Let’s Talk Autism: The World of Service Dogs
Hosted by Amanda Antell. Guest speaker Gwen Dudek. Produced by the Let's Talk! Podcast Collective. Audio and transcript editing by Miri Newman. Web hosting by Eugene Holden.
Let’s Talk! Autism: The World of Service Dogs
Summary: Gwen Dudek of Dogs for Better Lives talks to Amanda about the training, the placement, and living with Service Dogs, and what they can do for people with disabilities.
- Hosted By: Amanda Antell
- Guest Speaker: Gwen Dudek
- Produced By: Let’s Talk! Podcast Collective
- Audio and Transcript Editing: Miri Newman
- Web Hosting: Eugene Holden
- Released on: 7/21/2025
- More resources at our home website.
Episode Transcript
Transcript edited by Miri Newman
Introduction
Amanda: Thank you, Gwen, for joining us today. I look forward to talking to you today about Autism and Service Dogs, as it’s one of my favorite topics ever, ’cause I’m autistic and my special interest is animals.
Gwen: Fantastic.
Amanda: So welcome to today’s episode of Let’s Talk: Autism. I am the host and producer, Amanda, and today I am with Gwen Dudek, who is the Vice President of Dogs For Better Lives. And I’m excited to have you here today, Gwen.
Gwen: I’m very excited to be here. Thanks for having me.
Amanda: So, as I mentioned before, I am high functioning autistic. I was diagnosed at age 31, I use she/her pronouns, and I’m happy to say that after years of hard work and and like learning how my brain works as an autistic person, I got accepted to veterinary school and I am going to start that in the fall.
Gwen: That’s awesome. As you know, my name is Gwen, and I am the Vice President of the program department at Dogs For Better Lives. I prefer to be called she/her. Thank you for having me here today. It’s really great.
The Mission of Dogs For Better Lives
Amanda: So, in your own words, can you please tell our listeners the mission of Dogs For Better Lives, how are your dogs sourced, trained, and placed with families?
Gwen: Yeah! So Dogs For Better Lives — just to give you a little history and our mission — Dogs For Better Lives has been around since 1977. We were originally called Dogs for the Deaf, and so our history is really founded with a gentleman who was an animal trainer for Hollywood. He was fascinated when he learned of a woman who had self-trained her own hearing assistance dog. And so with that concept in mind, he started Dogs for the Deaf, in Northern California, where we’re now headquartered in Southern Oregon. So we just moved a little bit. But in the model that started Dogs For Better Lives, we used shelter dogs. And so we would go to shelters and, pull the dogs we thought might have the most success as a service dog, bring them to our training facility in southern Oregon, train them and place them. We still use shelter dogs as part of the way we source our dogs. The program is operating a little bit differently than how it did in the past. So shelter dogs are one source of our dogs. Another source of our dogs, we have our own breeding program that is very small and just beginning, where we’re breeding Labrador retrievers and golden retrievers to become future hearing dogs, future dogs for kids with autism, service dogs for kids with autism and facility dogs. And so our mission is really to train and place dogs for people with disabilities. and we maintain a lifelong commitment to those teams, um, wanting to support them as, you know, both people’s lives change and dogs change as time goes on. And so we’re always here as a support to those dogs and those folks that are part of our program. If you think about a program like this, you know, we are always looking for folks that are interested in getting a dog from our program, but we also have so much demand that, you know, there’s never really enough dogs. But, um, we are placing them at no cost to the individuals that go through our program, you know, go, go through our application and are approved.
Amanda: Thank you. So you mentioned, like, in the program’s earlier days, you guys were selecting dogs from shelters, and you’re still doing that, correct me if I’m wrong, and you’re also starting your own breeding program. What traits do you look for with shelter dogs and what do you look for in a shelter dog versus what you’re versus the dogs you’re breeding?
