Letters from readers:

Hello,
I live in Johannesburg, South Africa, where we have an active Guide Dogs Association for the blind, but no service dogs for other disabilities.

There are hundreds of thousands of diabetics in South Africa, so we need to start a training programme. My interest stems from the fact that I am a breeder and obedience instructor of German shepherds. I lost my husband from diabetes-related illnesses and I have a young friend who is insulin dependent.

I found your article fascinating and informative and would appreciate any information you could give me, re starting a programme here.

Many thanks in advance. - Pam

Hello Pam,
Good on you for noticing the need and wanting to fill the gap with service dogs. I have asked a few questions and found that it is a very big project to start, but as you are a trainer it would be easier for you than for a non-trainer.

The largest problem such organisations have is that they do not usually get any government funding at all, so the first priority is to become registered as a charity. To do that you will need to be highly organised and show that you have everything planned to the last detail and are ready to launch.

From that point one of the most essential jobs in the organisation would be raising funds and marketing the organisation to the general public and to companies and any person or business likely to provide funding.

There are two types of service dog training - training the disabled person's own pet dog; or training a number of dogs to be basic service dogs and then specialising in particular services when the person and their disability has been matched with a suitable dog.

Matching the dog with its partner is apparently a rather large part of the process and often the dog will choose for itself who it wants to be with. It is always best to help the disabled person train their own pet dog if this is possible and if the dog is suitable, as it already has a steady relationship with its owner and can be trained at its own home. Obviously there are limits to this - if the disabled person needs help of a heavy nature or work such as reaching for objects on shelves, opening doors, retrieving dropped objects (sometimes fairly heavy), dealing with retailers over counters etc, it would need to be a larger dog.

But if the person was, say, deaf and wanted to train their dog to alert them to knocks on the door, phone calls, alarms etc, then size would not matter at all. Age is also a consideration, because it would not be worth training a dog of about 11-12 years and get maybe one or two more years of work from them.

Most of the organisations now (other than the Guide Dogs Assn) do not breed dogs especially for training as service dogs, but will adopt suitable young rescue dogs or puppies, large or small and healthy, from the council pounds or SPCA or rescue organisations. These dogs (or pups bred for the purpose as well) do have a shaky start in life, as they are taken from their mothers or first homes, then to the service training organisation, then usually to foster homes for a while, then back to the trainers to start their training, then to a new owner - all within the first two years of their lives.

Each time they are devastated to lose the person they have grown to love and think of as family, so bonding with the potential new owner is by no means guaranteed (it can go both ways - sometimes the new owner just doesn't like the dog!).

Finally, I would just say that training service dogs is a whole new area with no relation whatsoever to training obedience dogs. You will probably find that you need to study up on the more recent training methods (obedience, apparently, is a thing of the past and rewards come in the form of enjoyable 'nosework') as a few trainers I know have done. The emphasis is now on understanding the dog's body language and using it to advantage - how can we expect the dog to understand us if we don't make the effort to understand how it is feeling?

Writer/trainer Turid Rugaas is an expert on dogs' calming signals and her books are hugely enlightening. For more information I would suggest you get in touch with:
Dog AID Headquarters - 25 Speechly Drive, Rugeley, Staffordshire WS15 2PT, email: dogaid@onetel.com, website: http://www.dogaid.org.uk/. (Dog AID trains people's own dogs as service dogs).
Canine Partners - Mill Lane, Heyshott, Midhurst, West Sussex, GU29 0ED, website: http://www.caninepartners.co.uk/, Tel: 08456 580 480, Fax: 08456 580 481, email: info@caninepartners.co.uk. (Canine Partners trains dogs and then matches them with people needing help).

I hope this is some help to you and I am sure that the above two organisations can fill in the gaps in my very limited knowledge. Good luck with your project. - Ed