Service Dog Types

Therapy Dog

Therapy dogs work together with their owners to interact with people to offer feelings of well-being or encourage rehabilitation through actual contact. Hospitals, nursing facilities, schools and rehab centres can be stressful and scary. A dog can help to return normalcy to people of all ages who must endure abnormal situations. These animals can provide a calming, nonjudgmental presence.

There are two main categories of therapy service. Animal Assisted Therapy (AAT) uses companion animals as a part of the patient’s therapy. Interactions with the dog are part of a treatment plan designed by a health care professional to improve the patient’s physical or emotional function. For instance, throwing a ball or brushing their coat encourages repetitive hand-eye coordination exercises.

Animal Assisted Activities (AAA) therapy introduces pets to withdrawn people to encourage communication, because patients often relax in the presence of a friendly animal. There’s no formal treatment plan or trained professional needed.

Important qualities for a therapy dog are confidence, patience, calmness, a gentle manner and a receptiveness to training. Socialisation and a solid foundation of training are essential for a dog to be considered for a therapy program.

Autism Assistance Dogs

Autism Assistance dogs are trained to assist children and young adults living with Autism. They help children to gain independence, and provide companionship and safety through the provision of a highly trained and skilled service dog. They have been proven to have a dramatic impact on their behaviour and quality of life by helping the child both physically and mentally.

The children are tethered to the dogs when outside to prevent bolting and the dog acts as an anchor. This also provides independence as they can hold the dog instead of a parents hand. Social outings can be made much less stressful for the whole family.

The other aspect is the dogs provide a calming influence as well as a companion for a child who in many cases may not have a friend. These dogs provide a social “bridge” for children who are often excluded by others because of their behavior or lack of social interaction. They can also be trained to help with redirection of repetitive behaviors, and have been shown to lead to increased vocabulary and improved quality of sleep.

It takes a particularly remarkable dog to work reliably with a person on the autism spectrum. A dog with the appropriate temperament and size is necessary for this program.  Our Training…

Personal Assistance & Mobility Dogs

Personal Assistance or Mobility dogs are partnered with adults with physical disabilities to assist with daily tasks and increase independence by reducing their reliance on other people. A service dog can help pick up dropped or unreachable objects, open doors, call for help and many other tasks that the owner may need assistance with.

A mobility dog not only assists with physical tasks, but also provides social and emotional support.

Every dog that comes through our training centre is hand selected and tested to ensure that they have the capability to do the work we ask of them. Puppies are raised by our trainers and begin socialisation and basic obedience training at a very young age. We expose our mobility service dog candidates to every sight and sound we believe they may encounter in their line of work, including to mobility equipment devices, so their sight and movement becomes familiar.

Every dog we deliver has impeccable obedience as well as a set of working tasks we expect them to perform to assist their handlers. Based on your application, we will work to find and select a dog suited to your individual needs.  You will then be provided the opportunity to meet the dog and spend quality time with them, ensuring the dog will be the right fit for you. Following this, we can then train the dog to perform certain tasks that are specific to you and your lifestyle.

Hearing Alert Dogs

Hearing Alert or Signal Dogs assist people with partial to full loss of their ability to hear sounds that are important to everyday living.  They alert people to particular key sounds by making physical contact such as nudging the leg or arm. Among the many sounds hearing dogs are trained to recognise and respond to are the sound of a doorbell, alarm clock, someone calling a name or a smoke alarm.

Partnering with a Hearing Alert dog can increase a person’s feelings of security and self-confidence by heightening awareness of environmental sounds.

After entering our training program and completing basic socialisation and obedience training, the dogs begin training in actual sound alert. This can include behaviours such as pawing for some basic sounds or more urgent indicators such as jumping on their owners to gain their attention. One of the distinctive differences between training a hearing service dog from some other types of service  dogs is that they are  motivated to go toward the sound or source of the “signal” that their owner needs to be aware of rather than away from it. Depending on the dog and in consideration of the owner’s needs.

After being placed in the home, the trainer will liaise with the new owner to customise the dog’s alerting pattern to their own particular environment and needs. Examples include: alerting to incoming e-mail messages at work, timers on microwaves, dryers and other appliances, and dropping keys.
In addition to their invaluable skills to help their owners overcome hearing disabilities and improving their quality of life, these service dogs also add the dimension of companionship to people who can become very isolated by their condition.

If you would like more information about our trained hearing dogs, please contact us. Based on your application, we will work with you to select a dog suited to your special needs and situation.

Medical Detection or Seizure Alert Dogs

Seizure Response Dogs are custom-trained to assist people who have epilepsy or other seizure disorders with tasks such as activating a life-alert system, finding someone to help, retrieving a phone or stimulating a person during a seizure. As a person recovers from a seizure, the dog can retrieve medications or food, act as a brace to help them up and provide comfort.

Certain dogs can also be trained to alert before a seizure happens, in some cases greatly minimising the amount of damage the body suffers or even preventing the seizure all together if there is time to take medication. Not all types of seizures are detectable, in order to train a seizure alert dog to alert to a type of seizure, there must be unique visual, physical, or audible cues that can be imitated during training. After training, there is a high chance the dog will recognise the seizure before it occurs, however it cannot be guaranteed and is more likely to develop over time if the human and the dog share a close bond.

Diabetes Alert Dogs are trained to alert their owners when they have low blood sugar by smelling chemical changes the human body produces when blood glucose is dropping or is low. The animals provide a signal to alert their owner to check blood glucose and treat hypoglycemia, if necessary.

A dog won’t replace a blood glucose meter and continuous glucose monitor, but it provides another layer of security as well as a friendly and watchful presence for better peace of mind.