Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
[ Mid-tempo music plays ]
I'd like to welcome you to this event, hosted by
the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners.
My name is Joan -- Joan Froling, and I'm one of the cofounders
and currently the chairperson of IAADP.
And for the better part of the last 20 years,
IAADP has been flooded with calls
from disabled persons
and families with a disabled loved one
who are seeking a service dog.
And while the nonprofit programs
that belong to Assistance Dogs International
help hundreds of families each year
to have a highly trained service dog,
unfortunately, the demand for these dogs
far exceeds the supply.
And this leaves thousands of disabled persons
and their families
that have to look into other options
for achieving the dream of having a service dog someday.
And whether they work with a professional dog trainer
or one of the new nonprofit providers
or they decide to train a service dog for themselves,
if they have prior dog-training experience,
the most important thing they need to know
is that the key ingredient to a successful outcome
is going to be finding a dog
with the right traits for this career
because training is not going to fix temperament problems.
it's not going to cure health problems,
and it cannot make up for a lack of aptitude on the dog's part
to perform the kind of tasks or work
that you envision that dog performing someday.
You'll be embarking on a treasure hunt,
and the more knowledge you can gain in advance
about what to look for and what to avoid,
the greater your chances of a successful outcome.
And to help with that, IAADP is hosting a workshop titled
"Assessing Dogs for a Service Dog Career."
And it will include some video footage about a dog at a shelter
who is going through a number of tests
to determine her temperament
and potential for a service-dog career.
We're very pleased to have with us today as our guest speaker
Jeanne Hampl.
She's a trainer with over 40 years of experience,
and she's been deeply involved in the assistance-dog field
in a professional capacity for the last 20 years.
From 1994 to 1998,
Jeanne was the executive director
of the Prison Pet Partnership Program.
And this was the program
that first pioneered in the United States
having inmates in prison
teach service dogs how to perform tasks
for disabled members of the community.
And during her tenure, Jeanne had to evaluate hundreds of dogs
to find those diamonds in the rough
who had the potential to become a service dog.
And along the way, she learned a great deal
about what to look for and what didn't work.
In 1999, she founded
the Assistance Dog Club of Puget Sound.
In addition to monthly meetings with activities for the members,
Jeanne holds weekly service-dog training classes.
And over the last 12 years,
she has enabled many disabled persons
to find and train a suitable candidate for this career.
So, she brings both her experience as someone
who has placed service dogs through a nonprofit program,
as well as helping owner/trainers
to achieve a successful outcome to the table.
Now, before I turn the workshop over to Jeanne,
I would like to talk for a bit about my own experiences
and IAADP and our goals in hosting this workshop.
On this next PowerPoint slide,
you will see a photo of me and my third service dog, Spirit.
He's a big white Samoyed, which is a sled-dog breed.
He has a very friendly nature and a good work ethic.
I was a professional dog trainer before I became disabled.
And when life necessitated the use of a wheelchair,
I set out to train a service dog to help me.
I soon learned there was a lot I didn't know
about service-dog task training.
And in 1991, I was very fortunate
to receive help from Paws with a Cause.
That is one of the largest and oldest
assistance-dog training programs in North America.
And they gave me a wonderful education
on teaching advanced service-dog tasks
and, also, how to work with a service dog out in public.
And thanks to that education,
I was able to train my second service dog, Dakota,
pretty much on my own.
But I think it's very germane to this workshop
to let you know that, when it came time to retire Dakota,
I had to search for over two years to be able
to find a suitable candidate to train for this career.
I had to believe that, if I kept looking, I kept trying,
sooner or later, I would find a dog with the right traits.
And I'm glad to tell you that the fifth dog
that I brought to my home for a 30-day evaluation --
he proved to be able to pass the health-screening tests,
the aptitude, and the temperament tests
with flying colors.
I named him Spirit, and we've been together
for the better part of the last 10 years.
And among other things, he's helped me travel to conferences,
even as far away as Great Britain in 2008,
to help put on an IAADP conference
for our European members.
It was definitely worth all of the time, the expense,
and the disappointment and the heartache
that can go into the search for the dog with the right traits.
He was absolutely trustworthy
with other dogs, with kids, with strangers,
he didn't mind loud noises, and he was talented.
He was truly a dog that I could depend on to help me live alone
and to be able to go places without always needing
a family member to assist me and even to travel alone.
And this is the kind of dog
that I'm hoping this workshop can help you to find someday.
Now, what is IAADP?
We're an independent, cross-disability,
nonprofit organization
that represents and advocates for disabled persons
who are partnered with guide, hearing, and service dogs.
We held our inaugural meeting in 1993
in conjunction with the conferences
of Assistance Dogs International and the Delta Society.
And the founders of IAADP envisioned it
as a self-help organization.
We wanted to enable disabled persons
with different kinds of assistance dogs
to work together on a number of goals
to foster the assistance-dog movement.
And over the years, thousands have done so
through our education campaigns,
our advocacy work, and our peer support projects.
And as some of you might know, IAADP also promotes
high training and behavioral standards for assistance dogs
and the responsible use of access rights.
On this next slide, you will see a photo
of our networking newsletter, Partners Forum.
Partners Forum was launched in 1994
to foster an information-sharing and advocacy network.
And it currently links together
about 350 assistance-dog training providers worldwide,
about 3,000 IAADP members
with guide, hearing, and service dogs,
and others who have a personal or professional interest
in the assistance-dog movement.
The list to the left of the photo
highlights some of IAADP's our activities over the years,
and I'll just touch on a few.
In addition to conferences and some workshops
in other countries,
we have an educational website
that receives over 250,000 visitors each year,
And we also have been deeply involved in advocacy work.
And, also, the list mentions CADO.
That is an acronym
for the Coalition of Assistance Dog Organizations.
And IAADP was a founding member in 2001.
And CADO enables the umbrella organizations
representing many nonprofit training programs
and organizations representing disabled persons
with guide, hearing, and service dogs
to work together whenever an issue comes up,
such as new legislation, proposed rulemaking,
or something else that could have serious consequences
for our community and it needs a response.
And we have learned that by speaking with one voice
and showing a united front on a number of issues,
it can be advantageous to achieving our advocacy goal.
Our next slide asks, "How can this IAADP workshop assist you?"
Well, one of the things we wanted to do
was raise awareness of the factors
that people should think about
before they go out and buy a puppy
or adopt an adult dog
and decide to train it as a service dog --
things such as a dog's size at maturity,
the breed traits, whether or not that dog
will have the aptitude to be able to perform
the kind of tasks that the person
envisions that dog performing someday.
We'd like to help disabled veterans, parents, and others
to increase their chances of a successful outcome.
And regrettably, over the years,
IAADP has received a number of consumer complaints
from disabled persons and families
who had a bad experience.
And sometimes, this may be due to an inexperienced provider
not making a suitable match,
but I'm afraid there are providers out there,
unfortunately, that will take advantage
of a client's inexperience.
And of course, it leaves the client feeling bitter
and usually out of a great deal of money.
So, one of our goals today
is to help members of the disabled community and others
to become a more savvy consumer
and to be better able to recognize
whether or not a dog that's offered to them
is suitable or not for this career.