Gwen: Sure. We’ve got a really nice modification of the shelter dog program going on now, where we’re partnered with a shelter in Carrollton, Texas, called Operation Kindness. So a very, very large shelter in Texas, and also now just recently partnered with Atlanta, the Atlanta Humane Society. So another very large shelter. And these shelters bring in, unfortunately, bring in thousands and thousands and thousands of dogs every year. And so we have a relationship where we’re able to see those dogs at intake, so we’re able to be kind of the first set of eyes on the dogs that are coming in. Now, unfortunately, in the world of service dogs, especially an organization that’s training these dogs and handing them off to someone, we’re not gonna be able to use any dog that has some pit that really clearly looks or is a pit bull. Um, but there are a lot of those available. But outside of that restriction, we are mostly focused on the dog’s temperament. We don’t care if it’s a little dog or a big dog, we need a dog that is social and… Really, social ability is the number one thing that we’re looking for. But then the second thing is, of course, an absence of any type of aggression. And maybe I should flip those, obviously in absence of aggression and highly social. Um, but that’s really what we’re looking for, at the very basic level. And then as we do more evaluation, of course, we’re looking to make sure that, you know, they don’t have a strong prey drive, that novel items aren’t surprising to them, that they do like interaction. You know, most any dog is trainable, so trainability is not really something we have to screen for, because we can route them into our different programs, like a dog that is highly food motivated and highly driven typically it becomes a very nice hearing dog, whereas our dogs that are just a little bit more chill, really like to be pet or just hang out, you know, those dogs become really lovely autism assistance dogs and facility dogs. So we can work with a wide variety of temperaments when we’re in those shelters, looking at the dogs in the shelter. Um, but there are a few things that they have to be very free of aggression and honestly fear, because you know that’s not gonna work well.
Amanda: Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. And that definitely lines up with what I’ve seen with service dogs and just kind of what I’ve learned about service dogs. But that also brings me to another question about the shelter dogs versus dogs you breed: What age of the shelter dogs are you looking for? ‘Cause I know with service dogs, ADA service dogs, they have to be trained from really young puppy hood.
Gwen: Right. So, um, we are members of Assistance Dogs International, so the overarching organization that sets standards and accredits assistance dog schools. And so with being a member of Assistance Dogs International, there is a standard in there that if you are, bringing in dogs that you didn’t start as puppies, so either getting them from a shelter or getting them from another program, that they have to be a part of your program for six months. And so that way you’re kind, you know, that dog before you’re handing it off to another family or an individual. To answer your question about age, you know, that is one of the very challenging things in the shelter dog program, because we don’t necessarily want to take a puppy, ’cause you don’t know what that puppy’s gonna grow up to be health wise or temperament wise. So the youngest dogs will look at are typically around eight months old. And then we also want them to have a working career, so we don’t want them to be too old either. So typically the dogs that we’re evaluating — if it’s known right? You don’t always know the age of a shelter dog — are between eight months of age and three years of age. And we can go a little bit older if we needed to, or a little bit younger if the puppy was showing promise, but that’s really the sweet spot for us. It’s to bring a dog in between eight months and three years, and then they’ll be in training for six months, maybe more.
Amanda: No, I think that’s awesome, because really young puppies can get adopted pretty easily at shelters anyways, right? So that, so eight months to three years, those are like, I would say like even approaching six months, I think dogs start losing their puppy appeal a little bit, if that makes sense?
Gwen: Right.
Amanda: Because they start to look a little more adult. So it’s like, I think that’s really awesome that you’re giving old like adult dogs or like young adult dogs the chance to have a purpose. So I think that’s amazing.
Gwen: Thank you.
Amanda: And I just have one more question about the breeding versus shelter dog: Why are you guys starting your own breeding program, when you have like a plethora of shelter dogs to choose from? It’s like, it seems like a lot of time and money that you don’t need to spend.
