Canine Companions for Independence

Aug 12, 2010

Be Smarter About Service Dogs Than 99% Of The Population In Only 2 1/2 Minutes

Al , , , Service Dogs

Excellent new CBS News video today with Canine Companions for Independence graduate teams of Frank Sciaretta with Service Dog Bastien, and Linda and Mark Cummins with Skilled Companion Dog Meesha, as well as CCI Northeast Region Executive Director Debbie Dougherty.

If you wanna be smarter about service dogs than 99% of the population (including a number of celebrities and politicians – big surprise there, huh?), gimme 2 1/2 minutes and watch it.

Watch the images, but pay close attention to the words, too, because they hit all the high points and very quickly. Bottom line: whenever you hear or read anything about service dogs, rack it up against what you see here.

Tons more I could say, but I’ll just add that the video will also give you a very good feel for why I have the attitude I do and what’s behind a lot of what you see me say here.



“Canine Companions Give Help, Hope to the Disabled”

Aug 9, 2010

I Can’t Guarantee You’ll Get A Service Dog If You Apply, But…

Al , , , , Service Dogs, Veterans

…I CAN guarantee if you don’t, you won’t.

Simple as that – CCI isn’t just gonna give you a dog, and I’d like to believe no other reputable organization will, either.

OIF Veteran Andrew Pike and his CCI Service Dog Yazmin

And, while it might not seem that way at first, that’s exactly how you want it. You don’t want someone to just give you a dog, or tell you they already have a specific one picked out for you and all you need to do is fill out the application.

If you’re gonna do this right, and make a lifelong match of a dog and human into a team, you have to know both ends of the leash exceptionally well. On the human end, that means a fairly thorough application process – CCI, for example, has a written application followed by phone and in-person interviews, and will tell you the process takes several months.  It’s not accidental that the resulting matches they make are legendary.

I wanted to bring this up again now because with everything I’ve been saying here lately about options other than service dogs, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea.  I’m still VERY concerned that not nearly enough veterans apply for them, especially those with severe injuries like SCI.

I’ve heard the usual reasons for not applying for several years now and I’ve addressed those here (see “I Don’t Want To Take Someone Else’s Dog” among others). On top of that, I’m even more concerned now because, if I went by what I see online, in the news, and on TV, I wouldn’t even know that service dogs have a role helping veterans with serious physical injuries – I’d think the only thing they do now is help with post-traumatic stress, which is very much NOT the case.

Now, I don’t want to waste your or an organization’s time, either.  For example, if you’re 100% certain that you need a seizure alert dog, there’s not much point in applying to CCI because they are very upfront that they don’t train those type of dogs. So you do need to research the places where you’re gonna apply

Lemme let you in on a little secret.  Well, maybe not a secret, but something I don’t remember ever seeing advertised, and that I know for a fact is true.  Part of the process in an organization determining if someone is a good candidate for a dog is whether they show enough initiative to ask for one in the first place.  So take a hint.

Look, there’s no way you’re gonna get “voluntold” for this one.  If you’re seriously thinking about a dog and have done the research, apply – don’t think it to death, just do it.

And, while it might not seem that way at first, that’s exactly how you want it. You don’t want someone to just give you a dog, or tell you they already have a specific one picked out for you and all you need to do is fill out the application.

Jul 30, 2010

You Can Train The Dog, But Can You Train The Human?

Al , , , Service Dogs

Great timing on this new video today.

First, it’s funny (and I can definitely use a laugh with all the serious stuff I’ve been writing about here lately), and, second, it gives you a real behind-the-scenes look at just what it takes to train service and hearing dogs to perform actual tasks for people with physical issues who really need them (as opposed to all the “feelgood dogs” I see stories about daily – sorry, said I wasn’t gonna get serious).

Rob and Joss from radio station KFGY in Santa Rosa, California do “we come do your job” stories, and, as part of that, went to the Canine Companions for Independence National Headquarters and Northwest Regional Center that are co-located there. Lotta familiar faces and places in this video that bring back great memories for me and likely anyone else who’s been to the Santa Rosa campus:

 

 

Lots I could say, but here’s the one key concept I want you to take away from this one.

Amidst all the humor, note how big a factor the human end of the leash is. A common comment from CCI graduates after attending the two-week Team Training at one of the regional centers is something like “We learned very quickly that the dogs were not gonna be the problem – we were. The dogs were very well trained – the trainers had to train US to be able to be smart enough to work with them.” One of those “I’m joking, but really I’m not” things.

