I’ve read a number of recent stories where a veteran has a service dog, the veteran has no physical injuries, the dog has been given to the veteran solely to help them deal with post-traumatic stress, and yet the dog has been trained to perform physical tasks (e.g., picking up dropped objects) for someone with physical issues who requires those functions.  Sometimes you have to read between the lines to figure that out, other times I’ve seen the articles come right out and say the tasks weren’t needed for this person, but were taught in case the dog had a partner with physical issues that needed them.

Whenever you see that, it should raise big red flags with you.

First, you gotta ask yourself – why would somebody go to the trouble and expend all the time, effort, and expense necessary to train a dog to perform physical tasks for someone who doesn’t need them, and very likely never will during the life of the dog? Or put a little differently, why would you train a dog that way and then not give it to a veteran who needed those skills? Particularly when there are so many people with severe physical injuries who actually do need a dog to perform those functions for them.

Now I don’t know the answers to that in these specific cases, and I can’t tell you that this is what’s going on there, but I CAN tell you what the history has been. Which you likely are not aware of unless you’ve followed a discussion that’s been going on in the service dog world for a number of years now.

Historically, this has been done to circumvent (or comply with, depending upon your point of view) the ADA. Where it’s come up has normally only been where someone has a dog whose only stated function is to provide them emotional support for a mental health issue and they get called on it, i.e., what does the dog do for them, is it a legitimate service dog, and do they have public access?

If you look at these cases, what you’ll see is that the person with the dog will often make an argument like this: “Yes, it’s a legitimate service dog and helps me cope with (fill in the psychological issue they are dealing with), BUT I also have (balance problems or hearing problems or some other physical issue) and the dog helps me with that, too.”  In other words, “I’m covered whichever way you wanna go”.

Let’s be clear here – just like in these current stories, the dogs were never described as “dual purpose”. The people made no bones all along about what the dog’s role for them was – the secondary physical stuff only came up when they got pressed on the subject. Hence the title of this post.

Another one we can debate all day long and where the law is not gonna be any help. My goal as always is just for you to be aware of something that might not be so obvious, ask the right questions, and then make your own decisions about what you’re willing to support. Because that’s what’s gonna drive whether or not this kinda stuff continues to be done.

For me, though, just doesn’t rack up right, no matter how you try to explain it.

When somebody says their dog is a service dog, public access is really what we’re talking about. If I describe my dog that way, the clear implication is that the dog does stuff for me and I can take it with me wherever I want. And, when it comes down to it, that’s the primary, if not only, reason to differentiate your dog in that way. (Note I didn’t say that that’s what defines a service dog – that’s another post.)

Keep in mind that, unless I state otherwise, my goal here is to give you brief, real world, practical, useful definitions and explanations that you can operate from daily, and not textbook, dictionary, or legal ones – you can go look those up for yourself, anyway.  In that vein, think of public access as “having your dog somewhere dogs normally aren’t allowed.”

Public access is the big threshold. Once you say a dog team (and note I said “team” – the human is an oft-overlooked critical component here, funny as that might sound) needs to be able to function in the public access environment, that changes and colors EVERYTHING – selection, training, evaluation, conditioning, legal factors, breed choice, you name it – it’s a lot longer list.  It adds an orders-of-magnitude level of stuff on top of just having a regular ol’, well-behaved, nice dog.

And that’s where the heart of this issue lies. If you really do need public access, it’s great to know it’s there for you and it’s a wonderful thing, but that comes at a price – there’s a lot of effort and responsibility that goes with it.

On the other hand, if you don’t really need to be able to have your dog in places where dogs aren’t normally allowed, and all you really want is a nice companion dog who’s maybe even trained to perform some service dog-like tasks for you, and to be able to go out in the vast majority of outside public areas where dogs ARE allowed, why bother?

Because once you remove that requirement, it opens things up tremendously, and makes things a lot easier for both you and those of us who are trying to help you.

It’s like how a very nice young lady occupational therapist from the South I was talking to at the National Veterans Wheelchair Games in Denver a coupla weeks ago put it. I was talking about this very subject, and I said “…and if somebody doesn’t really need one…”, and in her sweet Mississippi accent she finished my sentence with “…you could just get one from the pound!” Wasn’t said in a mean way at all, either – in fact, exactly the opposite – very nicely and just a simple statement of an obvious fact.