And IAADP has always fostered
the sharing of information between partners and providers.
So, we view this as an opportunity to share ideas
that some trainers and nonprofit programs
may want to add to their assessment protocol.
This next slide has a cautioning remark
that states, for safety's sake,
IAADP recommends you work
with an experienced dog trainer
or staff member at a shelter or rescue
and let them handle strange dogs for you
and do the initial physical assessment
on the dog's temperament.
Now, why is that?
Well, we want to lower the risk of a dog bite.
Many dogs are turned in each year
because of dominance-aggression or fear-aggression issues.
And the former owners very often don't say anything about it,
and this behavior is not immediately apparent
at rescues or shelters.
And many persons don't have any experience
at reading a dog's body language
and may not realize that something as simple
as bending over a dog to pet him
could evoke an aggressive response from a dog
who views this as a threat to his social position.
So, for those who have to go out
looking for a service dog on their own
and don't have a lot
of dog-training experience themselves,
we just wanted to raise awareness
that there is a bit of a risk and how you can minimize it.
And in summary, the more you can learn
before you take the plunge, the better.
And I hope this workshop will be a good starting point.
And I also wanted to let you know
that we have articles on IAADP's website
for additional information on this topic and related topics.
And for those who would like
to share their own insights on this topic,
please know that we welcome articles for Partners Forum.
And in closing, we hope
you will enjoy this thought-provoking workshop.
And we would enjoy some feedback on our webcasts,
so if you'd like to drop us a line,
contact us at joan@iaadp.org.
And I would like to thank Jeanne Hampl
for giving our audience the benefit of her experience
over the last 20 years
in assessing dogs for a service-dog career.
HAMPL: Thank you, Joan, for the lovely introduction.
Today, we are going to be talking about assessing dogs
for a service-dog career.
I have been training dogs for over 40 years
and training service dogs for the last 20.
I worked as a program director,
but I've also helped many owner/trainers
choose and train their own assistance dogs.
A program that I worked with
said that we were going to take dogs from shelters.
And so I spent a lot of time in the local shelters
looking for potential service-dog candidates.
It's interesting.
When I first began choosing dogs,
the dogs that I chose were fairly high-drive dogs, and --
because that's the kind of dog that I like.
And I found that, unfortunately,
a lot of people with disabilities
can't keep up with the dogs that I would choose.
And so I'd have this wonderfully trained dog
who I would have to find the perfect person for
because the dog was such a high-energy dog.
So, for me, it was a learning curve.
And I hope by this presentation
to prevent you from having to go through that same learning curve
when you're assessing dogs for a service-dog career.
Where do you start?
The most important thing is to define your needs.
As a person with a disability, there are things
that you will need a service dog to do for you.
And you need to know what those needs are before you begin.
You need to know what tasks the dog will be required to do.
A lot of service-dog tasks are multi-disability-related,
meaning that the tasks that we teach dogs,
people with a lot of disabilities
need those same tasks.
International Association of Assistance Dog Partners
on their website has a wonderful task list,
both for physical and mental disabilities.
So I suggest that people go to that list
and look and see what it is
that they would benefit from teaching a dog to do.
Where will the dog be living?
Is the dog going to be living in a small apartment?
Is it going to be living in a big house with a backyard?
Those conditions will tell you a little bit
about the size and the type of dog
that you're going to need.
Who will the dog be living with?
Is this a dog that's going to be living with just you,
or is it a dog
that's going to be living in a home with children?
It makes choosing dogs a little more involved
when you're bringing it into a home with multiple people.
A very social dog may have a lot of difficulty
only attending to the person with a disability,
when, in fact, it would prefer being played with,
with everybody else in the family.
Will you be doing a lot of traveling?
I have a friend who has a very large service dog,
and she goes by car.
Flying is pretty much out of the question --
not because she couldn't fly with such a large dog,
but because it is so difficult to fly with a very large dog.
And so, if you're a person that travels and uses public...
that's something to keep in mind.
And can you afford to care for a dog?
Dogs are not inexpensive,
whether it's our pet dog or a service dog.
It has to eat. It has to go to the vet.
It needs equipment.
So, you have to figure, "Can I afford this dog?"
Unfortunately, there is not a lot of assistance
out in the big world for extra needs
for people with disabilities and service dogs.
So being able to afford the dog is really very important.
Does size matter?
Mobility dogs must be size appropriate to their handlers.
If you're going to use a dog for counterbalance
or you're going to use a dog
for a little momentum moving forward,
like a lot of people with multiple sclerosis do,
you have to have a dog
that is appropriate in size to its handler.
A very tall person with a very short dog
isn't going to have a mobility dog.
The equipment that we put on mobility dogs includes a handle,
and that handle can't be very high
or it puts way too much torque on the dog's body.
So, when you're looking at a dog,
you need to know if it's going to be the right size for you.
The larger the dog, the more space they need,
both indoor and out.
So, you sort of have to figure out
what is going to work best for your height,
but, also, what's going to work best
for the place you live in.
The larger the dog, the more they cost to feed.
So if you have chosen a dog that is a larger breed of dog,
sometimes, the amount of food they eat every day
is really surprising,
and you now have that added expense.
So, size does matter when we're looking for service dogs.
Does breed matter?
The Americans with Disabilities Act does not restrict breed,
but some locales do.
Landlords and the public in general
do have breed prejudices.
And so, again, looking at your lifestyle,
you might rethink the breed of dog you want to get.
You want to get a dog that is socially acceptable to everyone
and not a dog that people are going to be afraid of.
Breeding -- types of breeds
can make public access much more difficult.
If you're out with a dog that people are afraid of,
you're going to have more access issues.
It's not right, but it is the reality.
Some breeds of dogs have temperaments
that are just more suited for specific service-dog tasks.
If one of the tasks you need is retrieving,
then to get a dog that has no desire to retrieve
is not going to make training easy.
If you have a dog that you want to do
what we refer to as "body blocking,"
it comes and stands in front of you
to give you more space,
you don't want a dog that thinks that,
because you've asked it to take that position,
it now is in charge and needs to protect you.
So, you need to know what tasks you need a dog to do
when you're looking at the breed of dog you want to get.
Some breeds have temperaments
that make public access skills more challenging.
If a dog tends to be a dog that is territorial,
of a breed that's territorial,
sometimes public access is harder for the dog.
They're not quite sure about a lot of strangers.
They don't think
that maybe they should be in the same place that you are.
And that can create problems during training,
even with the nicest dog
of the breed that you want to choose.
Where do you begin the search?
We're going to talk about both puppies and adult dogs.
I am not telling you that one is better than the other
because I think it's an individual choice,
and that has to do with your lifestyle.
But there are pros and cons to both puppies and adult dogs.
With a puppy, you are starting with a clean slate.
And that's a good thing
if the puppies come from very stable parents.
You have little guarantee with a puppy
the size or the temperament,
and this is true if you get a mixed-breed puppy,
or the orthopedic soundness,
unless you happen to know
the sire and dam are orthopedically sound,
and the chances, then, of a puppy being sound
is greater.