That’s something that gets lost in the discussion about service dogs – most people naturally think about the dog taking care of the human, especially if it’s someone with severe physical issues, but they don’t think about the human taking care of the dog. And that’s a HUGE part of the equation, something you need to be thinking about whenever you see service dogs talked about as a possible solution, both for a group of people and on an individual level as well. The top organizations know that, and it’s a key part of evaluating whether someone is a good candidate for a dog.

And that also means that a key piece is having trainers who not only are training masters when it comes to the dogs, they also have to deal with a wide range of people with varying physical abilities and personalities, with some associated emotional stuff going on in some cases as well, and they have to be able to effectively train them to work as a team with the dogs. That’s something that even those of us closely associated with CCI forget about a lotta times, and why I have such a tremendous respect for those trainers.

Again, a great video.

Jul 13, 2010

“He Makes Me Cry A Lot, Because I’m So Grateful For Him”

Al , , Service Dogs

Those are the emotional words of Canine Companions for Independence graduate Kelly Bussio describing her service dog Tadaki in this new video from Salt Lake City station KSL-TV yesterday.

ZD YouTube FLV Player

“Amazing dog services Salt Lake paraplegic”

Beyond the obvious emotional story, the video does a great job showing many of the skills of a properly trained service dog, in particular pulling someone in a manual wheelchair, an often misunderstood but very important function for some.

I am well aware that many are not comfortable with dogs pulling someone in a chair. Although, to my surprise, I just noticed the other day that probably the most promoted veterans-only service dog organization specifically says right at the top of their application in italicized print “It is (our) policy that our dogs do not pull a manual wheelchair.” Something to very definitely consider if you’re a veteran in a manual chair with a specific need for your dog to pull you, because that organization just ruled itself out for you.

I’ve always chalked people’s dislike of this task up to misconception, but having just seen an apparently older Lab of unknown origin last week at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games in Denver straining to pull a large man in a chair, I now have a better appreciation for why some are concerned.  When trained properly, with the proper weight restrictions and health examinations, as CCI does, it can be a very safe and essential task for some.

I personally know a number of CCI graduates who make use of this function daily, and at some point I plan to write something about just why it’s so useful for them – a longer discussion for another time.

For now, though, I think seeing Tadaki and Kelly rolling through that mall says a ton all by itself.

Jun 30, 2010

“Out Of Everything I’ve Done To Try And Improve My Life, Nothing’s Even Come Close To Getting My Service Dog, Napal”

Al , , , , , Service Dogs

I’ve written about my friend Air Force veteran Jason Morgan and his Canine Companions for Independence service dog Napal before here, here, and here.

This short news video from KXAS in Dallas yesterday pretty much speaks for itself and really captures them very well.



“Local Veteran’s Life Changed By A Dog”

Jun 3, 2010

OIF Veteran And Canine Companions For Independence Graduate Matt Keil Talks About ‘Homes For Our Troops’

Al , , , , , , Service Dogs

KDVR Channel 31 in Denver just did a great news story a coupla days ago with Canine Companions for Independence graduate Matt Keil and his wife Tracy promoting a wonderful organization, Homes For Our Troops, who built their beautiful house.  Matt’s CCI Service Dog Gus, who was raised in the prison program at the Kit Carson Correctional Center in Burlington, Colorado, makes a brief working appearance in the video, too.

As Matt explains in the video, he’s a wounded warrior who was paralyzed with the exception of his left arm by a sniper’s bullet near Ramadi, Iraq on February 24, 2007.  You can read more details about that in a number of places, including here: “After Surviving Sniper’s Bullet, Soldier Looks to Future”

Matt and Tracy have been super representatives for wounded warriors and their families in general and a number of organizations as well, including CCI, Paralyzed Veterans of America, Homes For Our Troops – pretty much anything they are involved with.

This is another placement that I’d describe exactly the same way I did Andrew Pike’s (Andrew and Matt are good friends, BTW) back  late last year:

“Every Service Dog Placement With A Veteran Should Be As Great As This One”

May 26, 2010

So Tell Me Again – What Exactly Is Your Program For Training Service Dogs?

Al , , , Service Dogs

I went looking a couple days ago for a detailed description of the most well-promoted ‘service dogs for veterans’ organization’s training program – couldn’t find it, which really surprised me.

Funny thing is, I was actually trying to give them a break, not pick on them. I felt like I might’ve been too tough on their program lately and wanted to find something good that’d change my mind and give me more confidence in them.

I finally gave up after 15 or 20 minutes of hard looking on their website. Only thing I could find were some vague references about training dogs to meet every individual’s requirements and training them anywhere, and I had to look hard to find those.

