I Train Service Dogs. Here’s What I Wish People Knew About These Animals.

Ever since the first friendly wolves began gathering around human campfires tens of thousands of years ago, dogs and people have had a special relationship. Due to their intelligence and eagerness to please, dogs do amazing work for their humans. A person and their pet’s bond can run deep. But service dogs share a special — and different — bond with the humans they work for.

What Are Service Dogs?

Service dogs can help people with disabilities in a wide variety of ways. Some of these include:

• Picking up items for someone who uses a wheelchair
• Providing stability for a person who has trouble walking
• Helping calm someone who is having an anxiety attack
• Guiding people with vision loss

In addition to people with impaired vision, service dogs can help people with many other challenges. Some of these include autism, diabetes, life-threatening food allergies, hearing loss, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

An important distinction to note is that service dogs are defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act as “a dog that has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability. The task(s) performed by the dog must be directly related to the person’s disability.”

Emotional support dogs and therapy dogs may do important work and offer great help to people, but they are not the same as “service dogs.” Therapy dogs receive training, also, but it’s a completely different type of training. Therapy dogs are encouraged to interact with a wide variety of people. On the other hand, service dogs are trained not to interact while doing their job.

What Breed of Dog Can Be a Service Dog?

There are no hard and fast rules for the breed of dog required to be a service dog. Even little dogs can be service dogs. While large dogs are helpful for people with mobility issues, smaller dogs may excel as healing alert dogs.

However, some breeds are more commonly used because they are known for their calm demeanors, intelligence, and ease of training. Some of the most common service dog breeds include Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers, German shepherds, poodles, and Doberman pinschers.

Training Service Dogs Begins When They Are Just 8 Weeks Old

A lot of preparation goes into training service dogs even before they begin their actual training. Puppy raisers keep puppies in their homes. There, they teach them all of the basic manners dogs need, along with offering a variety of experiences to learn about the world. All of this is done with love and affection to give the pups the confidence they need to become great service dogs.

Puppies usually live with their raisers (who are often volunteers) from the time they are eight weeks old until they are old enough to begin their official training, known as harness training.

What Is It Like to Work With Service Dogs?

We reached out to Olivia Miller, a long-time puppy raiser and new Guide Dog Mobility Instructor (GDMI) Trainee with Guiding Eyes for the Blind, to gain some perspective on what it’s like to work with service dogs. Guiding Eyes for the Blind trains and provides guide dogs to people with vision loss.

“As a raiser, I am responsible for the socialization, care, and training of a future guide dog from the age of 8 weeks until about a year and a half,” Olivia shares. “Once all my work is done as a volunteer, I bring the puppy back to Guiding Eyes for harness training, where a Guide Dog Mobility Instructor will progress their training and teach them the actual guide work.”

Besides raising puppies for Guiding Eyes, Olivia is training to become a Guide Dog Mobility Instructor (GDMI). Training to become a GDMI requires learning both on the job and through reading books and attending lectures. Roughly a three-year process, this is time when she is learning alongside the guide dogs, and by the end of the training program, a dog will have become a “well-rounded and mature guide dog.”

Service Dogs Have Plenty of Time to Play

One of the most common misconceptions people have about service dogs is that they are all work and no play. “This misconception is actually VERY far from the truth,” Olivia says, “and I think most service dogs live a drastically better life than some pets! When not working, service dogs get to do all the things pet dogs do, including playing with other dogs and toys, enjoying delicious treats, and exploring the world with their nose.”

A second misconception that some people have regarding service dogs is that they can read traffic signals and decide when to cross the street for the person they are leading. Olivia explains that this is not how it works. Guide dogs can’t read traffic signals. Instead, they wait patiently to cross the street until their handler tells them to. The service the guide dog provides for a vision-impaired person is to stop at a curb. This way, their handler knows they are at an intersection. The handler then stops and listens for parallel traffic. At the sound of a surge, they know it’s safe to cross, and they give their dog the forward cue.

Guide dogs, however, won’t enter an intersection if a car is blocking the path or if the dog can see a car approaching. Guide dogs can’t read traffic signals. However, they can read other cues to help keep their handlers safe in the line of traffic. “This is called intelligent disobedience and is a very impressive skill unique to guide dogs,” Olivia explains.

Fake Service Dogs Cause Big Problems

Service dogs are highly trained and socialized to behave calmly when in crowds or inside businesses. But problems arise when people put service vests on a non-trained dog just so they can enter a business. Businesses are required by law, due to the Americans with Disabilities Act, to let service dogs onto their premises. But it’s hard for a business to know if a dog is a legitimate service dog.

“There is so much work that goes into training and maintaining a service dog,” Olivia explains. “When people bring poorly behaved pets or fake service dogs into public, that not only distracts actual working dogs from their very important job, but it also gives businesses a reason to question and make public access more difficult for real service dog teams.”

Besides giving legitimate service dogs a bad reputation among the public, faking service dogs can cause problems for service dogs that are trying to do their work. “There are way too many good service dogs in the world who have been attacked, and some have to end their working career, due to others breaking the law and falsifying their pets as service animals,” Olivia says. “Unless you have a disability and a legitimate and trained service dog, please leave your furry friends at home.”

Ways to Volunteer

There are many ways people can get involved in the lives of service dogs. Although becoming a trainer is a long process, puppies need volunteers to give them a home for their first months of life. Guiding Eyes uses volunteers to raise their puppies, but even if you can’t commit to raising a puppy in your home, there are other ways to help socialize the puppies by petting, touching, and just spending time with them.

If you want to get involved, look for a service dog organization in your area and reach out to see how you can help. “I wish more people knew how valued any contribution of their time or money truly is to those who benefit from the use of a service dog,” Olivia adds.