If you know nothing about the parents,
you have no guarantees at all
that you're going to have a dog that is, in fact,
temperamentally sound or orthopedically sound.
Puppies require training,
from housebreaking to service-dog training.
And when you're beginning with a puppy,
you're putting in time
and maximum training requirements for that puppy.
You're going to have two years of training.
A lot of people say, "I don't want to wait for a program dog
because the waiting list is two years."
And yet, they get a puppy,
which they're not going to be able to use
until it's about 2 years of age
because it's not mature enough
and you don't have assurance
of what its orthopedic status is going to be.
With puppies, there's an increased cost.
You have to pay for puppies.
And if you buy a pure-breed puppy in this day and age,
you're going to be paying about $1,500 for the dog itself.
You get what you pay for.
This is especially true in puppies.
You have to feed a puppy,
which means that you will be feeding that puppy for two years
before it's really a working dog.
And puppies eat a lot of food.
When they mature to an adult dog,
they don't eat as much, but as puppies, they eat a lot.
The veterinary care... for their vaccinations.
They have to have X-rays for orthopedic problems.
They have to be spayed and neutered.
And all of those are costs that you need to incur
if you choose to get a puppy.
You have to take training classes.
And a lot of people say, "Well, I can train my puppy myself."
But training classes provide a socialization
that you don't get when you're training by yourself.
If you're already a dog trainer,
training your own puppy might be easy,
but if you happen to be a person with a disability
or a parent of a person with a disability
and you never really had a puppy before,
or, you know, you sort of had a family pet,
then you're going to need the expertise
that you're going to get from training classes.
And of course, with a puppy,
there's multiple sizes of equipment.
Puppies grow,
and you can't buy a harness for a full-grown dog
and expect a puppy not to slip out of it.
Puppies need multiple collars, multiple leashes,
'cause they usually chew through one or two,
and they're going to need harnesses as they grow.
So, you have to know that that also is an increased cost.
The success rate for reputable programs
who breed for purpose-bred dogs is only about 50%.
What does that mean?
That doesn't mean that,
out of every litter of eight puppies,
four of those puppies become service dogs.
It means that one litter
may have one puppy that becomes a service dog.
Another litter may have all eight puppies.
And so, when you choose a puppy,
you could very likely be getting the puppy
that is not going to make it.
And will you be able to re-home a puppy
that proves to be inappropriate for service work?
Once you've put your heart and your time into a puppy,
it is very, very difficult to give up that puppy.
I praise puppy raisers for programs so much
because, over and over again,
they bring these adorable puppies into their home.
They work with the puppy for 18 months,
fall in love every time,
leave a little piece of their heart,
and then send that puppy back to the program.
But there are a lot of people who can't do it.
And then, finally, will you be able to re-start the process
after losing so much time and money and heart on a puppy?
And where will you put that puppy?
Are you going to just keep dogs
until you find the right dog for a service dog?
Are you going to re-home that puppy?
And are you going to have the energy to start all over again?
Which is why, when people say, "Well, a program dog --
I'm going to have to wait two or three years,"
if you go through two or three puppies,
you may be spending four years before you have a working dog.
If you choose a young dog, again, there are pros and cons.
A good assessment will reveal temperament
on a young adult dog.
Now, that assessment needs to be done by a professional.
What do I mean by that?
When we talk about shelter dogs,
I really rely on the people at the shelter
who do behavior testing.
Some of the best money you'll ever spend
is to have a dog that you're looking at
evaluated by a behaviorist
or a trainer who knows dog body language,
who can assess the dog for temperament.
But a young adult dog
usually has the temperament it's going to have.
X-rays can be done on a young adult dog,
looking for hip and elbow dysplasia.
So you don't have to grow out a puppy to find out
that, after 18 months, that the dog is not sound.
You'll be able to test the puppy --
or the adult dog right away and know whether it's sound.
You will also have some idea of the size of the dog.
Even if it's a young adult,
it may grow a little bigger, but probably not much.
And when I talk about young adult dogs,
I'm talking about dogs between a year and 2 --
2 years of age, some a little little older.
But you will know what size they're going to be.
And maturity definitely leads to easier training.
What you don't know about this adult dog is
any baggage that it's carrying from its previous life,
which can affect the dog's temperament.
Where to begin...
We're going to talk about breeders.
We're going to talk about pure-breed rescues,
shelters, rescue groups,
and knowledgeable dog trainers.
Breeders -- you want to locate your local breed clubs
to find reputable breeders.
The Internet is not your friend
when looking for a reputable breeder.
Why do I say that?
I know a lot of reputable breeders
who have wonderful websites,
so I'm not saying just because a breeder has a website
that there's something wrong with the breeder.
But people will go online and put in "golden retriever puppy,"
and they will get all sorts of responses.
And many of those responses are puppy mills.
And the dog you get
may not even be the dog you saw the pictures for.
So I tell people to start with your local breed clubs.
If you talk to breeders,
they usually know who else has puppies,
and they have --
your referral base will just be so much better.
Be sure that any breeder you get the dog from
does health checks on the sire and dam.
That means checking hips, elbows, eyes,
and any genetic problems that are specific to a breed.
If your breeder says,
"Oh, my vet says the dog is fine,
and I don't want to waste the --"
they won't say "waste," of course --
but they don't want to spend the money on doing those checks,
find another breeder
because responsible breeders do health checks
on the sire and dam.
And then, ask them if their dogs are used for anything.
Are they purely show dogs, or do they do obedience?
Do they do agility? Do they do K9 Nose Work?
There's all sorts of dog sports.
And not because you're going to do dog sports
with the dog you get,
but, rather, it tells you about trainability.
If dogs are not trainable,
they are not going to make good service-dog candidates.
Pure-breed rescue
is another good place to find young adult dogs.
The dogs are fostered, which is a positive for you
because somebody has had this dog with them
for a couple of weeks or maybe a couple months,
and they know things about this dog.
You can find out if the foster family had cats,
and how did the dog do with cats?
Does the foster family have children?
Was the dog good with the children?
It gives you so much more information.
And a lot of the breed rescues
do take the dogs in for some veterinary checks,
not usually the hips and the elbows,
but they do find out if the dog has worms
and if it's up on its vaccinations.
And that's all very positive for you.
Dogs are usually adults,
so more is known about their size, temperament,
and structure.
The other source within the pure-breed rescue group
is that sometimes breeders actually get a dog back --
a family has to relocate.
Things have changed in their...
So, a good breeder will always take their dogs back.
And sometimes,
through pure-breed rescue or through asking breeders,
you can actually get a lovely adult dog that has,
just because of changes in family life,
has been returned to the breeder.
Shelters -- I spent a lot of time,
over four or five years,
going to shelters on a regular basis.
And I would bring in, sometimes, 40 dogs a year from shelters.
So, if I brought in 40 dogs, I would be testing a lot more.
It's simple, but there are good shelters,
and there are not-so-good shelters.
So, how would you know the difference?
I would ask,
does the shelter do behavior assessments on their dogs
before putting them up for adoption?
This tells you
that basic testing has been done on the dog,
and the dogs that would be inappropriate for adoption
are no longer available,
and so that the dog that you're seeing
at least has had some behavior assessment done.
