Backstage Media |
- “Growing Up Guide Pup” – Great Video Series About What It’s Like To Raise A Guide Dog Puppy
- Wanna Know What Canine Companions For Independence Is All About? Gimme Five Minutes And Watch This Video
- Another Great Dog Option For Veterans Dealing With Post-Traumatic Stress – Paws For Purple Hearts
- Three Great Alternatives To Service Dogs For Veterans: Hounds 4 Heroes, Pets 2 Vets, Pets For Patriots
- 17-Year-Old Hearing Dog Passes Away After A Lifetime Of Devoted Service
- “By Having A Dog At Your Side, You Increase Your Personal Space.” Uh, No.
- Canine Companions For Independence Graduate To Receive Disability Awareness Day Award In Annapolis This Saturday
- Veteran Kevin Stone Talks About His Paws With A Cause Service Dog Mambo
- Service Dogs For Veterans Outreach Event At Arlington National Cemetery
- Wait – You Mean Those Two Dogs Didn’t Really Belong To A Deployed Soldier?
| “Growing Up Guide Pup” – Great Video Series About What It’s Like To Raise A Guide Dog Puppy Posted: 20 Nov 2010 10:00 AM PST OK, I’m way behind the curve on this one. I rarely, if ever, write about guide dogs here – no real reason other than it’s not a part of the assistance dog world I know well or focus on, and there are plenty of others doing that already. But I do think highly of them and follow some of the top organizations, in particular Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, CA, which is, simply put, as good as it gets. As part of that, I’m subscribed to the GDB blog RSS feed and a fan of their Facebook page, but I’d never heard of or watched the Growing Up Guide Pup series until they mentioned it on the blog (“Puppy Raisers’ YouTube Series Debuts at New Media Film Festival”) last week, and they are already on week 40. It’s really, really good – see for yourself. And if I was a certain service dog organization about 30 miles up 101 (who they have a great relationship with to include sharing some breeder dogs), I’d steal…uh, borrow, I mean…this idea in a heartbeat.
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| Posted: 16 Nov 2010 01:43 PM PST Actually, the video is four minutes and it’ll take you about a minute to read what I have to say. Every 90 days at the five Canine Companions for Independence regional centers around the US there are combination turn-in / graduation events, where puppies about to enter professional training are taken to the centers by their puppy raisers, and assistance dog teams graduate from two weeks of team training. Those events are ALWAYS very emotional, even when you’re not turning in a dog, or don’t have one graduating, or don’t have a personal connection with one of the graduates, but even more so when one or more of those things is true. I’ve been to a number of graduations, but I still don’t think I can capture all the emotions for you. This video will do that for me, though. Each regional center does a visual presentation for their events, and they are all great, but I don’t know that anybody does it better right now than the Northeast Regional Center in Medford, NY out on Long Island (there’s a little challenge for the other regions…haha). Here’s their latest one from just a few days ago. I talk a lot about CCI and what it does, but this four-minute slideshow will tell you more than all the words I could ever say. If you want to know what this organization is about, why it’s so good at what it does, and why all of us do what we do…watch this. Canine Companions for Independence Northeast Region November 2010 Graduation   |
| Another Great Dog Option For Veterans Dealing With Post-Traumatic Stress – Paws For Purple Hearts Posted: 09 Nov 2010 10:00 AM PST There’s an article today in the Washington Post about another great option for using dogs to help veterans whose only or primary issue is post-traumatic stress – Paws for Purple Hearts. Actually, as the title of the article suggests, the dogs help those veterans as well as the veterans with serious physical injuries who ultimately receive the dogs once they’ve been trained as service dogs.
