There is one story, though, that, while not a good one, definitely got my attention and I wanna talk about because no one else seems to be. It’s been 11 days since I first saw it on October 30th, and there’s still no reaction on major news services, Twitter, or blogs, which, given that I routinely see all three erupt over much, much less serious service dog incidents than this one, really strikes me as odd.

Here’s the story, buried in the Courthouse News Service – read it for yourself:

“Iraq Vet Says McDonald’s Workers Beat Him“

Luis Montalvan, Sen Al Franken, and Tuesday.

So let’s review:

• Highly visible OEF/OIF wounded warrior – ‘poster guy’ for Puppies Behind Bars, been to the inauguration, Sen Franken says this is the guy who inspired him to write his recently passed service dog legislation, been featured on many news stories, including this one in the Wall Street Journal in July that got loads of attention: “‘Sit! Stay! Snuggle!’: An Iraq Vet Finds His Dog Tuesday”

• Biggest fast food chain on the planet, McDonald’s.

• Happened right in New York City (Brooklyn).

• Physical attack with garbage can lids that resulted in a significant injury.

Add all that up, and it’s clearly a huge story. And that’s true whether it turns out to be accurate or not, which is the point I want to make here.

Obviously, it’s a major story if it’s true, and, if so, my gut reaction is somebody needs to get hammered, bigtime. My standard ‘I’m not an attorney’ disclaimer applies, but those are some very serious accusations, and I don’t think you have to be a lawyer to see a big bucks civil action settlement, a lotta bad press for McDonald’s, and maybe additional criminal charges coming.

What’s not so obvious is that it’s still a huge story even if things didn’t happen this way – the story doesn’t just go away. There are a lotta serious questions that would need to be answered including, depending on the circumstances, ones about this particular dog placement, the screening and training process associated with that placement, and the overall concept in general of placements specifically for those with post-traumatic stress as their primary issue.

Let me be very clear – as a retired Air Force Chief Master Sergeant who has nothing but the utmost respect for all these young servicemembers today who have to deal with lots more stuff than I ever did, I’m the last guy in the world to say anything disrespectful about them, and I am not doing that here. That does not, however, remove the need to ask some hard questions and be extremely careful, particularly where we are placing assistance dogs into the mix.

Let me also be very clear that I’m not saying that things didn’t happen exactly the way Luis Montalvan says they happened. I wasn’t there and have no inside information or any other reason to believe they didn’t.

What I AM saying is, either way, this story deserves a lot more of all of our attention than it’s getting and cannot be ignored the way it seems to be getting ignored. If it’s true, I expect some serious action to be taken, and if it isn’t, I also expect some serious action – it doesn’t just vanish in one of those Emily Litella “never mind” moments I’ve written about.

Please keep your eye on this one – I know I will be.

I don’t care if you “heard about it on Oprah”, or you read about it here on my blog, or a well-known veterans organization is associated with it, or Charity Navigator gives it four stars (a discussion for another time, but for now note it’s significant that they are currently changing their methodology), or your best friend told you about it, or even if someone in your own family actually has a dog from the organization. Do your own research - the good places can stand up to the scrutiny, the not-so-great ones can’t, and the onus is on them to provide you the answers to your questions.

There’s lots more I could say (and have actually already said here: “Tough Questions You Need To Ask About Every Service Dog Organization”), but I’m a little tight on time right now, so let me make this simple:

When you see a story about service dogs for veterans, no matter how good it sounds or how touching it is, the very first thing you need to do is to go to the Assistance Dogs International list of accredited members and see if the organization is on it:

http://www.assistancedogsinternational.org/membershipdirectory.php

If so, great; if not, I’d suggest you find another place that is accredited to support – it’s that simple.

Sure, the non-accredited organization could still be a good place, but with so many great organizations on the ADI list who have taken the necessary steps to be accredited (and all of whom could use your help), why would you turn to a place that hasn’t?   Doesn’t make sense to me.

Plus, if a regular old guy like me knows that’s the first thing you should be looking for, then why can’t celebrities who have lots of money, research staffs, and pretty much every resource available figure that out?  You got me.

Let me be perfectly clear – this isn’t about personal favorites; it’s about the troops and doing what’s truly best to support them.  ADI accreditation isn’t some club membership – it’s a very serious evaluation that tells you a lot about an organization.  And not having it tells you something about an organization, too – at the very least, they’ve made a conscious choice not to seek accreditation.  At the very worst…well, let’s not talk about that.

Remember – just because you buy into a great idea, doesn’t mean you also have to buy in to the organization that’s pushing that idea.  If you see what you think is a great story about service dogs for wounded veterans, that doesn’t mean you have to support the organization you see in that story – if you’re willing to do a little looking, you may very well find there are much better places to support.

Please – all I ask is that you look closely – very closely.   You may be surprised what you see – and, more importantly, don’t see.

Lemme get right to the heart of things and tell you first why it’s so critical.  Some people, including me, fear that there’s a really bad service animal “incident waiting to happen” just around the corner and it’s only a matter of time. That fear isn’t based on some irrational hysteria – it’s because of the ongoing proliferation of service dog programs.  Seems like every time I turn around there’s another new one, often with a big press release about how they’re gonna be endorsed by some famous celebrity or appear on a talk show, and many times they are targeting their services directly at veterans with severe emotional or physical disabilities.

All it’s gonna take is one bad placement, one time where an inadequately trained dog and/or an improperly screened recipient results in an out-of-control situation where people get hurt. And God forbid the incident involves a wounded veteran from the Iraq or Afghanistan conflicts, especially one who’s been diagnosed with PTSD. We’ve already seen how the media in its normal way has been all over those kinda stories, sensationalizing them and maligning all OEF/OIF veterans over the actions of a few.