Exactly.

Where this issue normally comes up is in one area – “on the line” dogs where there’s a legitimate question about whether the dog is a true service dog, or a companion – a “feelgood dog”, as you will see me refer to them here. But here’s the thing – if you remove the public access part, that problem and the associated dance about whether the dog is actually performing any real tasks goes away.

Now I’m not suggesting for a moment that if somebody truly needs a service dog they should suck it up and not get one.  All I’m asking is that you take a hard look at whether you or someone you’re trying to help really needs public access, and let’s not press the issue just for the sake of pressing the issue when there’s no real need to do that.

Nowhere do I see this problem more than with the almost constant daily barrage now of feelgood stories about dogs doing wonderful things for military people, both active duty and veterans, particularly those who are suffering with post-traumatic stress as their primary issue.  Problem is, when you look closer and you know what to look for, there’s a lotta bull in those stories.  Well-meaning bull, but bull nonetheless.

And it’s not simple true or false stuff you can just punch into Snopes and it’ll tell you which it is, either – there’s more to it than that and you’ve gotta learn what to look for.  That’s been my intent all along on this site – educate people and correct a lot of the misinformation that floats around.  I don’t care so much whether you agree with me (although that’d be great) or not – you make your own decisions – I just want you to be smart, know what to look for, and have the facts when you make them.

My constant dilemma is what do I just let go, what’s worth bringing up, and if I’m going to do that, how do I do it in an effective way that doesn’t just come across as one big continuous whine or “it’s all about me” arrogant.  Because of that, I’ve sat on most all of these stories, countless times where I’ve written something and then said, “Nah, why bother? People just wanna hear feelgood stuff. Leave it alone.”  Well, I’m at a point now where I don’t know if I can do that any longer, and I want to set the tone for that.

Some of that is due to the cumulative effect of all those stories on me over time, but mostly it’s because things are getting worse, with more and more people pushing the same shaky concepts day after day as if they were accepted fact and already working as advertised.  Or maybe they just don’t know any better.  My fear is the more that stuff sits out there unchallenged, the more it gets accepted, maybe even unconsciously, as “well, everybody knows THAT” fact (I already see that happening) with potentially disastrous results for both people and dogs.

Feeling good or wanting to do good are simply not enough.  We need to be absolutely sure that what we do is really helping and not actually making things worse and placing people or dogs at risk.

My plan is to start writing much shorter posts more often, stop sitting on stuff and just get it out there. The trick will be to not turn this into one big rant site (we have more than enough of those already) without going the other way and “chugging on over to namby-pamby land” like R. Lee Ermey says in that hilarious Geico commercial, either.

Guess I shouldn’t worry, though.  Never fails that every time I wrestle with something like this and then give in and say something, I’ll hear from at least one of my friends with a service dog who will tell me they’ve seen exactly the same thing and thank me for saying it.  That means the world to me – they live it 24/7/365,  I don’t, and they are ultimately why all of us involved in this world do what we do.

We’ll see how it goes.

Definitely watch the video, but the real key here is WHY they were visiting – concerns over both existing/pending legislation and the Department of Veterans Affairs’ response – and you really need to read the two AMVETS blog posts associated with the visit to understand that.

“AMVETS, Paws With A Cause Take the Hill”

“AMVETS, Paws With A Cause Take the Hill (Part 2)”

As explained in the first post:

AMVETS Deputy National Legislative Director Christina Roof and Paws With A Cause National Marketing Manager Deb Davis joined the veterans, helping to explain shortfalls in current policy toward assistance dogs and pushing to close loopholes and improve access for veterans who could benefit from new programs.

The post then describes some of the major concerns Assistance Dogs International accredited and member organizations have with both the legislation and the VA response (which, in spite of the impression that may have been created elsewhere, is still being worked on and has not been finalized):

- Statutes and policies must be clear to veterans and implemented throughout the VA system with a clear point of contact. The current language found in Title 38 of the U.S. Code is too vague, failing to identify what VA’s actual responsibilities should be.

- When drafting responsible assistance dog placement and training legislation for veterans, a standard must be established based on proven assistance dog industry standards and practices exemplified by Assistance Dogs International, or ADI, and the International Guide Dog Federation, or IGDF. The bills currently before Congress are too vague and misuse certain industry terms interchangeably, such as guide dog, service dog, therapy dog, and assistance dog, making policy nearly impossible to properly implement.