(There may be a few inaccuracies in the article – for example, I’m certainly familiar with the legislation, but I’m not sure exactly which bill the writer is referring to here: “Legislation that would create a $7 million, five-year pilot program at up to five Veterans Affairs facilities is currently before the Senate.” – but that doesn’t detract from the overall theme.) I’ve known about PPH for several years, but I’m surprised to find I’ve never written about it here – just searched and didn’t see anything. The biggest thing I’ve always liked about it was the separation – these are veterans with post-traumatic stress training service dogs for OTHER veterans who have physical issues, as opposed to getting the dogs themselves. That removes much of what I’m concerned about with using service dogs where those with PTS are concerned while still offering them the benefits. Plus, the program is run under the auspices of Bergin University of Canine Studies, which was known as the Assistance Dog Institute for many years. Bonnie Bergin’s a little far out for me on some things, BUT she is, after all, the person credited with starting the whole assistance dog movement and who founded Canine Companions for Independence, and her organization is a long-time accredited member of Assistance Dogs International. All of which is far better than the vast majority of what’s out there. I am increasingly concerned with some of the organizations that have popped up outta nowhere, especially those training “PTSD dogs”, one in particular that’s got my attention and I’ve been biting my tongue hard about since I first heard of it about six months ago. (I’m still being quiet for now, but maybe not much longer – that’s how much this place scares me.) Please – if you’re gonna look for a service dog to help you or someone else deal with PTS, be smart. Even though I’m no fan of the whole concept (at least as it’s being implemented right now), I can still aim you at a number of places who train those kinda dogs who I’d talk to LONG before some I see getting a lotta favorable press and who I’d likely not talk to at all. In any event, might need some refinements, but I think the whole PPH concept is a good one overall and I’d like to see a lot more programs like it. About the only “bad” thing I see is using “Paws” in the name, since there are so many places that use that and it’s confusing. There are some great ones – most notably Paws With A Cause – and some other definitely not-so-great ones. As I always say, look closely.   |
| Posted: 30 Oct 2010 11:00 AM PDT Same thing I said here almost a year ago still applies – in fact, if anything, given the proliferation of programs and interest in this area, it’s even more true today: “Every Veteran With A Disability Doesn't Need A Service Dog, And This Is A Great Alternative” With that in mind, here are three great options – I’m sure there are more, but these are ones that have very good reputations and I’m comfortable recommending to you:
What I continually try to impress upon people is that, sure, dogs have a role to play here, just not necessarily SERVICE dogs. But, hey, even if – unlike me – you think that service dogs for those whose only or primary issue is post-traumatic stress is a great idea, I would ask you to consider a few things. A service dog, wonderful as they are, comes at a price (sometimes money is involved, but that’s not what I meant), primarily a lot of responsibility and some specific requirements. The vast majority of what most tout for those with post-traumatic stress – companionship, sensing when things are wrong, focusing on the dog as a way of calming yourself, etc – you can get with a pet. Where things ramp up significantly is when you say the dog has to be a service dog, really in two key ways. First, public access, which actually is given to the human, not the dog, and you can look up the legal definition, but as I’ve said before, just think of it as being able to take your dog places dogs normally aren’t allowed to go (“When You Hear "Service Dog", Think "Public Access"). This is an orders of magnitude jump for both the dog and the human, and changes the playing field entirely. Walking down the street with your dog to the library, school, store, stadium, restaurant, and so on, is one thing – once you say I absolutely, positively have to take my dog INTO those places, and step across that line, everything changes. Second, training the dog to perform specific tasks with specific, predictable results (the ADI standard, for example, is that a command will be performed 90% of the time on the first ask). It’s one thing to say “my dog calms me and licks my face when I wake up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat after a terrible nightmare” – a common theme – and quite another to say the dog has to be trained to sense an impending episode when you’re in the grocery store, restaurant, office, etc., respond to that, give you an indicator, you respond appropriately to that indicator, take a specific action, and do all of that reliably and consistently. Now, I know that in this day and age where the normal attitude about everything seems to be entitlement, to suggest the kinda self-restraint I’m suggesting usually doesn’t go over so well and results in a lot of comments like “How dare you try to deny me/him/her/us/them (whatever it is)!” But if you can keep from getting caught up in that, and can live without those things (and I contend the vast majority of those we’re talking about not only can, it may very well be a much more appropriate option for them as well), it has the huge