Gwen: So the reality of the shelter dogs, so in our old model, we were pulling a lot of dogs out of the shelter, and only 11% of them were going on to be placed as service dogs. Making that transition from shelter to service is very challenging. We’re having a little better success in the program now, and we’re only pulling very small numbers of dogs at a time to train, but we’re still at less than a 50% success rate with that program. So way that you can consistently have more predictability in being able to produce service dogs is to have your own breeding program. Because our breeding program dogs are hitting about like 70% success rate. They’re converting into service animals, at a real, a much higher rate than the shelter dogs do. But you’re right, breeding programs are expensive and they are challenging, and, yes, yes. And, and finding volunteer puppy raisers to raise those little cute bundles of joy and then give them back also a challenge. So.
Amanda: Yeah. And the reason I ask that is, so I want the audience members to understand that there is a significant difference between raising a dog from puppy hood to do these specific services versus a dog and a shelter that you can train. And the nice thing about autism, in my opinion, is that because we’re a people on a spectrum, you don’t have to have a dog too highly trained to accommodate our needs, if that makes sense, depending on where we are on the spectrum, obviously. But like a Deaf person’s dog, obviously they would need to be trained in sign, they would have to recognize nonverbal cues, which I think is awesome. To me, you can actually teach a dog, basically the entire language of sign language easily, ’cause dogs communicate with us non-verbally anyways. But at the same time, when you have more specialized training, like, mobility issues, cardiac conditions, or seizures. You need a dog that is trained to, to handle basically any scenario possible and just keep a calm temperament. So I just want the audience to understand why I’m asking you these questions.
Gwen: Sure.
Amanda: On that note, what does happen to the shelter dogs if it doesn’t work out with the family?
Gwen: So for our shelter program currently, we go to the shelter, we do an evaluation. There’s a couple steps to the evaluation, including, you know, going to a dog friendly place in public like Lowe’s or Home Depot. And then also taking the dog back to our training apartment and making sure, “Well, we are just now pulling the dog outta the shelter, if we pet ’em in a surprising way, how do they react?” Right? Like, just trying to really see who they are right in this moment. So then the dogs get selected and go live with a foster, and then we go get them from foster, train them every day, and take them back to foster. So they’re not living in a kennel in this program that we’re running right now. As a part of all of their training, you know, we’re taking them places. We’re seeing how manageable they are. We’re seeing what their training style, learning style, interaction style is, and making the decision if the dog can progress in the program. One of the dogs we had in our program recently seemed fine in the car, but car sickness became increasingly worse with every trip. And so we had to drop that dog from our program. Where we are with our relationship with our shelter partners is the dog had about two and a half months of training, we knew it was crate trained, it knew, sit, down, how to walk on a leash and a few other things. We knew exactly where the hard thing to live with this dog was the car sickness. So we were able to return the dog to Operation Kindness, and they were able to tell the future adopter, “The dog knows all of these things. This is the what you’ll be managing.” And the dog got adopted really quickly just because you know so much more about them once they’ve been in our program. So that’s when, um, you know, that’s when a dog is dropped out of training.
Amanda: My last part of this question So how are dogs matched with families and what happens when it doesn’t work out?
