Quality Purebreds Sought to Assist Disabled

Freedom Service Dogs of America (FSD) needs a few good canines!

Actually, this Colorado non-profit organization could use many well-bred and socialized purebred puppies and young adults to meet the needs of its clients waiting for fully trained service dogs.

FSD trains its canines to assist veterans and active military members with post-traumatic stress (PTS) or physical injuries related to service; children with autism and other neurocognitive disabilities; and adults with disabilities stemming from cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injuries, and traumatic brain injuries. It also trains therapy dogs to assist counselors practicing within about 300 miles of Denver. FSD offers canines that don’t graduate from its program for adoption.

It has a waiting list of 120 individuals: thirty-six veterans with PTS, eighteen children with autism, and sixty-six adults with various disabilities from across the United States. These individuals hope to be matched with canines trained to help them with everyday life activities. Some FSD canines provide comfort and support for PTS veterans; while others open and close doors, including those of refrigerators; push buttons; locate and retrieve phones; and pickup items for disabled adults. Still others calm and de-escalate meltdowns of children with autism.

FSD doesn’t charge its clients a penny for its service dogs.

It’s trained and placed nearly 500 canines with the disabled since its founding in 1987 by PJ and Michael Roche. In 2018, 44% of its dogs went to help veterans with PTS, according to Laura Edwards, FSD’s Director of Dog Operations.

This year, Edwards expects only twenty-two dogs and their new owners to graduate from FSD’s rigorous training program. She’d hoped for thirty-five graduate teams. Clients wait between eighteen and twenty-four months to be matched with a specially trained service dog.

Why can’t the organization keep up with the demand for its service dogs?

That’s the question FSD asked itself in 2017. It found that 71% of its dog candidates washed out because of behavioral issues, Edwards says.

The problem, she explains, was the source of its dog candidate pool, not the training program or trainers. Most of its candidates came as donations from shelters and rescue groups.

“We were asking traumatized dogs to help traumatized people.”

Plea to Labrador, Golden, and Standard Poodle Breeders

FSD also discovered that the most successful canines were Labrador retrievers, golden retrievers and standard poodles as well as mixes of those breeds.  As compared to a 12% total graduation rate of all of its dogs, 45% of its Labradors and 23% of goldens graduated in 2018.

Edwards researched other service dog organizations’ Labrador lines and learned their foundation canines came from well-respected Labrador kennels known for producing quality conformation and versatile canines.

She believes that “shelter dogs can’t compete with a breeder’s sound and healthy dog. And while everyone loves a shelter story, it simply isn’t the most singularly feasible way to meet our client’s needs.”

That’s why she’s asking reputable breeders of Labradors, goldens, and standard poodles for help. FSD wants to obtain “the type of dog that we can only get from the hard work breeders put into their dogs,” she says.

Puppy Raising Programs

In 2018, FSD started two puppy-raising programs to try to increase the number of viable canine service dog candidates. The community-based Puppy Raising Club involves twelve week old and younger puppies, including those donated by breeders, that live with specially trained volunteers for a year. These volunteers raise and train the pups in their own home with the guidance of FSD staff. The pups then return to the FSD’s Colorado facility for evaluation so they can be matched with and specially trained for an individual client. The second floor of the facility houses a mock kitchen and living room, plus rows of airline seats, to facilitate the individualized training of each dog.

Seventeen pups are part of this program, according to Edwards.

The second puppy program, Puppy-Raising Pilot Program, is conducted in conjunction with the Colorado Department of Correction’s (DOC’s) Trained K-9 Companion Program. Prison inmates at the Men’s Correctional Institute in Sterling, CO help train and socialize the puppies, starting at eight weeks of age. After two months, the pups transfer to the Denver Women’s Correctional Institute. There, inmates and FSD trainers work with the puppies and take them into the community for outings for further socialization.

FSD evaluates these puppies at about six months. Successful puppy candidates then live at the FSD facility where trainers work to maintain the skills and socialization of the dogs, and introduce them to basic work skills. They are then matched with a client before they receive additional training to meet a client’s specific needs.

About fifteen puppies are currently in this pilot program.

Breeder Participation

Edwards says that FSD has received a few dogs as donations from well-known and reputable purebred breeders but seeks many more donations to help met the needs of its clients.

Earlier this year, Lisa Butler, who has bred and shown her Snowberry Labradors in the conformation ring for more than thirty years, donated an eight-week-old pup named Maverick after FSD evaluators met him and two littermates. The evaluators thought Maverick had the best chance of becoming a service dog for a veteran with PTSD, Butler recalls.

Maverick and a standard poodle named Goose currently live with two Texas A & M University students in College Station, Texas, where they are acquiring basic training and socialization skills.

Why did Butler donate one of her coveted and much sought-after pups?