- Decisive action must be taken in the short term, since thousands of veterans could potentially benefit from any new program, and AMVETS and Paws With A Cause are happy to work with legislators to make this happen. Though VA may have concerns over cost, the return on investment from veterans who take advantage of assistance dogs would have far-reaching effects as veterans re-enter the work force and live up to their full potential.

I can tell you that volunteers and staff from Canine Companions for Independence and other ADI member organizations as well as other veterans organizations are actively working those issues and have been making visits to Congress, both formal and informal, for some time.

You normally don’t see much, if anything, in the news about those visits, though, so it’s very nice to see this kind of publicity, and kudos to AMVETS and PAWS for making that happen.

Bottom line, as I’ve been saying for a long time, is that it’s not enough to just say we’re for service dogs for veterans, we have to make that happen in the right way.

Turns out that, contrary to everything we’ve been hearing for some time about how spinal cord injuries are way down in Iraq, those injuries are actually way UP in Afghanistan.

And that plays directly with future placements of service dogs with OEF veterans. I don’t think it takes a genius to figure out that with the recent increased troop levels, the reality is we’re likely going to see a concurrent increase in SCI for some time.

Which means we need to be taking a real hard look at things like the types and quality of service dogs we’re training and especially where government funding is going to be allocated for those dogs.

The overwhelming emphasis in the press, Congress, and even the Army in recent months has been placing dogs where post-traumatic stress or other mental health issues are the primary concern.  While that’s certainly understandable during a time when the Army has just announced a record suicide level and everyone’s grasping for solutions, we can’t afford to lose sight of the more traditional need for those with severe physical injuries, particularly SCI.  In some cases – like legislation that arbitrarily says 50% of the veterans who receive dogs must suffer from primarily mental health issues – I think we already have.

Given the length of time it takes to adequately train effective service dogs (not to mention moving things through government bureaucracies), NOW is the time to reassess and readjust as necessary, not several years down the road when it’s too late.

Almost every day I see questionable things from supposedly responsible organizations and people in the service dog world, particularly where veterans are involved. Like the veteran working his dog with no leash I just saw in a slick fundraising video from a service dog place that focuses solely on veterans (watched it four or five times and I still couldn’t believe it).

Or the veteran in a news story a month or so ago about how he and his dog are being discriminated against by a bus line who shows off a worthless registration card from one of those flaky places that sell ‘em and says something about how he even has documentation for his dog (probably just didn’t know better, but he – and the reporter – should).

Or a recent news video where a veteran with serious post-traumatic stress issues intentionally places both himself and the dog who’s supposed to help him with those issues into a stressful situation, the irony of which wasn’t lost on me (and, yeah, sure, you can take the dog pretty much anywhere, but should you?).  And so on…

What makes it even worse is not only do most people not pick up on this stuff, they usually actually think it’s great and get behind it!  Between the news media, people with thousands of Facebook friends or Twitter followers,  continuous mindless retweeting, etc., I start feeling like one little ol’ guy nobody’s paying attention to who’s constantly swimming upstream against a strong current.

I’m torn – I’m really very tempted to start calling people out on this stuff, but I also don’t wanna “go negative” and end up spending my life arguing with people – there’s no future in that.  So, for now, I’m just gonna continue to try to show you the way things are supposed to be, hope you pick up on that, and that you notice when things aren’t. That could change at any time, but I’ll try.

It all comes down to something one of my fellow Group Sergeant Majors taught me when we were on the Air Force Academy staff many years ago and that’s stuck with me. We were talking about some incident out in ‘”the real Air Force” where some sleazoid messed up bigtime, and I half-jokingly said, “You know, instead of handpicking only the best people for the staff, maybe we oughtta start bringing in some slugs so cadets can see what they’re like, too.” My compatriot said, “Nah, Al, trust me – they’ll see ‘em soon enough. We just need to keep setting the standard and example so cadets know how things are supposed to be and count on them to get it.”

Hey, I understand – the vast majority of people see a veteran, a dog, put the two together, and automatically say, “Wow, that must be a great thing.”, even though it may very well not be.  It’s not so much that I wanna give people the answers – I just want ‘em to start asking the questions.

