Here is a little Friday fun. It’s “brag about your dog” day!

Answer as many of the following questions as you wish.

What breed of service dog do you have?

Did you train your service dog? Or was your service dog trained by someone else?

If you did not train your service dog yourself, do you think you could now having worked with yours?

Where did you obtain your service dog?

What is the most amazing thing your service dog has ever done?

Do you allow people to pet your service dog (this includes dogs that are trained to only be petted when they have been given a command to allow it)?

Have you ever felt that your service dog gave you a chance to educate the public about service dogs?

Have you ever had anyone complain about the breed of your dog being a service dog?

Anything else you want to say about your dog, feel free too!

Sussie, Gunny and Rainy.

Just recently I had to retire my service dog due to back issues with him. I use him sometimes for light tasks but all and all his career is over. I am now using my husband’s service dog as my husband was just recently admitted into a full care facility due to his ALS.

Gunny seems to be taking this retirement OK. Possibly because it hurts him to do too much work and he knows it. However, there are times when he looks at me and clearly says “You still love me though, right?” I give him extra extra attention so he knows that Mommy still loves him.

My question to the readers is this…

Have you ever had to retire your service dog and take on a new one? How did your retired dog take this? Did they help train your new service dog?

Sussie, Gunny (Ret.) and Rainy

I have a friend that runs a publishing company. She is always trying to come up with new ideas for a new magazine.

Which leads me to ask the readers.

If a magazine geared towards Service Dogs and ESA’s and their owners, would you subscribe to it? Would you submit stories to it? If you were a trainer or sold Service Dog goods, would you advertize in it?

Sussie and Gunny

Just recently I had a reader ask me how she could allow her dog to relieve itself while on a 30 hour non stop train ride cross country. I suggested that she train the dog to use a potty pad and make sure the dog is consistent before even attempting the trip.

But this led me to a question for the readers. Would you take your dog on that long of a non stop trip?

Paralyzed Marine paired with service dog

Golden retriever has thousands of Facebook friends through Milk-Bone ad campaign that chronicled his training
By Sue Manning – The Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — Noble is a four-legged Facebook star with thousands of friends. Sam is a 23-year-old Marine who was paralyzed in a car accident.

After months, the two have been matched.

Noble, a golden retriever, was raised from a pup and trained as a service dog as his online fans logged in every day, sharing stories and offering words of encouragement.

Sam Farr, 23, of Oceanside joined the Marines right out of high school. He was on duty in North Carolina two years ago when the car he was in went out of control and over a cliff, partially severing his spinal cord.

It would be a month before he woke from a coma in a Georgia hospital. He was paralyzed, unable to use his hands or walk. During Farr’s rehabilitation, volunteers from a group called Canine Assistants visited the hospital with service dogs that would lick Farr’s hand. When Farr was asked if he’d like a dog, he said yes.

It was more than 18 months of hard work for both before they met a few weeks ago.

“He jumped straight in my lap and started licking me in the face,” Farr said. “They brought two other dogs. I had to continually give the other dogs treats to get them to respond to me. With Noble, I didn’t have to do that.”

Only after they knew it was a match did Canine Assistants tell Farr about Noble’s Facebook fame. “They asked me if I knew anything about Facebook and I said, ‘I am the king of Facebook.’” Farr promised Noble’s fans he would figure out a way to keep them posted. “They have nothing to worry about. Dogs are one of the greatest creatures on God’s planet. I will take care of him like he takes care of me,” Farr said.

Her son knows the value of friendship, said his mom, Crystal Farr. After the accident, Farr’s three best friends went to school to learn how to do IVs and take care of him in an emergency. “Sam loved that they did that for him,” Mrs. Farr said.

Farr said he hopes he and Noble can go to school, and they are planning a Caribbean cruise. They’ve only known each other a few weeks, but Farr said Noble already knows when he’s feeling bad. “He’ll come to my room and lay his head in the bed next to me and make sure I’m doing OK.”

For Farr, the hardest part of being paralyzed is going out. “Sometimes I feel there’s no point, like it’s a waste of time because I can’t do the things I used to do.”

But he and Noble have been to the mall, the movies and a restaurant, and going out is starting to have more appeal.

Mrs. Farr said her son is constantly dropping things. She used to retrieve them, but now Noble does. “He’s so fantastic. Sometimes I forget he’s a dog because he reacts so much like a human,” she said.

Mrs. Farr is comfortable enough now to go back to work as a CPR instructor for the American Heart Association.

Noble’s Facebook page, chronicling his journey to becoming a service dog, is part of an ad campaign for Milk-Bone. He has over 34,000 friends and counting.

A copyrighter on the campaign, Will Decher, summed up the feelings of those who got to know Noble over the months: “You can teach a dog tricks, rules and commands, but you can’t teach a dog how to have a Noble heart.”

Sussie and Gunny
http://thegunnyfund.chipin.com/the-gunny-fund

I am collecting a list of Service Dog trainers. If any of our readers knows of someone that trains Service Dogs for individuals, could you please send me their information?

Send it to

macnachtan@q.com

Thanks!

Sussie and Gunny

Well you can’t get a degree in service dogs but you can take classes in topics like

Human-Dog Psycholog

Pup-Child Development

History of Emerging Dog-Human Culture

and a complete curriculum of classes from Bergin University of Canine Studies, home of The Assistance Dog Institute. Also be sure and check out the  publications they have available for viewing online. Who would have ever guessed there was a university for both people and dogs.

Being a Service Dog written from the dog’s point of view

See the original post here:
It took a lot of work to become a service dog – Dubuque Telegraph Herald

Gloria Gilbert Stoga is the founder of Puppies Behind Bars, a canine training program that partners puppies with prison inmates. At the end of their training, the dogs are placed in the outside world, either as bomb-sniffing animals or as service dogs, providing daily assistance to wounded veterans.

Here is the original post:
Putting Puppies Behind Bars (For A Go… – NPR