If you want to be involved in the service dog world, one of the first things you better understand right up front is that it’s a serious business. And if you can’t do that, please – find something else to be involved in.

Sure, you do it because you love it, it’s a great thing, a lotta fun, very worthwhile and meaningful.  But you gotta use your head and not let your heart override it, and that means making some decisions and doing some things that aren’t so much fun sometimes, and it can be tough – REAL tough.

Best analogy or comparison I can give you is flying. I spent a big part of my Air Force career as an aircrew member linguist flying around in the back of airplanes in the not always so friendly skies. More to the point, a large portion of my close friends are pilots. Every single one of them loves it, will tell you it’s their life, has a lotta fun doing it, but also knows they have to be very serious about it, because if you’re not, people die. At the same time, if all you did was focus on the serious stuff, you wouldn’t do it, so they have all developed the necessary balance between the fun and serious parts.

Can’t think of any better example there than this short video of an Air Force Thunderbird crash in Idaho seven years ago:

If a Tbird pilot can make what’s a rookie mistake – miscalculate his altitude so that he started a routine loop back toward the ground 800 feet lower than he should’ve  – it could happen to anybody.

Now I’m not gonna tell you that people or dogs will necessarily die in the service dog world (although it is certainly possible and does happen) because of human mistakes, but you can seriously screw up somebody’s life if you get things wrong, not to mention the overall negative effect you can have on the entire service dog community, and you better be very clear about that.

And yet I see stories every day where people never got that in the first place or have forgotten it somewhere along the way. Well-meaning people who really want to help, but you can tell from the things they say and the stuff they do that they’ve lost their focus, let their hearts get the best of their heads, and forgotten what the goal is. It’s not just people new to the game, either – I see it happening with people who’ve been around for many years and oughtta know better as well.

How do you know if that’s happening to you? Well, if you find yourself doing or saying any of these things, you better take a real hard look in the mirror and ask yourself just what it is you’re really trying to accomplish and why you’re in this world.  These are all things I’ve seen said and or done by people involved with service dog training in just the last few months.

“It makes me FEEL really GOOD inside, that’s why I do it. I just enjoy watching other people FEEL GOOD and that makes me FEEL GOOD.” (my capitalization)

Notice a pattern there?  All swell and wonderful, but lemme give you a clue – it’s not about whether you or I – or even the person getting the dog, for that matter – “feels good”.

“The people who have used pit bulls as service dogs generally won’t go for any other breed.”

Huh? Notwithstanding whether the breed is even appropriate for the specific tasks someone needs (e.g., pulling a manual wheelchair) or any of the legal stuff going on, if people in wheelchairs with Goldens and Labs get unfairly hassled in public access areas all the time, how much more problem do you think, say, somebody with a controversial breed like a pit is likely gonna have, especially if the person has no visible physical injuries? No way am I saying that’s right, but it’s the reality, and if you choose to train pits for them in spite of it, you better recheck your priorities, and fast.

“In another training method designed for soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress, dogs are taught to mark a 3-foot space around someone by walking in a leashed circle, clearing people away who might be crowding the individual. “

C’mon, you can’t be serious. I can’t see how you possibly could be considering, among other things, the ramifications of something like that on the entire service dog community (more on that in a later post), and I think maybe you’ve let the emotions of seeing a veteran who’s dealing with post-traumatic stress get to you (that’s not some abstract discussion for me, either – again, more to follow).  (This one is particularly disappointing to me, because, unlike the majority of these deals, it’s being done by a place that, up to now, has had a pretty good rep.)

“The average pet can often be transformed into a highly effective service animal if the family is willing to institute the structure necessary for success in the program.”

Not sure how you define “often”, but…yeah, sure. That’s why Canine Companions for Independence, for example, goes to the trouble to breed all their dogs, train them for two years, and still only graduates 30-40% of them. Please.  That, by the way, is the epitome of being serious, and talk about making decisions you don’t want to make (i.e., releasing dogs from training), but that you know are for the good of everybody concerned, including the dog.

And, last, this doozy:

“The dog’s a companion, but also in a sense, the dog’s a weapon…”

WHAT?????!!!!!?????

That’s enough for now, I could go on all day. Trust me that these are not a few selective quotes taken outta context to make my point, either. I have a real sensitivity to that kinda thing – matter of fact, I just saw the definitive example of that when it was done to a good CCI veteran grad friend of mine in a national news magazine article about service dogs in only the last couple weeks.

Bottom line is this. We already have more “half fast” service dogs out there than we need, and surely do not need any more. But that’s exactly where we’re headed if this nonsense keeps up.

And the real irony here is that a number of the people saying these things are combat veterans, who’ve been through many life-or-death situations, so they sure understand “serious”, but, based on what they’re saying, don’t have a clue when it comes to training service dogs.

Please – do everybody a favor.  Get your head on straight here, and if you can’t do that, get outta the game before somebody gets hurt.