Ah, I’m not really planning on going anywhere. There’s too many good things going on, like the two fantastic service dog placements with seriously wounded OIF veterans that Canine Companions for Independence just made in the last couple weeks.  More about those later.

“Homeless Dogs Help Healing Troops”

The reality is a service dog isn’t necessary or appropriate for every wounded veteran (or anyone with a disability, for that matter) – not the popular thing to say, but the truth. So much of the popular public opinion I see now comes off as “Hey, let’s just give every wounded veteran a service dog and that’ll fix things”, especially when we’re talking about mental health issues like post-traumatic stress as opposed to physical injuries.  Well-intentioned, no doubt, but misguided, nonetheless – it’s just not that simple nor necessarily the way to go.

There are a myriad of factors involved in providing someone with a no-joke, for-real, fully functioning service dog, and, done right, it’s a time-consuming, extremely thorough, and usually expensive process that requires a lifetime commitment from everyone involved. Programs like this one are great because they provide troops who don’t have a more serious need with so much of what they do need, cost very little, if anything, and all of the factors specifically associated with a service dog are taken away.  They also have the potential to not divert a lot of funding and effort away from areas where, in my view, they are better expended, e.g., the training of full-up service dogs for those people who have physical injuries as their primary issue.

No question whatsoever that there are still many veterans who really need and would benefit from a service dog, and I remain convinced that we still aren’t reaching those with severe physical disabilities, particularly the relatively younger group of OEF/OIF veterans. But I’m also convinced there are a whole lotta people that don’t need that level of support, and we need to be talking about these kind of programs first before making the big jump to right away talking about service dogs for everybody.

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.

The story I’m referring to is this article from The Oregonian a few days ago about Canine Companions for Independence puppies being raised at the Coffee Creek Correctional Facility for women in Wilsonville, OR:

“Future service dogs get their training by women inmates at Coffee Creek lockup”

It’s a good story, too (albeit with a few inaccuracies – for example, they aren’t “therapy dogs”), but my point is that, as I’ve said before, there are a number of service dog organizations who have puppy raising programs in prisons and place dogs with wounded veterans as well.  Some definitely do a much better job of promoting themselves than others, too, but you need to be very careful not to confuse the quality of the public relations effort with the overall quality of the program.

I remain convinced that Canine Companions is the premier service dog organization in this country, and that’s why I’ve chosen to concentrate my efforts there.  That surely doesn’t mean they are “the only game in town” and, in fact, contrary to what some seem to believe, they don’t want to be, either – there’s no way in the world CCI could handle the need for assistance dogs all by themselves, and they are well aware of that.

Make no mistake – while I’m a “CCI guy”, I’m for ANY service dog organization that’s doing a top-notch job of providing dogs for veterans, the key being “top-notch”, a subject I’ve addressed here many times.  Let’s just say I continue to see things organizations say about themselves that, as a minimum, are a stretch, and, at worst, could be intentionally misleading.

No organization is perfect, but that’s something I’ve just never seen from Canine Companions – if anything, they don’t toot their horn enough, certainly not anywhere near as much as I’d like them to. I think I have a good idea why that is, too – as I’ve said repeatedly, I don’t speak for CCI, but I have had a close association with them for enough years now to understand some things, so I can give you an educated opinion here.

First, they are very, very sensitive to graduate privacy or, to put it more bluntly, they aren’t gonna pimp their graduates. They certainly don’t hide them – you can go to the newsletters on the website and see pictures of all the graduate teams, for example.  But when you see a very public and active graduate team, that’s because they’ve chosen to be that way on their own with no pressure from CCI.

Second, there is also a great sensitivity to not pandering to what’s popular, especially where veterans are concerned. That means you won’t likely ever see CCI changing their core mission – as some service dog organizations have done without even mentioning it – from training dogs for those with severe physical disabilities to training dogs for those whose primary diagnosis is post-traumatic stress.  (The irony being that post-traumatic stress will almost certainly be present in a veteran with the type of physical injuries we’re talking about, anyway.)

Unfortunately, that sensitivity has also meant Canine Companions hasn’t talked about the work they have done to incorporate post-traumatic stress into both the screening of candidates and training of dogs.  For example, they long ago brought in outside post-traumatic stress experts who sat down for several days with training staff to discuss this subject in detail.  Those discussions were very successful and resulted in a number of improvements in both those areas – I hope someday you’ll be hearing about that directly from CCI instead of just me.