The fallout from an incident like that could destroy in an instant all that so many have worked so hard to achieve for so many years.  And I can guarantee you if something like that does happen, even if it’s later shown to be a dog that wasn’t properly trained, or an applicant that wasn’t properly screened, or a shaky dog organization, it’s not gonna matter – all service animals and those who benefit from them will likely be hurt, and significantly.

My point last time was that laws, while they have their place and are one tool in the arsenal, aren’t going to solve this problem.  You can only hammer so much – while laws might get some marginal “service dogs” out of public areas and maybe even cause some bad programs to shut down, they aren’t gonna produce more good dogs or placements, nor do they give the average person something they can use to help make that happen. You accomplish that (and this is where you can have that huge impact I mentioned) by only supporting the good programs so they thrive, and not supporting the marginal ones until they either improve, or go away altogether.

That means you have to make informed decisions about organizations that train and place service dogs, and to do that you have to educate yourself and make your own judgments about any service dog organization.

And I mean ANY organization.  I don’t care if you “heard about it on Oprah”, or you read about it here on my blog, or a well-known veterans organization is associated with it, or Charity Navigator gives it four stars (a discussion for another time, but for now note it’s significant that they are currently changing their methodology), or your best friend told you about it, or even if someone in your own family actually has a dog from the organization. Do your own research - the good places can stand up to the scrutiny, the not-so-great ones can’t, and the onus is on them to provide you the answers to your questions.

What do you look for?  Here are a few revealing questions to ask every time you see a service dog organization:

● Is the organization an accredited Assistance Dogs International member? And, if so, how long has it been an accredited member?

I’ve mentioned this one before (“How to Find the Best Service Dogs for Disabled Veterans”) – at this point, if I don’t see this, I have to ask why.  In fact, the better a program looks to me and the more publicity it gets, the more the absence of ADI accreditation jumps out as a potential big red flag.

● Do they provide specific descriptions of what the dogs are trained to do as it relates to accepted standards?

For example, if a place talks about how they train psychiatric service dogs or dogs for PTSD, then I’d expect to see as a bare minimum a reference to the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners’ “Service Dog Tasks for Psychiatric Disabilities” (http://www.iaadp.org/psd_tasks.html), or, better yet, a detailed description of how they follow the guidelines outlined at length in that document.

● What is the real focus of the organization? Are they truly focused on “the human end of the leash”?

Service dog programs now often have a number of individual elements they promote, sometimes all combined into one program – for example, prisoners raising dogs (one element) rescued from shelters (another element) that will become service dogs (another element) for wounded veterans (another element).  On the upside, each one of those is a great thing by itself, and, naturally, in combination, it comes across as even that much better.  On the downside, though, those things can easily be competing priorities, and the organization – and you – have to figure out what’s the primary focus.

Are they more interested in rescuing dogs from shelters?  Or is the real priority helping prisoners?  Or is their true passion helping wounded veterans? Harsh as this may sound, the bottom line is the focus has to be on making a life-changing, lifelong improvement for the person receiving the dog, and those other interests are side benefits that are important only to the degree that they help make that happen.  Again, look closely, but sometimes I think this one jumps out at you.

● And, most importantly: Will the organization make the tough calls when they need to?

The reality is that it’s easy to look good with the general public on this subject, especially when you involve the other elements I mentioned, particularly veterans with disabilities.  Most people love dogs, the level of specialized knowledge about service dogs isn’t there, and, on top of that, when you say you’re going to help out a wounded warrior who really needs the help, most people’s automatic inclination is “What’s not to love? Tell me where I sign up.”

But, like so many things that look good on the surface, when you look closer, it’s a lot tougher and more complex than it seems, and there are some hard calls that have to be made. Will they release a dog from training, even though it’s a wonderful dog and everyone loves it, and it’s at 90% of where it needs to be, but still just doesn’t meet the service dog standard?  Will they turn down an applicant, even though it’s someone who has faithfully served their country, been severely injured while doing so, whose situation tears at your heart, but yet you know just isn’t a good fit for a service dog? Will they do those things, knowing that they are likely to be vilified by some, condemned in the media, and maybe even have their motives or qualifications questioned?

Or will they take the easy way out and not make those kinds of tough decisions? Let a dog slide through training because, hey, 90% is close enough, there’s a real need, and things will probably be OK?  Grant a borderline application request because they get caught up in the emotion of dealing with a wounded veteran and want to “do the right thing”? Or, maybe worst of all, are they firmly convinced that they know better than all the established assistance dog organizations and associations, and that they are actually helping someone, when, in fact, they may be doing more harm?

Maybe none of that will happen, but, ultimately, you have to ask yourself:  Am I absolutely certain that the organization will never, ever, for any reason, risk placing someone who receives one of its dogs in a potentially unsafe situation?

If you’ve read this far, you could easily be asking, “Sheesh, Al, all these places are trying to do is help – why are you being so tough?” Trust me – as somebody who loves these dogs, is a veteran, and is deeply involved as a volunteer with one of these organizations, I know how tough it can be sometimes to stay focused on the real goal. I also know how hard it can be to accept some of those tough calls that have to be made – I’m just thankful I’m not the guy who has to make them. But somebody has to, and you better be absolutely sure that any service dog organization you’re gonna support is willing to do that.

Please go back and reread what I said at the beginning – we simply can’t afford an incident like that.  Pay very, very close attention to the organizations you read about or see on television, don’t take anybody’s word – mine, a famous celebrity’s, anybody’s – about those places, and go check them out yourself using the guidelines I’ve given you.

]]> http://www.albrittain.com/service-dogs/tough-questions-you-need-to-ask-about-every-service-dog-for-veterans-organization/feed/ 2