Service Dogs Medical Alert Dogs
Our volunteers are the heartbeat of our service dog program. We are family, brought together by our love for dogs, our willingness to give 100% to help these puppies grow into solid dogs that will help improve the quality of life for both children and adults.
This is a lifelong commitment. We care about our recipients as much as we care about our dogs.
Our puppy training program is designed to raise puppies who can handle any obstacle without stress or fear. Mental cognition is vital, so we want to ‘send the puppies to school’ as early as possible. Your participation is what matters. It makes all the difference. Not only are you helping raise some of the best puppies, you are reducing the number of puppies that wash out, and increasing the number of dogs we can raise each year.
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PTSD service dogs are a challenge to raise. Their primary purpose is not to give comfort to the handler. They go above and beyond:
interrupting nightmares, phoning for help, turning lights on, waking up their handlers, picking up dropped items at home and in public, grounding the handler until they feel better, possibly alerting that an episode is approaching, making space in public, lead handler to an exit, find a car in a parking lot, interrupt self harming or OCD behavior, Deep Pressure Therapy, waking up handler from a nightmare, block a crowd, room/house sweep when handler arrives home,
All with, and without cues. These dogs are truly the stars of our program. They have a big task ahead of them. They are a lifeline that gives their handlers freedom.
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We are very careful where we place dogs. We believe everyone has the right to own a support dog, or a service dog with public access as ‘required’ as stated in Ontario law.
It is our responsibility to place dogs in homes where they will be well cared for, protected, and their emotional and physical well-being is taken care of, daily.
Continue reading “Where We Place Service Dogs”
In Ontario the law does not protect the rights of people to own support dogs. A support dog is a dog that has legal ‘pet’ status, but is taught tasks and behaviors that will help mitigate a disability, give assistance/relief to a primary caregiver, and does not have a doctor’s note stating the dog is ‘required’ for public access.
The fact that Ontario law does not protect rights does not mean that it is illegal to own a dog as a support animal, or that they do not exist. It just means the laws to protect pets in Ontario are sufficient to protect support animals.
It does not mean that you cannot train a dog to do the same tasks as a service dog. It does mean that your dog does not have specialized training for public access.
We use the term ‘support dog’ to make it easy to differentiate between a srevice dog, and a dog trained to offer support at home, or where pets are allowed.
Continue reading “Support Dogs”