APAW: Types of Work

Service

Our Service Dogs are trained to assist a person with mobility trouble. Often the person is in a wheelchair or scooter, but they may be able to walk perhaps with the stability of a cane or walker. Some possible disabilities our clients may have are multiple sclerosis, spina bifida, muscular dystrophy, cerebral palsy, or Parkinson's disease. Another possibility is due to an accident such as a spinal cord injury. While a client may have serious physical difficulties, we do require that our dogs are placed with a person who is able to provide (or instruct a helper) for any dog-care necessary.

Service Dogs have full access rights to almost any public facility including restaurants, malls, and public transportation... see the ADA for more details (go to our 'Links' page).

Tasks

Retrieve items from floor, hand or other surface
Deposit items on floor, lap/hand or other surface
Tug open doors (refrigerator, regular)
Push button for automatic doors
Turn on and off lights
Pull a manual wheelchair short distances
Brace and provide minimal balance
Read a few commands (words and stick figures)
Be a loving, faithful, unobtrusive helpmate

Social / Therapy

A Social Dog's job is to make people happy - this can be done through monthly visits to nursing homes or hospitals, crisis response for victims/witnesses, visiting an elementary school to listen to children read or many other ways. A Therapy Dog is prescribed to the patient by their doctor. A goal is set, and steps are taken to reach that goal, records kept of every session. A Therapy Dog may assist with rehabilitation after an accident or surgery, help a child with autism achieve better self-control, provide an interesting subject for a person with cognitive impairment to learn and remember details and much more.

Social / Therapy Dogs are placed with a person who would like to take their dog to 'work'. The client does not have a disability, and the dog does not have public access rights, except to the locations at which they visit.

Tasks

These dogs were all trained for Service work, but were better suited for life as a Social / Therapy Dog
How to safely visit a patient from the floor or a chair
Tricks such as wave, bow, sit pretty, and play dead
Read a few commands (words and stick figures)

On occasion we have 1-2 year old Poodles who are not suitable for Service or Social / Therapy. These dogs have received thousands of hours of training and socialization and we try to place them in another career. The most common reasons for a dog to be released from our program are:

Prey drive is too high
Too much energy
Too much initiative

These traits are often sought after in certain fields of work, such as Search & Rescue, Narcotics or Bomb Detection, Cancer Detection etc. If possible, we try to place these specially-trained released dogs to continue their work in one of the above (or similar) lines of duty.

When a working home is not found, or if a dog has a disqualifying trait (such as hip dysplasia or another health issue, or mild fear/aggression of some stimulus), the dog will be available to a suitable home as a well-trained pet. The dog may not be donated to another assistance dog organization or be privately trained for assistance work, but we encourage the new owners to participate in a dog sport such as agility or rally.

These are brief descriptions of other roles an assistance dog may have, however we do not provide dogs in these categories (occasionally a released dog may be suited to the work and be trained/placed by another organization).

Guide

Guide Dogs lead a person who is blind or visually impaired. The person must know where they are going as they instruct the dog at every turn - a Guide Dog's job is to avoid obstacles and alert the person at elevation changes such as curbs.

Hearing

Hearing Dogs alert a person who is deaf or hard of hearing to specific sounds by running to the source, back to touch the person with nose or paw, and back to the source. Hearing dogs may be taught to alert to the smoke detector, telephone, doorbell, teapot, a crying child, or anything else that may be needed by the individual.

Seizure Response

Currently it is not known how dogs realize that a person is about to have a seizure, so an alert can not be taught - though there are some dogs who will alert on their own. However, dogs can be taught how to respond if their owner should start to seize. Some ways a Seizure Response dog can help are finding another person or pressing an emergency button, removing dangerous obstacles from the vicinity, carrying the person's medical information in their pack, and providing physical and emotional support as the person comes out of their seizure.

Diabetic Alert

These dogs are trained to detect the scent change of hypoglycemia (low blood sugar) in insulin-dependent type 1 diabetics. This job is particularly important through the night where an undetected drop could result in death.

American Poodles At Work - "Giving A PAW To Aid Mankind"
413.436.0601 / info @ americanpoodlesatwork.org
PO Box 1933 Warren, MA 01083