Extra Special Pets & Animals
Sep 23, 2009 10:44 pm US/Central
Must Love Dogs: HSDM Graduating 300th Service Dog
ST. PAUL (WCCO) ―
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It is easy to see why training such a dog is a long and intense process. Costs are estimated at about $25,000 per dog.
CBS
Hearing & Service Dogs of Minnesota will soon place its 300th dog with a person in need of assistance. The dogs provide mobility assistance. They calm and escort children with autism. They alert the hearing-impaired to audible signals they would otherwise miss. Four recent graduates are even trained to warn people with Diabetes their blood sugars are dangerously low, before they pass out.
It is easy to see why training such a dog is a long and intense process. Costs are estimated at about $25,000 per dog. It would be prohibitively expensive for the non-profit HSDM without puppy raisers. These essential volunteers spend a year training and caring for dogs in the program as if they were their own, then give them up for the greater good of a client in need of assistance.
All Peters founded Hearing & Service Dogs of Minnesota 20 years ago.
"It takes somebody who is selfless and is thinking about others and is focused on the goal of making assistance dogs available to people who need them," said Peters.
The Heffernan family of St. Paul has been involved as volunteers for 16 years; first as a foster home for dogs in the program, then as puppy raisers. Each dog requires a year long commitment by the whole family. Husband and wife Pat and Dee Dee, their son Samuel and daughter Katherine all share the work of teaching the dogs to perform a myriad of tasks.
"It's a family thing. I may write down a few things and they see I've worked on [the obedience move] down-stay," said Dee Dee. "[Another person] can work on the next thing."
The family takes the dogs on numerous outings to socialize them, to conditioning the growing pups to overcome all forms of public distraction.
"They go shopping with us, to the grocery store and the department store," said Pat. "We take them to the doctor, the orthodontist. To work."
Peters said the idea is to make certain nothing will startle the dogs once they are put into service.
"[In training they encounter] men, women, children, all different kinds of environments as a puppy, so they've already been exposed and they're not afraid of those things," he said.
Meanwhile, the Heffernans record the dogs' journeys in scrapbooks as if they were their children. They file away the memories, not for themselves, but for the person with whom the dog will be partnered. And yes, when it is time to send the dog back for final training at HSDM's center, there are always tears.
"Oh yeah, a lot of tears," Dee Dee comfirmed.
However, she quickly added, there is nothing more rewarding than seeing the day when a dog is put into service in someone else's life.
"It really makes it fun to see the dog working," said Dee Dee. "To see the relationship that [develops] and that the dog is having fun. The dog just loves working."
(© MMX, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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