“I wanted to do something positive to help with the crisis affecting veterans. PTSD work is a very select program, requiring a temperament that is neither too outgoing or too introverted. The Keeper X Grey litter combined two really sound temperaments,” she says.

Keri Schooler and Shannon Gage of Amigas Labradors donated one young adult and are about to donate another. They’ve also sold, at greatly reduced prices, two young adults as well as four, eight-week-old puppies to FSD. These six Labradors are in training except one that has been placed with an autistic child, Schooler says.

She adds that she and her co-breeder want to help FSD fulfill its mission of providing service
dogs to needy individuals.

“Shannon and I believe in giving back and are very happy with our relationship with FSD,” says Schooler. Both breeders have a combined total of more than fifty years’ experience in breeding and showing Labradors in the conformation ring.

Schooler became involved with FSD after she was contacted by Butler about her dark yellow Lab that needed a forever home. Butler knew that Edwards was looking for that temperament and color of a Labrador after her family lost its first service dog, Disco, to cancer.

Years before―in 2012―Edwards wondered if her son with autism could be helped by a service dog. She learned about Colorado’s DOC K9 dog program. That’s where she found Disco, a one-and-a-half-year-old, dark yellow Labrador. Joan Schoenfeld of Snowwoods Labradors had donated Disco to the program.

Four-and-a-half-year-old Ian and Disco immediately bonded.  The next year, in 2013, Edwards founded the nonprofit organization Disco Dogs whose mission was to adopt dogs from shelters and rescue organizations and train them as service dogs for children with autism without cost to the family. By then she knew the cost of buying a fully trained service dog was $25,000 to $30,000―a prohibitive figure for most families.

At the same time that she founded Disco Dogs, she began volunteering for FSD.

After Disco’s death in 2016, Edwards knew Ian needed another service dog. She’d seen vast improvement in her son’s behavior and social skills thanks to Disco.

She contacted Butler whom she knew was friends with Schoenfeld. That’s how Butler learned about FSD but she didn’t have a dark yellow Labrador. Edwards knew that color was important to her child with autism.

Unable to find a dark yellow, Edwards ended up accepting a donation of a light yellow Labrador and tried to train the exuberant male for Ian. The dog didn’t work out. By then, Edwards worked fulltime for FSD after her organization, Disco Dogs, merged with her new employer.

On the day that Edwards’ family parted with the yellow that later became a different type of service dog, Butler contacted her about Schooler’s young dark yellow.

Within days, Edwards and her son flew to Texas to meet the dog named Race. In December, Race and Ian graduated from the FSD training program. Twelve-year-old Ian starts seventh grade in the fall, in a large part thanks to Race, Edward says.

Benefits to Breeders

What can FSD offer a reputable purebred breeder in exchange for a donation of a healthy, well-socialized puppy or a young adult dog?

• Satisfaction knowing that they are helping a person in need.
• Results of health examinations and tests. FSD tests purebreds for genetic diseases by using a Pawprints Genetic breed panel. It also has each dog’s hips, elbows, and shoulders x-rayed. For Labradors, a Pawprints panel for service dogs includes eight tests for different genetic diseases.
• Updates of the progress of their pup or young adult dog.
• Invitation to the graduation of their dog with the matched client.
• Choice of return of the dog to the breeder or offer to have the dog placed through FSD’s screened adoption program, should the dog not graduate from FSD’s program.
• IRS form documenting the donation.

Before canines are sent to their new permanent service dog home, they are spayed or neutered but not before the age of eighteen months for orthopedic and other health reasons, Edwards says.

FSD spends an estimated $20,000 to $30,000 per dog on health testing, veterinary bills, and training. That sum includes a minimum of two-week training of the client with the selected service dog as well as follow up with each client, and additional training for the dog and client when necessary, Edwards says. “It’s a lifetime commitment by FSD which will always take back a dog when necessary.”

How can FSD afford to train so many dogs and maintain its thirty-five member paid staff, and oversee 400 volunteers who walk, help train, and clean up runs at the FSD facility? Donations and fundraising are the short answer.

In 2018, FSD’s budget was about $3.6 million. About 78% of that amount was spent on program expenses which includes training and health care for its canines as well as staff costs. Another 17% went for fundraising expenses and 5% for managerial expenditures. That same year, FSD brought in an estimated $4 million in direct and indirect contributions, including $1.1 million in private and government grants and $766,000 in fundraising, according to its website.

Donations come from major foundations and corporations as well as individuals. Some sponsor individual dogs for a specific category of client. For example, former Denver Bronco’s wide receiver Eric Decker and his wife’s foundation’s Decker’s Dogs sponsors canines that are trained specifically for veterans!

For more information about FSD or to volunteer or donate, see: https://freedomservicedogs.org

All photos except Layla’s are courtesy of FSD.