Now, if this was some home-grown, DIY, rinky-dink website for a small organization, it still wouldn’t be OK, but I could maybe understand it a little. But it’s not – this is a very, very slick professionally done site from a very well funded organization who definitely knows how to promote itself and does so at every opportunity, which makes the omission even more glaring.

What I expected to see (and what you need to expect from any service dog organization as well) is something EXACTLY like this: Canine Companions for Independence’s Training And Placement page. Most importantly, because of the program content – it’s the gold standard against which you should compare all assistance dog organizations’ programs – but also because it’s a well-laid-out, detailed, one-page, start-to-finish description of the two-year process AND it’s pretty easy to find – just go to cci.org -> Programs  -> Training And Placement.

Make no mistake – training and placement are the core of any assistance dog program, and if you’re interested in a service dog for yourself, a family member, a friend, or someone you are professionally advising, that’s one of the very first, if not THE first, things you need to evaluate.

It’s like I told so many people at the Warrior Games a coupla weeks ago who got to see CCI grad Jason Morgan and his wonderful service dog Napal and were so impressed by them: that kind of match and a dog that great doesn’t happen by accident – it’s a two-year process and only about a third of the dogs make it all the way through.  And in spite of all that swell and wonderful feelgood stuff they might’ve heard about “the dog picking the human” (like in one well-publicized recent TV special), there’s a whole lotta focused and very specific effort involved to make a lifelong assistance dog team partnership like Jason and Napal’s.

Pretty much without fail, that explanation got the classic big eyed, raised eyebrow expression of surprise from everyone I told, which confirms for me what I already knew – most people have no idea what it takes to really do it right. Which is perfectly understandable, but which also makes it all the more critical for organizations to clearly and honestly explain their training program in detail and put that explanation where you can easily find it.

They owe you that.

May 20, 2010

One Of These Things Is Not Like The Others

Al , , Veterans

In case it’s not real obvious which one (or you’re just a wiseguy):  one of us hasn’t been to space – me.

It was my great privilege and honor to spend a large portion of Monday and Tuesday this week with three astronauts from Space Shuttle mission STS-131 who just returned from space April 20th – Commander Navy Capt Alan Poindexter, Pilot Air Force Col Jim Dutton, and Mission Specialist Dottie Metcalf-Lindenburger.

The occasion was a visit here to Colorado Springs including Challenger Middle School, Challenger Learning Center, Mountain View Elementary School, and the US Air Force Academy that was organized by my close friend Art Romero and which he very graciously allowed me to be a part of.

I’ve known Jim since he was a cadet at USAFA and I was on the staff over 20 years ago, Dex and Dottie I only met this week, but I’ll tell you this about all three of them. I honestly think you couldn’t meet three more impressive and truly just plain nice people on the planet (or I guess off the planet, too – that just rolled right off my tongue that way, I swear).  Although Dottie really has the edge there (sorry, guys) – I’d been told more than once before I met her that everybody just loves her, and now I understand why.

Beyond that, it was another tremendous experience and one of those once-in-a-lifetime things you feel very, very lucky to have been involved with.  That really doesn’t even begin to cover it, but it’s about all I know to say.

And just like I mentioned a few days ago when talking about Rocky Bleier, same thing applies here, too.  If you know me, you know at some point we’ll be talking about service dogs, especially for veterans, and Canine Companions for Independence, and you can bet that happened with my three astronaut friends as well.

Thanks again to everybody who made this possible, starting with Art.

May 15, 2010

Warrior Games – More Thoughts

Al , , , , Service Dogs

I’ve been trying to come up with a way to sum up the Warrior Games experience of the last coupla weeks, and I’m really having a hard time – it was one of the most wonderful experiences of my life and truly a first-ever event in more ways than one.

Air Force Warrior Games Basketball With Canine Companions for Independence Veteran Graduate Jason Morgan and Service Dog Napal

For me personally, there have been so many overlapping and intersecting worlds – friends on the Air Force team who were competing, Air Force Academy coaches along with training and events at USAFA, a Canine Companions for Independence graduate on the AF team – it’s just been overwhelming. I’ve met a lotta ‘old’ friends – people who I’ve been talking to for years in some cases but had never met in person – and made a ton of new ones as well.

It’s really been the center of the wounded warrior universe here for the last week or so, and we reached critical mass with all of the elements that have never before been assembled in one place at the same time.

First, you had the inspirational competitors – 200 wounded warriors from all the services setting an example for all of us that has just left me in awe. In fact, “awesome” is a word that used to be reserved for events like this before it became just another meaningless overused trite expression.

