I have a bootiful, brilliant 5-month old yellow lab. She has the smarts and gentle temperament to be a therapy dog (dogs who visit hospitals, rest homes, schools, etc). I’d love to bring her to campus with me a few days a week so she can interact with all kinds of people. My boss is very cool with this.
My intention is to do the therapy certification courses after doggy passes her current obedience class. In the meantime, would it be ratty to buy a “Therapy Dog in Training” coat so she looks kosher and can visit around campus without a lot of questioning?
I wouldn’t do that, but would take her everywhere she’s allowed to be as a pet. My greyhounds are better behaved than most people’s children and I got them Canine Good Citizen certificates just to make it official. I look for places I can take them. There are a few dog-friendly wineries around here that I’ve taken them to, and once a year we do Greyhounds in Gettysburg where many of the town retailers allow us to bring our dogs into their stores. We’re so good we’ve been doing that for many years and keep getting welcomed back. It’s fun to take your dog into a clothing store! I have a picture of my Capri standing in front of a pants display with a sign saying “Capri’s $9.99”.
Please, please, please, please, please don’t do this. It makes it extremely difficult for actual assistance dogs to be accepted when non-official people take advantage of the fact that they can buy a vest off the internet.
Also keep in mind that being a therapy dog doesn’t grant access to places service animals are allowed. You may want to do a little research while you’re waiting for a class to become available.
Every campus I’ve ever been on has had dogs from time to time. Sometimes, they’ve been my dogs, but not usually. Take her up there and hang out at the student center for a bit, on leash. You’ll get lots of attention but sweet and intelligent yellow labs always do.
Keep the visits short so that it doesn’t test her attention span. If she starts getting worked up, take her home. You’ll want every outing to be successful. She’s still a puppy so you need to ease into it. Don’t plan on taking her to your own classes until she’s older and can be trusted to sit for an hour.
Personally, I would wait until after she’s been spayed. She’ll be a little older and steadier at that point. She’s had all her shots, right?
When I was in law school in the 80s, Bowser came just about everywhere with me. Certainly off leash on the quad, in the classroom of the undergrad courses I taught, in my TA office, and he waited outside of law school when I was in class or tied up in front of Murphy’s or Deluxe Billiards more than once. Walking down the street, if he saw a party spilling out the door, he’d be in among the legs before I could think whether or not I was likely to know anyone. Sure was a simpler time without the need for vests and “Canine Good Citizen” classes.
It was kind of fun. The class portion was just firming up basic obedience skills in preparation for the certification test. The dog needs to demonstrate being under your control at all times along with having good manners at all times. So the skills they test for are sit-stay, recall, leave it, good on-leash behavior in crowds and not being reactive to either people or other dogs. We had a couple of dogs in our class fail because of reactivity - one owner of a large portugese water dog claimed it was his third time in the course (destined for a fourth).
That course motivated us to finally teach our male greyhound to sit on hand signal because he never sits naturally and we couldn’t teach him how for about two years. Despite this personal triumph, the instructor exempted both greys from the sitting requirements because they were so good at standing calmly by my side for any length of time and not being at all reactive.
They embarrassed me at the test, though, when doing recall. When unleashed and called, all the other dogs ran happily to their owners. When unleashed, mine stood there looking confused and then finally slowly walked over to me. That’s greyhounds for ya. (I’d thought of bringing a squirrel call because it stimulates them into a chase, but thought that would disqualify us for cheating. LOL!)
I’m not clear on this point; is your dog currently in an assistance training program or are you just planning to enter her in an assistance training program at some point in the future? If she’s currently in a program, then bringing her to your job while wearing a training coat is fine. But is she’s not currently in a training program, you’d be abusing the system and that would be wrong.
Little Nemo, it actually doesn’t matter. Her dog is doing therapy dog training, not assistance animal training. As someone above pointed out, these are different things:
Therapy dogs go to hospitals, schools or libraries to provide comfort to the people there. They allow students or elderly with little access to pets to have someone to pet and love on. They also give young kids someone non-judgemental to read to as a method of helping them to learn reading.
Assistance animals do more active services for people. They are trained to open doors, fetch things, help a person walk or climb stairs, help a person get up after they fall or help prevent them from falling in the first place. They can also help alert the person about to have a seizure, etc. It’s only this category that is allowed in public places like restaurants (in the US) or anywhere that ordinary pets are forbidden.
The majority of therapy dogs I’ve seen are on airplanes so that the owner’s can keep their dogs with them when they travel, as opposed to paying for them to ride in the cargo area.
