Many in the Moebius community are interested in service dogs these days; and you may be eligible for one. But how do the dogs themselves get trained, and then how do people get trained to use them in the best way? Read on:
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FORT WORTH, Texas — It’s the first day of classes, and Pippa can
barely contain her excitement. She knows she’s supposed to sit still and
listen to instructions, and for one so young and full of energy, she
does an admirable job.
Fortunately, the promise of a treat makes it easier to pay attention.
Pippa is a 4-month-old Vizsla puppy with a smooth caramel coat, big
droopy ears and the kind of soft, sweet eyes that make humans melt.
She’s intently engaged with her surroundings and with what she’s being
taught in her first class with IDEA Service Dogs of Keller.
Her owners, 16-year-old Lina Perez and her mom, Katie, live in far
north Fort Worth, and have come to IDEA’s founder, Maureen Bennett, to
learn how to train Pippa to be a seizure response dog.
It’s an atypical situation. Usually, service dogs are selected and
trained and fostered during a lengthy and expensive process, then,
finally, assigned to the people they’re meant to serve. But Bennett
handles things differently, keeping the future service dogs and their
people together from the get-go, so that the relationship starts off
strong and the dogs aren’t transferred through a variety of caregivers
while they’re growing and working on their skills.
Lina, who has periodic seizures, has a lot riding on Pippa’s success.
The plan is to teach Pippa to go get help if Lina has a seizure and to
be able to retrieve a packet with medicine and instructions.
“In the future, I’d love to move out of the house and go to college,
so having a service dog will be added security and companionship,” she
says.
In a private session before the first group class, Pippa only
wriggles a little while getting buckled into her service dog in training
vest. The new royal blue apparel bears that telltale patch with the
slogan, “Please don’t pet me I’m working.”
Lina has a bag of small treats and a clicker to reward good behavior,
and when Pippa lies on a small rug at Lina’s feet, it earns her a click
and a treat.
Right now, Bennett has eight canine “students” divided into two IDEA
training classes, plus another dog taking a private class. The classroom
for the IDEA dogs — the name stands for Independence Dogs for Everyone
With Differing Abilities — is in the garage of Bennett’s home, a
remodeled, air-conditioned space where classes take place on Sunday
afternoons, September through June.
She keeps her groups small because it gets crowded: Besides four
trainers in attendance, each dog is accompanied by its owner with a
disability and another family member who also participates.
“We treat service dog training as a family affair,” says Bennett.
While most traditional programs insist on one person giving the
orders, IDEA’s practice is to educate the family on commands and
methods. A list of 60 different commands that dogs are expected to learn
during a two-year period range from the usual “sit” and “down” to
higher-level tasks like turning off lights or finding a misplaced item —
an inhaler, for instance.
Training focuses on the use of treats and praise — reinforcing good
behavior and ignoring bad behavior. In addition, the program’s mission
is to provide service dogs at an affordable cost, thus the novel concept
of equipping families with the training knowledge and allowing a pet
owner with a disability to use a dog he already has, provided the animal
has a good temperament for service.
“Our goal is for the dog to be ‘bullet-proof’ in public, first, and
then to learn special skills to help the disabled person,” Bennett says.
Like the Perezes, Shari Hanna was intrigued by Bennett’s program and
the possibility of training her own service dog. Because of a
degenerative disease she developed at age 12, she has had more than 20
surgeries on her hip and retains a pronounced limp. Hanna has had two
service dogs in the past and is in the process of training Crockett, an
11-month-old golden retriever, as her third. A special handle on
Crockett’s harness provides his owner with some relief and support, and
he accompanies her to work in software support at American Airlines
every day.
Currently, the pair is part of IDEA’s more advanced class. Although
he just started in February, Crockett is a quick study, Hanna says. Even
at his young age, he’s learned to not get overly excited by the
attention of others and has been exposed to as many different animals as
Hanna can find. He also goes to a variety of stores and events with
her, and recently accompanied her to a movie.
“I work with him most every day. We do some sort of little practice,” she says.
A.J. Wilson relies on IDEA for lessons with his Australian Shepherd,
Flint, a former show dog. At 26, Wilson has had Type 1 diabetes since he
was 9, and he and Bennett are taking private lessons with the goal of
making Flint a diabetic alert dog.