You want to work with your shelter staff.
They usually know the dogs.
And the shelter staff really want their dogs adopted,
and so you have to sometimes take it
with a little grain of salt.
But they also know the dogs that just seem to be right.
Is there adequate space at the shelter to test dogs,
and will they allow you to test dogs?
And that's a question you want to ask
when you go into a shelter.
Another question you can sometimes ask,
with breed rescues as well as the shelters is,
"Will you allow me to take this dog out
to have its hips and elbows X-rayed before I adopt it?"
Shelter success rate is only 15% to 20%.
And I know that the person
who got the wonderful dog from the shelter
that made a wonderful service dog will say,
"Well, I don't believe that."
And they have to understand
that they were one of those 15% to 20%.
I would bring 40 dogs out of the shelter every year
into a training facility.
And I had good trainers.
I chose the dogs,
or a few of my volunteers chose the dogs,
and yet, we still only had a 15% to 20% rate.
The dogs would have bad hips.
The dogs would go through the honeymoon period
and come out and find out
that they were food-aggressive or they were toy-aggressive --
so many things that happened.
Or some of the dogs just wanted to be dogs,
and working wasn't what they thought they wanted to do.
So, when we say it's 15% to 20%,
we're not trying to discourage people.
That is the reality.
Rescue groups -- again, like shelters,
not all rescue groups are created equal.
So, you want to know, do they foster out their dogs,
or do the dogs live in a bunch of pens all together?
It's really important to know what the dog's background is.
How did the dog come to rescue?
A lot of shelters, on the shelter card, will tell you
that the dog was an owner turn-in
or that the dog was found on the streets
or the dog was involved in a criminal case.
You'll know where the dogs come from.
And so, you want to ask those questions to rescuers.
Also, do they do veterinary checks on their dogs?
And do they do behavior assessments?
What are some of the traits we look for
in service-dog candidates?
We want the dog to be adaptable.
We want them to move from place to place
and fit in well.
And this is where, when we look at certain breeds,
though they may make wonderful service dogs
if they're kept with a single person,
they're not really adaptable.
Golden retrievers, Labradors -- they love everybody.
But some other breeds of dogs tend to be more one-person dogs,
and so they're not really adaptable to situations.
Is the dog confident?
Fearfulness in a dog eliminates it from being a service dog.
Service dogs have to be confident
because they're out in the world,
and the world is constantly changing.
And they need to not be stressed all the time,
'cause stress is just bad for their health.
They need to be friendly -- not necessarily overly social.
For those of us who are lovers of golden retrievers,
like myself,
one of their big downfalls is that they just love everybody,
and we're constantly telling them to, "Leave it."
But we do want a dog that is friendly, that's approachable.
You want a dog that's easy to live with.
High-maintenance dogs
do not make good service-dog candidates.
You want a dog that's polite,
a dog that's aware of its body
and doesn't knock everything down.
My golden retriever Gaby
doesn't know where her rear end is most of the time,
and so she's more apt to bump people.
So, dogs need good body awareness.
And they need to be trainable.
They need to want to be worked.
They need to like to work with you.
And that's just an important trait
if you want to train a dog to be a service dog.
How do we test a potential candidate?
Only test dogs
that fit your criteria of size, age, and breed.
When you go into a shelter or you go into a rescue,
you see a lot of cute, wonderful dogs.
And if you're a dog person like myself,
when they're standing at the gate,
it's really hard to resist their faces.
So I tell people, "Read the kennel cards.
Don't look at the dogs."
You want to have a dog
that fits the size, age, and breed that you're looking for --
your criteria of what that dog needs to use
before you take it out to test it.
Otherwise, you'll fall in love.
Because I would bring some dogs into the shelter --
from the shelter to the prison
that were a little younger because they were just so cute,
and we would grow them out.
And we had that ability.
But it would have been a lot easier
if they had been a little older
and didn't look like your basic Disney dog.
Know that the testing you do is only for that moment in time.
People will frequently say to me,
"Well, you know, I tested the dog, and it was fine,
and then all of a sudden, these problems crept up."
And the dog was testing at that moment,
and if you don't understand that,
you know, your testing can be really disappointing.
But know that you're testing in the moment in time.
Testing should continue
until a pup or a dog is fully trained.
We don't test the dog, say, "This is great,"
and then when it starts having problems,
try to work through those problems
and not retest the dog.
They should be tested all along the way.
And initial testing
only tells you the dogs you do not want.
If a dog does not do well in testing,
then that is not the dog that you want.
And that is really important to remember
all through the process.
At any time during testing,
if a dog exhibits fear or a fear response,
is afraid of what you're doing --
and you will see in the video,
the little dog that I tested there actually did very well.
She was concerned about a few things,
but there was never a fear response.
If I had seen a fear response, I would have ended the testing.
The reason I would have ended the testing is
it's not fair to stress the dog,
plus, I know that that dog
is not going to make it as a service dog.
If a dog exhibits any aggression --
an aggressive response, if the dog growls,
if the dog puts its hackles up --
I just end testing
because what the dog is telling me is
what I'm asking it to do in testing
is way too stressful for that dog.
It's not fair to continue testing the dog,
and the dog is not a service-dog candidate.
One of the important things to remember
is service-dog candidates are not rehabilitation projects.
We do not fix problems in dogs after we choose them.
If the problem exists, it's best to find another dog.
The types of testing.
Sue Sternberg's Assess-A-Pet test,
which you can find at the website below,
has been used in shelters.
It is a test that really needs to be given by a professional --
a professional, either a trainer or a shelter worker.
And a lot of the shelters use this test
to do a behavior assessment on dogs.
There's the ASPCA SAFER program,
which is another test that is used by shelters
that, again, is looking for behavior problems in the dogs
and, also, to give a person an idea
of this dog's stress level
and how well it's going to do in a family home.
The ASPCA also has a Meet Your Match test.
The Meet Your Match test is a wonderful test
that gives you an idea
of what home would be better for the dog.
And they have cards that say things like "couch potato"
or "life of the party."
Your couch potato --
probably a dog that would prefer not to work,
very low-energy dog, very quiet dog.
The dog that is the life of the party,
it means it's a very, very active dog.
It's going to need a lot of exercise.
It's going to need a lot of management.
It's going to be a dog that maybe is going to be too much
for a person with a disability to handle.
I was a lover of "life of the party" dogs --
still am --
and it was one of the things that I had to change
when I was looking for dogs.
And so, hopefully, you will learn from my mistakes.
Once a dog has passed
either the Assess-a-Pet or the SAFER testing,
then more specific testing can be done
to assess trainability, sound sensitivity,
prey drive, and natural retrieving skills.
And you will see this in the video.
If a dog doesn't stay in the classroom,
if it doesn't want to work with you,
even though it doesn't know anything,
while you are doing the trainability part of the test,
the chances are that training that dog
for all the tasks
that work or service dogs are going to have to do
is going to be very, very difficult
and may end in a lot of frustration
for both you and the dog.
Sound sensitivity is so important.
