Assistance Dogs provide specific services to their partners as well as greatly enhancing the quality of their lives with a new sense of freedom and independence. Service dogs can provide physical assistance, companionship, psychological, and social benefits. A person with a disability considering acquiring a service dog needs to educate themselves on the abilities and limitations of service dogs, and assess their personal needs and the impact a dog can have on their lifestyle. We can help!

Generally speaking, there are three types of Assistance Dogs:

Guide Dogs for the blind and/or visually impaired;

Hearing Dogs for the deaf and hard-of-hearing;

Service Dogs for people with disabilities other than those related to vision or hearing.

 Pawsitive Perspectives Assistance Dogs primarily focuses on training service dogs for people with physical mobility disabilities. Our dogs can also be trained as Diabetic Alert dogs (trained for detecting changes in blood sugar levels), Home Help-mate dogs (these have been trained in the same skills as Service Dogs, but are not granted public access qualifications due to not meeting our high standards of performance. The dogs assist their partners with every day, in-home tasks, such as opening doors, loading the clothes dryer, retrieving items off the floor), Autism support dog, and Facility/Animal Assisted Therapy dogs on a case-by-case basis.

Our commitment is to train one rescue dog for every dog bred for our programs.These rescue dogs may be trained as Diabetic Alert Dogs, Home helpmates, and/or working as hearing dogs. There's a job for every dog that trots out our doors...even if it is simply to be the best partner and family companion you've ever had!

Over an approximately two year period, our young Assistance Dogs in Training pass high standards of health, behavior, obedience and skill training in order to become a certified assistance dog. Our dogs are taught up to 90 commands to perform such tasks as:

• Opening doors
• Turning lights on & off
• Retrieving dropped, or necessary, items
• Paying at a counter
• Pulling wheelchairs and providing balance
• Hearing dogs respond to different sounds which include knocking, doorbell, timer, alarm clock, smoke alarm, telephone, baby cry and the person's name.

Equally important to the tasks performed, an assistance dog provides constant companionship and emotional support for its partner. Through partnership with an assistance dog, people often experience a joy and confidence due to the increased social interaction and independence.