benefit of getting you out of a lotta stuff and opening up a lot more options for you. Here’s the reality, anyway. With the numbers that are being tossed around about just how many veterans suffer from varying degrees of PTS (a well-known RAND study said 300,000, and that was two years ago and only from OEF and OIF), there’s no way we are ever gonna get there with service dogs. Even if somebody says the real need for those with severe enough issues to warrant a service dog is “only” 10% of that – shoot, even if it was 1% – 3,000 properly trained service dog teams, especially on top of the already existing need, is a BUNCH. And even if you include all the options – organizations, individual trainers, or people training dogs for themselves – I don’t ever see that happening. Not if you’re gonna do it right. So, with all that in mind, if you’re thinking about a dog for the reasons we’re talking about here, why not take a real hard look at organizations like this, and start with these three?   |
| 17-Year-Old Hearing Dog Passes Away After A Lifetime Of Devoted Service Posted: 29 Oct 2010 09:30 AM PDT Bumped into this one yesterday that’s a long-time, ongoing story, but this was the first I’d heard of it. Another wonderful “speaks for itself, just go read it” story from the Mount Rainier Volunteers blog that there’s really nothing I can add to, other than maybe to say that Dogs For The Deaf, in case you’ve never heard of them, is a longstanding ADI-accredited organization in Oregon founded and run by Robin Dickson that does tremendous work. Just leaves me speechless, honestly.
 Mount Rainier VIP Allan Dreyer and Dogs For The Deaf Hearing Dog Damian (c)John Chao   |
| “By Having A Dog At Your Side, You Increase Your Personal Space.” Uh, No. Posted: 28 Oct 2010 01:22 PM PDT
In fact, exactly the opposite. Ask most anybody with a service dog, or anybody who’s raised a puppy for a service dog organization – you get far more attention and people in your personal space, especially in public access areas, than you ever get without a dog. Actually, doesn’t even have to be a service dog in a place people don’t normally expect to see dogs – think back to your own experiences when you take your pet dog for a walk around the block. OK, sure, if you have a controversial breed like a pit bull, or a 125-150 pound breed people aren’t used to seeing as a service dog, yeah, I guess maybe people will stay away from you. But for the vast majority of people and their dogs, this just isn’t how things are. In case you don’t know who Joan Esnayra is, when you hear Psychiatric Service Dog Society, think her, because no matter how many members they may have, the reality is it’s a one-person show – her. And, frankly, she’s been able to get attention and interest (and money – $300K from the Department of Defense to do a study) out of all proportion to the size of the group of believers in this concept, largely because of all the returning veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress as well as those trying to help them who are desperate for anything that might give them some relief. I’ve talked about this subject many times in the past, there’s lots more to say, and I will continue to say it because this issue is so important, but here’s why this particular remark is so critical. That one comment – from the very source of this whole movement, no less – goes right to the heart of the fundamental disconnect (and, in my opinion, flaw) with this whole concept, and whether you buy into it or not determines your approach on this whole subject. Because you have to get past that one before you can even begin to talk about any of the other more complex things associated with the whole idea of using service dogs in this way. And even if you do get past it, there are still many more hurdles to get over, not the least of which is whether it’s even appropriate to train service dogs in this way. As I always say, make your own decisions, but be very clear about what you’re supporting. More to follow.   |
| Posted: 27 Oct 2010 11:00 AM PDT Congratulations to my friend Nancy Patterson who’s been selected to receive the 2010 disAbility Awareness Day Award, the highest honor given by the Anne Arundel County Maryland Commission on Disability Issues. If you’re in the area, the award will be presented at the disAbility Awareness Day this Saturday, Oct. 30, 1 – 4PM, at Westfield Annapolis mall. Complete announcement is available at this link: “2010 disAbility Awareness Day Awardee Chosen”. There are a couple errors in it – clearly Mahler is not a Golden, and Nancy doesn’t hold the actual title of volunteer coordinator – but those don’t detract at all from how great it is overall and what it means for her to receive this honor. You really need to read the whole thing, but here’s the key part (my emphasis):
They couldn’t have made a better choice.   |
| Veteran Kevin Stone Talks About His Paws With A Cause Service Dog Mambo Posted: 25 Oct 2010 04:54 PM PDT WOOD-TV in Grand Rapids, Michigan, just did a short interview today with Deb Davis, National Marketing Manager at Paws With a Cause, and Kevin Stone, a veteran with a PAWS service dog, Mambo, to promote their upcoming Masquerade Ball fundraiser this Saturday in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Kevin and Mambo are a very visible and well-known team, largely because of Kevin being a US Paralympics medalist and archery coach – they were just at the recent USP Military Sports Camp in San Diego a couple weeks ago. Kevin talks about how much Mambo helps him, particularly with all the traveling they do.