Remember that a dog that's out in public
is going to hear buses stop, cars backfire,
beeping sounds at the Costco as the forklifts back up.
It's going to constantly be inundated with sound.
And a dog that is sensitive to sound --
the stress of working is just too hard.
And so, when I'm testing dogs, if I find sound sensitivity --
and you'll see this in the video --
I test for it.
I throw pans on the floor.
I work with a clicker
because if the dog can't handle the sound of a clicker,
it's not going to handle a lot of other senses -- sounds.
Prey drive --
if a dog is going to have a high prey drive --
my golden retriever right now has the highest prey drive
of any dog I've ever owned.
If she gets into a pond with ducks,
she will chase those ducks until she can hardly swim.
That kind of prey drive is not appropriate for service dogs.
And if you are looking at Labs and Goldens
and they can't stand still when a --
when a crow flies by or a seagull flies by,
this is not a dog that's going to be happy as a service dog
and a dog that could possibly injure its disabled person.
So, when we're looking at the prey drive,
we know that dogs with high prey drive
do not make good service dogs.
And natural retrieving skills is just so important.
Retrieval is a cooperative game.
Prey-drive dogs chase and kill.
So, you throw the ball or you throw a toy.
They run out. They grab it.
They shake their head. They dance around.
They're happy, happy, happy.
A dog with good natural retrieving skills
picks the object up and willingly brings it back
to the person who threw it.
They want to continue the game, and they want to be cooperative.
So, a dog without natural retrieving skills
is usually a dog that I --
that is not necessarily a good dog
for a lot of the service-dog tasks that we want to teach.
When we're looking for dogs for hearing,
we want a dog that is aware of sound.
There's a difference between sound sensitivity
and awareness of sound.
So, this is where the help of a professional
might come into play
on whether or not this dog that you've fallen in love with
and has tested quite well --
whether what we're seeing is sound sensitivity
or sound awareness.
We're going to be seeing a video right now.
The video was taken at the Tacoma --
the Humane Society of Tacoma & Pierce County.
The person that is doing the beginning testing
in the blue shirt is their adoption --
head of adoptions.
Her name is Cecily,
and she or one of the other shelter workers
tests every dog that comes into the shelter.
They do a behavior assessment on the dog.
It is a sort of a mix between several different assessments,
and no dog at their shelter is adopted out
that has not had a behavior assessment.
The dog we're using is a dog named Frannie Bean.
She is a little German shepherd/collie mix,
probably about 9 months old.
She was turned in to the shelter.
She is being -- has just been treated for kennel cough.
You will notice that we do use Sue Sternberg's Assess-A-Hand --
it's a safety device that we use with --
so that there's no chance that,
if the dog is not kind and gentle,
that it would injure us.
I am going to turn the video on now.
The dog is being given a rawhide stick,
as well as a pig's ear.
And we're giving it high-value treats
because we want to see
whether or not the dog is a food- or treat-guarder.
And dogs that guard food and treats are --
again, would be a rehabilitation project
that we would not be interested in.
She's using the hand.
Notice the dog was startled by the hand,
but its response was to be interested
and to give it a kiss.
You notice that she's doing everything more than one time.
And the dog is not really sure it wants those treats now
that the hand has taken it away.
And a dog that does food guarding
would definitely be annoyed with that hand.
And I have seen dogs actually attack
and grab on and try to kill it.
Here we have food.
We put down even more high-value.
This happens to be wonderful soft food.
We put down something that the dog is going to love.
You notice this time,
when she pet the dog with the hand,
the dog knew what the hand was.
This is what we call "recovery,"
and the dog is like, "Oh, well, you're annoying,
but you can stay here."
She moved the dog's head away, moved the bowl away.
And the dog says, "You know, you're a good hand.
I'm not going to attack you."
This is a dog that we're looking at
to see if the dog is food-aggressive.
Food-aggression and food-guarding
are not potential service-dog candidates,
and in a lot of shelters,
dogs who are very much food-guarders
would not be adopted out.
I have moved the slide just for time.
The dog was actually ignored, and, notice, it just laid down.
Here, she is now reintroducing socialization with this dog,
and she's petting it.
The dog is joining up with her,
very happy to snuggle up against her,
wants to be her friend.
Now she's getting down and going to do body-awareness testing.
So, she's scratching and rubbing.
You will notice everything that she does,
she does more than once.
She's going to test the -- check the dog's teeth --
in other words, how is the dog about having its mouth handled?
And then she goes back and does it again.
The reason we do things more than once
is we want to be sure that the dog
doesn't let us do it the first time,
know what we're going to do, and take exception.
Here, she's checking the dog's foot.
The dog doesn't particularly like it,
but the dog is still staying in her lap.
Now she's doing a body hug.
This is one thing in the testing that I highly recommend
that you have done by somebody who is a professional,
either the shelter staff or a trainer.
Best money you'll ever spend
is to have a trainer come with you to testing
so that there is no chance of anyone getting injured,
because, if a dog is marginal
and you give it a full-body hug like this,
dogs dislike being hugged,
and sometimes they will act aggressively when you do it.
Now, Cecily is a professional.
She has watched this dog through all the other testing she's done
and is pretty sure that this dog is going to do nothing
when she hugs it, and so she continues on.
If, at this point,
she thought that there was a chance
this dog was going to act -- act aggressively toward her,
she would not have done this portion of the test.
But the dog says, "You know, hug me again.
That was really nice."
And now she's going to check its back legs
and see its response.
And it's like, "You know, this is fun.
Do you want to touch me a little more?"
She's checking its belly out.
And while you're doing a test like this on the dog,
you're also looking for lumps and bumps and --
and little lesions and to see the dog's response.
And this dog seems to think having its bottom scratched
is more than a little fun.
Cecily is now taking the collar off the dog.
If you're testing yourself,
you would not do this
because you would have no control of the dog.
And she is going to do a retrieve test.
She is using an easy-to-retrieve toy.
She's getting the dog very excited.
Not all shelters will have done a retrieve test on the dog,
and you want to ask this because if they don't do it,
you definitely want to do it.
The retrieve is just so important.
It is a sign of a dog's willingness
to cooperate with another -- with a human.
Many dogs will chase what you throw,
but not every dog will pick that object up
and be willing to come back and give it back to you.
So it is really important
that you know that a dog likes to play
the retrieve part of the game,
not just the "chase the thing" part of the game.
Dogs with high prey drive will chase anything.
Very independent dogs
will occasionally pick up and run and hide,
and we don't want that to happen.
If this dog was to run and go off in a corner
and we had to, you know, bribe the dog to get the toy back
or we had to, in fact, separate the dog
because it was growling at us,
we would know that the dog was not a service-dog candidate.
This dog is very willing to play the game, as you will see.
The distance you throw things is not -- doesn't matter.
What we're interested in is the dog bringing it back to you.
And this dog really seems to think this is fun.
We're not correcting it for jumping up at this point.
We just want to see if the dog will play with us.
And you notice the dog has gone into a play bow.
It has dropped the toy.
It has come, and it's re-joined up with Cecily, saying,
"I really like you.
The toy is fun, but I know that this is between the two of us."
Cecily is now going to actually get some treats,
and she's going to do a food exchange.