This paragraph from the American Legion blog Thursday is the best description I’ve seen of what’s gone on here – I was there Wed afternoon, and it happened just this way:

My “I wish I brought a hankie” moment came in the Mens 50m freestyle. The heats were divided into 3 categories, Lower Body Injuries, Upper Body Injuries, and TBI/PTSD athletes. In the LBI heat there were 6 competitors, the first 5 of which finished the heat bunched up closely at around 45 seconds. But the 6th competitor trailed by a lot. In fact, he was only about 15 meters in to his swim. It was a young Marine….a young marine with no legs. He could have stopped, he could have turned around, since he was about 1/3 done. But that isn’t what Marines do. The entire crowd was on it’s feet. I even saw a guy in a wheelchair painfully push himself to a standing position to cheer. The other athletes in the heat didn’t exit the pool, they turned around, and treaded water while yelling, clapping and cheering on this survivor, this athlete who was going to finish no matter what. It was incredibly loud in there, and behind me a marine mom was crying as she cheered. She wasn’t alone, a good 50% of the crowd was either crying, and a good 49% of the remainder was blinking as rapidly as they could. I would have been in the first category, but somehow held it together. There are events you witness in your life that awe and inspire you, this was one of them. When that Marine finished the 50m, the crowd was ballistic. Athletes, coaches, fans, media, military and even the folks running the event all screaming and clapping. Perhaps one of the most moving things I ever witnessed.

http://burnpit.legion.org/2010/05/warrior-games-day-3/

The guy that was written about is Chuck Sketch, who I later had the great privilege of meeting, and who was chosen by the winning Marine team to accept the Chairman’s Cup at the closing ceremonies:

On top of that very emotional environment, you had a collection of the real “movers and shakers” from different organizations in the wounded warrior world coming together in an unprecedented way. Based on my experience, I have a feeling we will see some great things coming from all the conversations that I know went on here.

For me, it was an opportunity to talk service dogs for veterans with many varied groups – veterans thinking about getting dogs, nonprofits and government agencies looking at helping veterans get dogs, people interested in puppy raising, and so on.  In case it’s not already obvious, there is a tremendous interest in service dogs in this world, but the reality is also that most people aren’t aware what’s available, and, even if they are, don’t know where to go, what to look for, and who the best organizations are.

And, trust me, all service dogs and organizations are by no means equal – might look that way (and some organizations may even intentionally try to make it look that way), but they are not.

The best way I know to get that point across is for people to see what a real service dog team looks like and then let them make their own judgments and comparisons, and having Jason Morgan with his CCI Service Dog Napal here was absolutely invaluable in doing that.  Here’s a nice picture from my friend Agnieszka Obstoj taken right after Army Chief of Staff Gen Casey presented the AF team with bronze medals for wheelchair basketball – Jason, Napal, and Rich Pollock:

Canine Companions for Independence Graduate Jason Morgan And Service Dog Napal Get Medal With Air Force Team At The Warrior Games

This is exactly what a service dog should look like in public a lot of the time – lotsa hoopla, excitement, and noise, but the dog is lying down relaxed, leash firmly in the hand of the human. Look around and notice how many times that’s not what you see, and you’ll have even more appreciation for CCI dogs like Napal.

Jason and Napal very definitely provided the example, and when I explained to those who saw them – and there were many – that it takes two years of very serious and focused effort to produce a dog like Napal and a match like those two have, and only about a third of the dogs make it all the way through, without fail, their eyebrows went up and their eyes got real big.

There’s lots more I could say – I’m not really speechless, but there are just so many thoughts and emotions still buzzing through my head a day after the events ended I can’t get them all out.  So I’ll just leave it here for now.

May 10, 2010

Warrior Games Opening Ceremonies

Al , , , , Service Dogs

Having gone to the opening ceremonies today, I can tell you it’s already become apparent on the very first day that the Warrior Games is a unique and very special event, and it’s not gonna be possible for me to even begin to keep up with it here.

So, I’ll just give you a coupla neat things to look at which, given my military background, not surprisingly have a definite Air Force bent.

First, a great picture that was taken of the Air Force team with Gen Gene Renuart, NORTHCOM / NORAD commander and ranking officer in Colorado Springs.  Even better because Canine Companions for Independence graduate Jason Morgan and his service dog Napal are in the front row at the right:

Second, something funny – Gen Renuart’s comments about the ‘interservice rivalry’ – I think he pretty much nailed it here:

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