MILTON, GA. – On a sweltering morning in July, the service dogs are pacing in their cages while the lucky dozen children who have made it off the assistance dog waiting list were making their way to the first day of training camp. Some with wheelchairs or walkers, others leaning on their parents, the kids have traveled from as far as California to the Canine Assistants headquarters north of Atlanta.
One of the younger recipients is 11-year-old Billy Ma, a smiling boy with glasses from Columbus, Ohio. He was born with Duchenne muscular dystrophy, a devastating genetic disease that causes progressive muscle deterioration. Doctors say he will stop walking in a couple of years, and the disease will eventually attack his heart and lungs so a service dog will become increasingly helpful — and necessary — in his life.
How the Dogs Can Help
From the time they are newborns to about 18 months old, the golden and Labrador retriever mixes at Canine Assistants are prepared to be service dogs. They can open doors, turn on lights, tug off a child’s socks or push a button to call 911. A lot of them can sense a seizure before it happens, and go get help. Many of the dogs can even push dirty clothes into a washing machine and take clean clothes out of the dryer with their paws.
“Dogs have basically one purpose in life, and that is to make us happy. They’re very easy to teach,” says Canine Assistants founder Jennifer Arnold, author of the new book Through a Dog’s Eyes and the subject of a PBS documentary by the same name. The documentary will have its second airing Sept. 8 at 8 p.m. EDT on PBS.
While the tasks are impressive, Arnold and others tell Paw Nation that the truly magical thing about assistance dogs is what they do for a child’s spirit. Just by being there, the creatures are able to make a child’s feelings of fear, isolation and loneliness disappear.
“They look at you with such admiration,” Arnold says of the dogs. “Over time you start to feel worthy of that, and that’s very different from how a lot of times you feel about yourself when you have to rely on other people for help.”
Why the Children Are There
That first day of training camp, Arnold asks each recipient to tell the group why they want a service dog. The mother of a boy that doesn’t speak says she hopes a dog will be a calming presence, especially at airports. A little girl from California, paralyzed on her left side from a stroke, tells Arnold she wants a dog to help pick things up and get help if she has a seizure. A young woman who is paralyzed from the waist down wants to take her dog to college. Ma tells Arnold that he falls down sometimes and needs help getting up. His dog will come with him to school, and be his friend.
Canine Assistants provide the dogs at no cost to the recipients. It will pay lifetime food and veterinary care for every dog it places, if the family needs it, and recurrent training.
Ma listens dutifully, but he really just wants to pet the dogs. At the first break, he rolls his wheelchair to the cages lined up along the wall, pokes his fingers through the grates and touches their soft fur. He stops at the cage of a dog named Dell and scratches the dog’s head and ears through the bars. The dog lifts his head in approval.
It will be another 24 hours before Ma learns which dog will be going home with him to Ohio.
What To Expect
The training period will be a stressful two weeks, Arnold warns the families. There will be quizzes every morning, a final exam, lectures about dog behavior, and lessons on feeding, grooming, and house training. During the matching process, more than one child might fall in love with the same dog.
“Everybody thinks that they basically are coming to pick out their dog. The secret is that the dog picks the person,” Arnold says.
And despite their 18 months of training, the dogs might not obey the children’s commands.
“Don’t get frustrated with the dogs because they’re not doing what you want them to do,” recipient services coordinator Judy Moore-Padgett warns the group. “You haven’t earned their love.”
That will happen soon enough.
Coming Next: Billy is matched with his dog, and starts to bond.
Story by Daphne Sashin, originally published August 2010 on Paw Nation.
Photo by David C. Scott via Canine Assistants.