And this is just information-gathering.
She wants to see if the dog will give the toy up for food.
And the dog said,
"You know, the toy really, really is more fun
than your treats,"
which tells me something down the road in training this dog,
that this dog might be a dog
that a lot of training could be done with toys
because the treats are fine.
Now Cecily is looking at trainability.
Again, not all shelters do this. She does.
She's asking the dog to shake,
and the dog doesn't understand what she wants.
But, notice -- the dog is staying in the classroom.
Here, she's asking the dog for a down,
and she gets a partial down, and she gets a play bow.
Again, the dog is interactive and staying in the classroom.
And there are two other people in this room.
I'm there, and the person taking the video is there.
So the dog could have left her at any time,
and instead, the dog said, "You know, I really like you."
Another thing that the Humane Society does
is test the dog's willingness to go into a crate.
This gives them information for adopters.
It also gives you information if they've done this.
And she is just using a lure.
She's using a treat to see if the dog will go in the crate.
And, again, the dog stayed in the classroom.
It didn't take very long for the dog to go in.
I would think that I could clicker-train this dog
into that crate in just a very short period of time,
more -- very willing to be in there.
Cecily is just ending her part of the testing,
threw the dog a treat.
And I am now going to come into the picture and begin testing.
This first test is to look at prey drive.
This is my little mechanical dog.
I've had this dog for a very long time.
And you can see the puppy dropped his treats, walked over,
and said, "Well, you're a very funny-looking thing."
And you notice the ears are up.
The dog is not sure of what it is.
And I'm just letting the dog figure it out.
It backed away and said,
"You know, I'm not going to try to kill it."
So I said, "Okay, I'll shut the noise off,
and let's see what you do."
Did the dog forgive us?
She came and joined up with me, bumped my legs,
asked my permission, in a sense,
to go over and check out the dog,
and immediately checked it -- sniffed its butt --
perfectly normal thing to do,
obviously thinking it might be real.
I asked Cecily to throw a towel over her head
and act a little odd.
She's walking with a cane,
hunched over, talking to this dog.
"Hi, puppy. Puppy, puppy.
Oh, can I touch you, puppy, puppy?"
And you notice that Frannie is not too concerned about her.
That's a response I'd like to see.
I now have a popper toy.
This popper toy makes noise.
The dog looked at it, said,
"You know, I think you're crazy."
I immediately asked the dog to reconnect with me,
put my hand out,
and she came right back over and sniffed me.
So, again, she is seeking my time
and seeking me for confidence,
and I like seeing that in a dog.
I opened up the umbrella, and that was a no-brainer.
If I had done that to my golden retriever
when she was 5 or 6 months old,
she would have been in the next room --
a reason why she was never a service-dog candidate.
And the dog again -- notice how it's staying with me.
There is another person in this room.
I went and got my clicker.
I want to see if the dog is sensitive
to the sound of the clicker.
The dog has found the food on the floor,
so I'm pretty much ignoring it, letting it finish.
The dog, again, is right with me.
I ask for a sit.
I clicked, which you can't hear because the video is muted,
but I clicked, and the dog said, "That's fine."
I'm now looking at a little bit of trainability.
I have, again, asked for down, which the dog doesn't know yet.
And I'm not going to spend the time to teach it at this point,
but what I love is this dog has stayed in the classroom with me.
Why do I do the clicker?
It doesn't matter whether you're going to be a clicker-trainer
and you're going to train the dog with a clicker
or you're going to use verbal markers
or how you're going to train this dog --
I need to know that the dog is not sound sensitive
to something as subtle as the sound of a clicker.
I've had clients call me up and say,
"I have this wonderful dog.
"It's my new service-dog candidate.
"It's the best dog in the entire world.
"But I took out the clicker,
and it exited stage left and is shaking on the floor."
The dog is not a service-dog candidate.
Being afraid of the sound of something as simple as a clicker
will be a dog that will be afraid of all sorts of sounds
in the environment,
and a service dog has to be very much --
has to be really okay with sound.
I'm going to continue the video.
At this point, I'm redoing Cecily's test
because I'm not Cecily
and I haven't spent a lot of time with this dog.
I want to see what its response is going to be
when I inflict a little bit of discomfort.
Service dogs get their feet run over.
They get stepped on in restaurants.
They get chairs pushed into them.
They get children running up in the mall
and throwing their arms around their neck.
It's just the reality of having a service dog.
And I need to be sure,
at the very beginning of testing,
that this dog is not going to be aggressive
or incredibly fearful if it has pain inflicted.
I'm squeezing the dog's foot, and the dog licked my hand,
said, "Oh, that's not so bad."
So then I go over to the other side,
and I squeeze its flank,
and the dog said to me, "Oh, well."
And then I squeezed its ear, and it said,
"You know, this lady does crazy things,
but if she wants to do that, I'm good with it."
Again, it's all about something new and recovery.
What you can't hear on video,
but you did see is I threw pots on the floor
and they made a lot of noise.
She looked at them. She immediately looked at me.
And as soon as I started walking toward the pans --
lids, she said, "Okay, all's right with the world.
You've picked up the pans. I trust you -- no problem."
And now, to end our session with her,
I have asked her for a sit.
I have something I can reward.
And now I've told her that she's the best dog in the world.
And I'm very happy with the testing from this dog.
She tested well,
and this is a dog that I would want to continue
with my testing because I felt that she was worth --
worth continuing on.
If I were looking for a smaller service-dog candidate,
this would probably be a dog that I would pick.
When you bring people to --
and go in and test dogs,
you really should have somebody who can take notes.
I knew that I was videoing this,
and that's another very important tool,
which is so easy for us to do nowadays.
We can video it right off our cellphones,
or I just use my camera.
You can then look at the video and review it in your mind.
If you don't have a video, have somebody come and bring --
make a spreadsheet.
If you're going to be testing more than one dog,
they'll get very confusing.
When I test puppy litters, I have a spreadsheet.
And there's Puppy Number 1, Puppy Number 2, Puppy Number 3,
so that I know exactly what each puppy did.
And if you're testing more than one dog at the shelter,
you're going to want to know exactly,
"Which puppy am I --
"Which dog or puppy was I testing,
and what, exactly, did they do?"
When I do puppy testing, I also do a follow test,
which means, if I put the puppy down
and walk away from the litter,
is the puppy more interested in coming with me
or staying with its littermates?
Following in puppies is very similar
to the cooperative retrieve in the dog, which says,
"I really like being with humans,"
which is just so important.
And then review the results of the testing.
Sometimes a dog will test really well.
It won't show fear, it won't show aggression,
which are the big red flags.
It'll test really well on everything,
but one thing is sort of iffy.
If I really like the dog and the dog is the right size
and the right temperament for me
and everything else looked beautiful,
I may retest that one area of the test.
I may even decide, at that point,
to have the dog's hips and elbows X-rayed
and then retest that point of the test,
because nobody is 100% all the time,
and this is especially true when you're testing puppies.
When you're testing puppies,
you truly want to test more than once
because the day you test, one of the puppies may be tired.
It may have been running around, playing,
and you get there, and all it wants to do is sleep.
