a herding dog.
No comments:
Post a Comment