More info about their event here: The Masque – Masquerade Ball   |
| Service Dogs For Veterans Outreach Event At Arlington National Cemetery Posted: 30 Sep 2010 04:58 PM PDT Video from yesterday’s Canine Companions for Independence Salutes Independence veterans outreach event at the Women In Military Service for America Memorial at Arlington National Cemetery is now up at The Pentagon Channel. My friends Sam Cila, Buddy Hayes, and Corey Hudson, CCI CEO, are all interviewed. I tried to embed it with the start time set (something you can easily do with any YouTube video and you’re supposed to be able to do with these, too), but it didn’t work for me, so you’ll need to let it load and then drag the bar to the 18-minute point where the CCI segment starts:
Companion article (pun intended) with more detail has now been posted at Defense.gov as well: “Defense Leaders Promote Benefits of Assistance Dogs for Veterans” On top of everything else, I want to point out something Buddy addresses that most of us who’ve been involved with service dogs for any length of time have heard hundreds if not thousands of times from virtually everyone who has a service dog. Namely, how people would completely ignore them before they got the dog, but once they had the dog, that all went away – people stop, talk, actually go out of their way to meet them. As Buddy says, “Oh, yeah, they ignore you – just flat out…they walk right by you like you’re invisible. And now they come up and, you know, wanna pet the dog…” (Trust me, I know all the etiquette rules very well, and I also know that many with the dogs allow it, too – it’s up to them, and that’s not the point here.) A complete, 180 degree change from how life was before. That’s one of the biggest reasons I have problems with the whole concept of what service dogs for those whose primary or only issue is post-traumatic stress are being trained to do – actually keeping people away from their human partners. That runs directly counter to the role service dogs have appropriately played for as long as they’ve been around (with the exception of one group of dogs whose proponents have been pushing this idea for years and are now doing it with veterans) and is something I plan to address at length in another post. Haven’t had a chance to talk to anybody who was at yesterday’s event yet, but I’ll be very interested to see what they say.   |
| Wait – You Mean Those Two Dogs Didn’t Really Belong To A Deployed Soldier? Posted: 30 Sep 2010 11:38 AM PDT See this all the time, and not just with dog stories, and it makes me nuts: “Follow-up visit: Dogs’ owner not soldier in Iraq” Classic example of why you have to check things out BEFORE you post them. Although this one’s pretty tame in comparison to many I’ve seen, and there were questions raised about it by some milbloggers when it was first publicized. I’ve even had friends post things that I’ve told them privately weren’t real, they’ve acknowledged that, but then have made no public correction or comment. And in the case of one hoax where I did publicly comment on it and say it was a hoax, follow-on commenters continued to thank the person who posted it for doing so! Look, there’s already enough real nonsense floating around out there, not to mention all the made-up stuff from people who don’t check before they post it – why add to it?   |
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