And you think to yourself,
"There's something terribly wrong with this puppy,"
when, in fact, he's just a sleepy, tired puppy.
So, if you have the opportunity to test a dog more than once,
that's to your benefit.
Unfortunately, with a lot of shelters,
you're not going to have that luxury
unless you're willing to take the dog
and then do further testing.
When we finish doing the testing,
we are going to then test the dogs
for things that we weren't able to test
during the actual testing.
I didn't bring another dog into the room
when I was doing the testing in the shelter
because the room was too small.
But we did walk the dog
down through the corridors of other dogs,
and she was really not concerned about them at all.
If you have a dog that,
as you're walking through the shelter,
is barking and lunging at the dogs in the cages,
that would be a dog I would just put back
and I wouldn't do further testing with.
Cats are a part of dogs' lives.
In this day and age,
whether you have a cat of your own,
a friend is going to have a cat,
or you're going to meet cats on the street,
you need to be sure that the dog that you are testing
does not have intense dislike for cats.
Very frequently, we see this in dogs that are high prey drive.
We also see it in certain breeds of dogs.
So, what you can do is you can take the dog --
ask them at the shelter if you can walk it past the cattery.
If the cat --
If just the presence of the cats
gets the dog riled up or the dog just,
you know, eyes on to those cats and doesn't want to walk by,
that pretty much tells you,
if there's glass in the way and the dog is having trouble
controlling itself,
that this is a dog that probably has very high drive.
It not only will be a problem around cats,
it'll also be a dog
that will probably want to chase rabbits and squirrels.
And depending on where you live, that may be a problem.
And then you are going to want to test the dog with children.
And this is an area where you have to be very careful.
We don't test the dogs initially with children
when we're bringing them out of the shelter
because we really want to know a lot more information
about the dogs before we introduce them to children.
Children are a -- an unknown entity for some dogs.
Some dogs just weren't socialized with children.
My golden retriever was not raised with children,
and I didn't have children come over,
and she's just sort of a happy, wiggly golden retriever --
not service-dog candidate --
and she is not necessarily appropriate around children.
This doesn't mean that she's aggressive --
she just really, really sees them
as something that might be a play toy
and is a little too excited around them.
So you do want to be careful
introducing a new dog to children.
One of the things that I recommend you do
for further testing is go to a play yard,
but stay on the far side of the fence,
and just see what your dog's response is
to the children that are playing.
And then, if you have children of your own
or you have a friend with children
that is a child that's been around dogs,
they can come up to the fence and try to pet the dog.
I have very young grandsons,
and I keep my dog behind a baby gate when they were littler,
and they would pet her through the baby gate.
She would lick their hands.
And so I knew she was fine with them.
I just didn't want her knocking them over.
If a dog does not like other dogs and doesn't like cats,
if it doesn't like children,
or it is inappropriate around other dogs, cats, and children,
it's just not a service-dog candidate
because, in the real world,
a service dog's going to have to be able to interact
with all of those.
Further testing that we do on a dog
once we're happy with what we've seen --
all service-dog candidates
need to have their hips and elbows checked for dysplasia.
You need to know this before you spend time training.
Eye testing should be done on all collie breeds or mixes
because they have all sorts of genetic eye problems --
collie eye being the biggest -- as well as Labs and Goldens.
Labs and Goldens have juvenile cataracts.
They can have uveitis.
There are a lot of eye problems that show up in Labs and Goldens
or Labs and Golden mixes --
Labs or Goldens with other breeds.
And if you know from right away that they have a problem,
this dog would not be a candidate.
I've had golden retrievers --
one of my golden retrievers had juvenile cataracts,
and the dog was --
did eventually go blind toward old age,
but it probably started having visual problems
long before I knew it.
But the dog was not a service dog,
and I knew that he had the juvenile cataracts.
So you really do want to do eye testing.
And the ophthalmologists are usually very kind.
A lot of them will test a service-dog candidate
for a very low price
because they do what we call breed testing
on dogs that are going to be bred,
and those tests are valid for service-dog candidates.
Environmental testing --
once you have the dog home, give it a few days to settle in,
and then take the dog to a local garden store
or an early morning trip to a pet store.
You need to be sure that the dog
is not afraid of things in the environment,
like doors in stores that open all by themselves,
the noise and the clutter and things that go on in stores.
It gives you a lot of information.
These will be places where you'll be training a dog
during its training phase,
but you want to make sure that the dog
does not become extremely fearful or stressed.
You take the dog into these places, for example,
and they were to urinate on the floor,
obviously, you get to clean it up,
but this is a dog that's doing that
because it's very stressed in the environment.
So, you need to do some environmental testing.
You need to see how the dog reacts to new sights and sounds,
and this is also very important.
If they are excited about the sound and go, "What's that?"
and then check in with you and go on their way,
what we call is a dog that has recovery.
The dog was surprised or excited about something,
but it immediately recovers and go on --
that's the kind of dog we would really like.
You also continue exposure and testing
all throughout the dog's training.
It's a continuous process,
which is the heartbreak of owner-training a service dog,
and the heartbreak for programs
is when they have a dog that has done so well,
and they've done all of these things right,
and then suddenly it becomes afraid of sounds
or of other dogs
or of things that previously it had been fine with.
Remember that puppies go through fear periods,
and fear periods usually occur
somewhere around 8 weeks, 8 months, and 18 months.
And so a lot of times,
you'll have a dog that did really well with something,
and then suddenly it appears to be afraid.
I would give the dog a week or so of exposure and --
gentle exposure and see if it gets over it.
But if the problem persists,
then the dog is just not a service-dog candidate.
When you're testing dogs,
you want to be sure that you're videoing the test,
like I did at the shelter,
or you want to be sure that you have a spreadsheet
if you're doing multiple puppies.
You don't remember -- we think we remember, but we don't,
which is why I love video.
Video is an excellent way to test,
to keep records of your testing,
and also something for you to look back on,
especially with a dog that develops some sensitivities
after you've taken it out of the shelter or the rescue.
You can look back and see what the original testing looked like
and then see how the dog has changed.
Any time during testing,
if a dog exhibits a fear response, end testing.
I think I've said that before, and I think it bears repeating
because, as you begin to train the dog
and take it out and about,
you may start to see fear responses
that you didn't need to see earlier.
You want to quit whatever you're doing,
take the dog back to the car,
and then re-evaluate exactly what happened
and see if this is a problem that is just a fear period
or if this is a problem that's going to continue on.
And this is where the help of a trainer
can be very valuable.
If a dog exhibits any aggressive responses,
you're going to end testing
or you're going to end the socialization
or the environmental testing.
And you need to know right away that this is a dog
that is not an appropriate service-dog candidate.
Remember, again, that service-dog candidates
are not rehabilitation projects.
Problems that dogs have will stay with them.
We, as trainers, can make them look beautiful,
but if the stress level gets too high,
all of the problems rear their ugly heads again.
And I'm telling you this over 20 years of experience
that dogs cannot be successfully rehabilitated
if they're going to grow up to be service dogs.
They may make wonderful pets,
but the stress of service-dog work,
it'll just prove too much.