Bottom line is that you can be confident and comfortable in what Canine Companions is doing with veterans – you just may have to work a little harder to see it.  Some organizations might do a better job of promoting themselves, but no one does a better job making individually matched lifelong placements of assistance dogs.

]]> http://www.albrittain.com/service-dogs/wounded-warrior-receives-canine-companions-service-dog-raised-in-prison-program/feed/ 0 http://www.albrittain.com/service-dogs/finally-the-real-story-about-the-department-of-veterans-affair-and-service-dogs-for-veterans/ http://www.albrittain.com/service-dogs/finally-the-real-story-about-the-department-of-veterans-affair-and-service-dogs-for-veterans/#comments Tue, 08 Sep 2009 20:23:11 +0000 Al http://www.albrittain.com/?p=1671 While I’ve addressed this subject before (“Why The VA Has Provided No Money For Service Dogs – In Their Own Words”), I’ve really held off and pretty much kept my mouth shut, hoping that some of the behind-the-scenes discussions I was aware of with the VA regarding service dogs for veterans would bear fruit, and not wanting to possibly mess those up.  Plus, I really think some of the VA people working the issue are good guys and want to help, and I didn’t wanna risk torquing them off.

Well, without going into more detail, I will tell you that those talks have been going on for several years now, things have really fallen apart, and from all appearances they are going nowhere on the VA end.  That’s why I was so glad to see this story all over the place this weekend, even with the misleading headline (BTW, the story doesn’t say this, but Taylor is a Canine Companions for Independence service dog – he and Bill Callahan graduated from the Southwest Regional Center in Oceanside, CA in February 2009.):

“After 8-year delay, VA program hopes to help vets”

I’m so used to misleading headlines by now – especially from the AP, where the vast majority of stories originate – that I just expect it, but I’m also really tired of them, too. (At least they got the Department of Veterans Affairs part right – it’s not the “Veterans Administration” and hasn’t been for years. I’m immediately suspicious of any story that starts out that way and you should be, too – it gives you a good idea right off just how thorough the person who wrote it is and how accurate the article may be as well.)

Just like this story – the real headline should be:

“Paraplegic Veteran Gets Service Dog With No Help From The VA”

Because that’s the key point here, and the dead honest truth. With all the hype of late, particularly all the buzz about “post traumatic stress” dogs (which I think is now helping to obscure the service dog need for veterans with severe physical disabilities like spinal cord injuries who, ironically, will almost certainly have post traumatic stress issues as well – but that’s a subject for another post), the reality is the VA has had over seven years to work this one and has really done zip.

I hear now that the VA says they have something in the works, but, honestly, we’ve all heard that one before, and that’s pretty much the same line in that article.  Did you see any details?  Nope. Could just be that with the two pending pieces of legislation (“Wounded Warrior K-9 Corps Act Introduced in Congress Yesterday”, “Service Dogs For Veterans Act Passes The Senate, But What Does That Mean?”) they are a little nervous and feel the need to look like they are doing something.  Both of those bills definitely need work, but, hey, if they get the VA’s attention, that’s a good thing all by itself.

Nonetheless, I’ll say again what I’ve said before – I don’t think the government or the VA is the solution to this problem. But if providing some money gets top-notch service dogs in the hands of more veterans with disabilities who need them, then I’m all for it.

One thing that should have been done LONG ago is allowing veterans with service dogs to receive the same  payments for expenses that veterans with guide dogs have been receiving for years.  That I know of, the VA has not even agreed to do that, although if you look at their official web page for guide and service dogs, it appears that they now have – this is indicative of the serious confusion that’s all around this subject:

http://www1.va.gov/health/ServiceandGuideDogs.asp

Lemme leave you with a coupla things you can do here.  One, you can certainly contact your elected officials to voice your opinion, and it wouldn’t surprise me if you hear about an effort to amend or combine those two pieces of legislation in the near future.  By far the biggest thing you can do, though, is to educate any veteran you know who could be a potential candidate for a service dog (especially those with serious physical disabilities like SCI), or anyone who may know a veteran who might be a potential candidate for a service dog – in other words, everybody.

Please contact me if I can help with that at all.