Although the sweet-tempered pup didn’t work out in the ring, Bennett
says his intelligence and sunny personality make him a good candidate
for service. This is Bennett’s first time to train a diabetic alert dog,
and she says Wilson must intentionally make his blood sugar get a
little out of balance and swab his saliva with a cotton ball. He freezes
the sample, and samples of normal readings, in marked vials. The vials
are thawed out for training and hidden around Wilson’s apartment.
Flint earns a treat when he alerts them to an out-of-balance sample.
Eventually, they’ll train him to associate the scent with Wilson and be
able to help.
“When I start to go low, he should determine it almost immediately,”
Wilson says. “Once he’s got that figured out, we’ll teach him to open
the fridge and get something for it.”
Bennett did not start her career working with dogs, but her own health issues led her toward the new path.
Some 20 years ago, while living in California, the sudden — and
painful — onset of rheumatoid arthritis was followed by a diagnosis of
ankylosing spondylitis, an inflammatory disease that can cause some of
the vertebrae in the spine to fuse together. In less than four months,
she went from running three or four miles several days a week to not
being able to do anything. She had to quit her job and says she spent
most of a year stuck in bed.
Eventually, her pursuit of various treatments allowed her to get up
and around, and while using her corporate experience to help administer
grants to local nonprofits, she came in contact with a traditional
service dog organization. Soon, she was raising puppies for the group,
serving on the board and learning how to train service dogs.
The traditional model in service dog training is that puppies spend
the first 18 months being raised in a foster home, learning basic
obedience and socialization. Next, dogs go into kennels to work with
trainers who teach them to perform the tasks a person with a disability
might need. Dogs that learn the skills and are calm and confident
graduate to service.
One of Bennett’s foster pups, a golden retriever named Mercy, flunked
out of traditional training and became the inspiration behind IDEA
Service Dogs.
Mercy was smart and eager to learn when the pair met in 2002, and
Bennett had no problem teaching her basic obedience. Soon, Mercy had
been sent off for service training, but after a number of months,
Bennett learned that the young dog had failed the program. As the story
goes, Mercy was afraid of balloons and waving flags and was deemed
unsuitable. With puppy raisers getting first dibs on animal adoptions
for “failures” they’ve housed, she jumped at the chance to bring Mercy
back home.
Bennett learned of another approach to training service dogs with
Leashes for Living, a group that focused on assisting those with
disabilities and their families in training their own service dogs at a
fraction of the cost of traditional programs. The duo enrolled in the
two-year program. They passed with flying colors.
Bennett got involved with teaching Leashes For Living classes and
kept busy there until her marriage to Jerry Bennett — and a move to
Texas in 2006. The two had known each other 30 years earlier when they
worked together and reconnected over the phone.
Two years later, she started IDEA Service Dogs in Keller. Jerry has
the official title of director of the nonprofit, although he jokes that
his unofficial title is “vice president of poop” because he picks up
after the dogs following their end-of-class play session in the
backyard.
“He’s so supportive,” Bennett says. “I couldn’t do this without him.”
In 2011, Mercy died, and Bennett still talks often of how special her
first service dog was. Now, she has a new canine partner, 4-year-old
Sophie, another golden retriever who is well-on her way to becoming
“bullet-proof” in public and is eager to learn new skills.
On a recent Friday afternoon, Bennett was teaching her to pick up a
dropped credit card, a tricky task on hard floors. Retrieving dropped
items is Sophie’s primary task, but she also helps provide stability and
mobility assistance to Bennett. The command “brace” means Sophie will
be ready for Bennett to lean against her for support.
Although she is already an IDEA graduate, Sophie is a perpetual
student. Bennett says she continues attending training classes because
her calm, contented demeanor rubs off on the other dogs and she can
demonstrate skills.
At the age of 63, Bennett doesn’t allow her mobility challenges to
stop her; she is tireless — and passionate — when it comes to IDEA
Service Dogs.
“I hope to do it until I can’t,” she says. “It’s what makes life worthwhile.”
© 2015 Fort Worth Star-Telegram
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC
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