Why don't dogs work out?
First, we have the physical issues we talked about.
Dogs that are orthopedically unsound
are not service-dog candidates.
They do not need to be on those hips and elbows,
up and down, on different surfaces --
it's just not fair to the dog.
You want to know
what their hips, knees, and elbows look like,
and you want to keep in mind that,
if they are not sound,
they should not be being worked as service dogs.
Severe allergies -- what do I mean by that?
Some dogs are allergic to or have an intolerance
to, say, chicken,
but they do fine on salmon food
and never have a sick day in their life.
That's not a severe allergy --
that's a little bit of an intolerance.
But dogs that have allergies to fleas,
that have hot spots,
that tend to scratch or get repeated ear infections --
those dogs are going to be dogs
that are going to spend a lot of time at the veterinarian,
they're going to have a lot of downtime,
and allergies become worse in the presence of stress.
And I had a friend who had a service dog
that had ear infections on and off for the years
that she worked the dog.
The dog was retired,
and after retirement, never had another ear infection.
Obviously, the stress of working
decreased the dog's immune system
and increased the dog's response in his ears.
So we don't want dogs
that we know have severe allergies lurking.
To choose one of those dogs would be just counterproductive.
Bowel problems.
If you have a dog that has irritable bowel
or tends to have diarrhea,
obviously, it can't work as a service dog.
And so, when you're looking at puppies
or you're looking at adult dogs
that tend to have recurrent problems
with diarrhea or with bowel issues,
those dogs are not a service-dog candidate.
And lastly is the urinary incontinence.
Early spay and neuter in female dogs
can create urinary incontinence, and these are the dogs that --
they'll be laying down, and when they get up,
there's just this little wet spot underneath them.
Well, you can't take those dogs on buses and subways,
and you can't take them into stores.
So, if you notice that a young adult dog
that you're testing has --
or you've had and you've taken it out --
and it has urinary incontinence,
this is not a dog that you would want to use as a service dog.
Behavioral issues.
Why dogs don't work out, behaviorally.
Obviously, we've talked about fearfulness and shyness.
Those are not traits we want to see in a dog
for a service-dog career.
Aggression is not a service dog --
a behavior issue you want to see or deal with.
We do not want dogs that are territorial.
You may need the help of the paramedics someday.
You can't have a dog that's standing over your body, saying,
"Please, I'm protecting my person."
The dog's not trying to be bad. It's just who the dog is.
So, a dog that's territorial
does not make a good service dog.
The same is the protective.
People frequently say, "Oh, my dog loves to --
my dog protects me."
Well, dogs protect themselves.
You happen to be with them.
And so dogs that are protective are usually fearful
and, again, not a good service-dog candidate.
Dogs that are overly social --
People go, "Oh, that's such a happy, friendly dog."
It's going to be really hard for that dog
to not be happy and friendly all the time,
and you're going to be spending a lot of time telling the dog
to, "Leave it,"
which, for a lot of very social breeds of dogs
really makes them pretty sad,
and it makes a lot of work for you.
So, we want a social dog, but not an overly social dog.
And lastly, high prey drive.
You may find that the dog tested beautifully.
You get it out and about.
You go into the park,
and the dog sees a squirrel and takes off like a shot,
possibly pulling the leash right out of your hand,
and is standing up on the side of a tree --
is a dog with high prey drive.
Trying to change that is going to be very, very difficult.
And we live in the real world,
and we need to let these dogs be who they are.
And asking that dog to constantly inhibit its reaction
is not fair to the dog,
and it's not fair to you
when you're looking for a service-dog candidate.
Why dogs don't work out. Poor work ethic.
We will be training --
Remember, I said I brought in 40 dogs a year.
And my trainers would come to me and say, "You know, Jeanne,
"this dog would rather be doing something else with its life.
It just is not interested in what I'm doing."
And it wasn't because we weren't using good training methods
or we didn't have really good food
or we weren't trying to motivate the dog.
The truth of the matter was,
it was a dog that just was a couch potato
and really didn't want to work.
A dog like that is not going to be a good service-dog candidate.
And I've had -- I had a friend who I placed a service dog with,
and the first dog had the most amazing work ethic.
But the same dog -- when it was time to retire,
he got another dog,
and it was a fine, wonderful golden retriever.
And anybody would have thought,
"Oh, I'd be so happy to have it."
And yet, after having had a dog with good work ethic,
he said to me, "You know,
I really love this dog, except it has no work ethic."
And you know, so people go, "How do you judge that?"
And so, it was when he said, "Come on.
"You know, we're going out. Go get your harness,"
and the dog would sort of stretch
and look at him and go, "Really? Do we have to go?"
where the other dog would go, "Yay! I'm going to work!"
So, when you have a dog with poor work ethic,
it is not really a good dog for a career as a service dog.
Along with that is low trainability.
What do I mean by that?
We know how to motivate dogs,
and we know how to reward dogs for what they're doing.
Some dogs would prefer not to work.
And not wanting to work,
they also don't want to be trained.
And you noticed in the video that little Frannie Bean
was more than happy to stay in the classroom with me.
All of the stuff going on in that room,
and she still touched base with me and said,
"I don't know what you want me to do,
"but I'll try it. I'll stay here.
"Do you want a play bow? Oh, shake?
I don't know shake, but I'll play bow again."
This was a dog that was saying to me, "Train me.
Train me. Train me."
And that's what we look for in service-dog candidates.
And then there's the personality conflict.
I am a type "A" person.
And, as I told you early on,
when I was looking for service-dog candidates,
I was looking for type "A" dogs.
I have a friend who has a Rhodesian Ridgeback.
And the Rhodesian Ridgeback is a wonderful dog.
It is so type "B" that, when we're training, I am so bored.
And I laugh because it's not the dog's problem at all --
it's mine.
So, I want you to think
of getting a service-dog candidate,
looking for a service-dog candidate as a marriage.
The two of you are going to have to be together
for 8 to 10 years,
and if you have a personality conflict,
it's not going to work.
So, be sure that, when you're looking for your dog
that you are choosing a dog that you actually like.
I'm sure that this presentation
has caused a lot of questions in your mind.
And I have set up a chat group on Yahoo!
for people who have seen this webcast.
I've posted on this slide
all of the information you need to join this group.
When you -- since it's a members-only group
and it's only for people who have seen the webcast,
you are going to have to request
and tell me why you're requesting to join.
So, in the -- you want to write,
"I have seen the webcast
"on 'Assessing Dogs for a Service Dog Career,'
"and I would like to join this group.
"I have questions
that were brought up from the presentation."
I will be available to answer those questions.
I went with this format rather than a live chat
so that we can have a continued discussion.
I would like to thank the Humane Society
of Tacoma & Pierce County
for allowing me to videotape our dog,
which actually is Frannie Bean.
I also would like to thank Cecily,
who was the shelter adoption coordinator
who did the initial testing.
And you can find information
about the Humane Society of Tacoma & Pierce County
on their website.
I want to thank you all for watching this podcast.
I hope this has been useful to you
and that you will be successful in choosing the right dog
for your service dog
and that the dog will have a long
and happy service-dog career.