Gwen: Sure. So in our process, the dogs are trained for about four months, so we have a pretty good understanding of who the dog is, and what their strengths and weaknesses are. They are tested in month five, so they go through a process with our national training manager, where the trainer demonstrates the dog skills and talks again about all things we’ll want to know about this dog before deciding where to put it. When we pull the dogs into training, they all are trained a basic subset of the skills, but at month three, we route them facility, autism assistance, or hearing dog. And so then the dog spends the second half of its training really focused on the skills that it’s going to need for its future role. Once the dog progresses through training and hits that testing mark, our national training manager and our training team will look at all the folks that are on our waiting list and they will, try to learn about if so, in the case of placing, uh, an autism assistance dog, we wanna know about the family, we wanna know about their lifestyle. Where do they go? Where do they think they’ll take the dog? Cause the dog doesn’t have to go everywhere with them. Is the kiddo in therapies, and they wanna integrate the dog into any of the therapies, or in their afterschool activities? Just trying to really understand how they’re gonna integrate the dog. Of course we also wanna know like the kid’s activity level, and sometimes we’ll have parents say, yep, my kid is really busy, but do not give me a really busy dog. Or they will say, my kid is really busy and I need a dog to keep up with ’em. So we’re trying to take all of that feedback into account when we select a family. Once we think we found a family that we think is a good fit, we will call them, describe the dog. and they can tell us if that sounds like a good fit to them or not. If they say yes, we, um, take the dog to them and do a one week placement. So, a trainer goes to their home, works with the mom, works with the kid, works with the dad, grandparent, whoever the support system is, integrates the kid into the relationship as much as we can in a week. Some kids are dialed in right away, wanna do as much as they possibly can, and some kids are like, not real sure. Why is this person in my house? So what are they doing here? Why did they bring this dog that licks me sometimes? Every placement is unique. We, you know, respect and appreciate that, actually. A lot of that one week is training the mom or the dad or the grandparent — whoever’s involved — on how to build a relationship between the dog and the kid. Um, and then at the conclusion of the week, the placement is considered made unless there’s something else to work on. And then our families keep in touch with us, so once a month for the first year, they’re gonna send in a report and talk to us on the phone, or on a video call, or a text message, something. We’re gonna have some type of communication. And then, at the end of a year, we’re gonna see them in person and then again at three years and seven years, and if they need us to come and see them in person more often, we’re available. But this is how we are, like, keeping a pulse on how everything’s going. and if they need help with anything. Cause dogs do develop behaviors sometimes that we don’t love, and so how can we kind of work with the dog and, and modify those behaviors. In the case where maybe a placement doesn’t work out, a lot of times we’re gonna see that during that one week of placement. Where maybe it just really wasn’t a good fit, dog to person, or, I feel like this happens more commonly in like our hearing dog roles, where we’ll bring a dog and, for whatever reason, what the person can do to manage the dog doesn’t necessarily line up with the type of management that the dog needs. And so maybe that’s a time when we’ll just bring a dog back to training and find another person for them. If a dog doesn’t work out, so maybe it’s been a working dog for five years, for a kid with autism. This actually did happen to us recently where, um, the parents called us and they said, ” You know what? My kid, my kid grew up and he doesn’t use his dog anymore and we don’t feel like it’s fair to her. We don’t, we don’t have a lifestyle that, you know, since the dog isn’t going with us anymore, we don’t really have a lifestyle where she gets to be a dog. We think it would be really great for you to take her back and give her back to the volunteer that raised her.” And so that has happened. But again, every situation is unique. Regardless of why a placement maybe doesn’t work out, Dogs For Better Lives takes that dog back and finds a situation for it where it can happily live the rest of its days. Whether that’s as a working dog for someone else or as a pet dog for someone.
Training Autism Service Dogs
Amanda: How would you say that Autism Service Dogs differ from other disability service training, re I guess with your organization, like hearing. And you kind of went into this a little bit, but you mentioned the difference of food motivation versus like non-food, food motivation. So how do the training regimes differ with Autism Service dogs?
Gwen: Great question. so the training that Dogs For Better Lives does for the the autism service dogs is currently very focused on interactive skills. So the dog, when cued, will lay his, or her chin across your legs when you’re seated, or on a bed, or on the floor. They also have a behavior called lap, where the dog will place its front legs across your legs when in any of those positions. A lot of our families like that, kind of provides that deep pressure that we’ve heard can be calming and kind of centering, grounding for the kids. The other skills that the dogs learn, specific to the autism assistance dog, is a behavior called touch, where when directed, we can send the dog to go touch, or nudge, a kid’s hand, leg, wherever we want, wherever the kiddo will accept, or prefers, to have the dog go touch, nudge. And some of the parents use that as like an attention getter, like, Hey, come into this room with me, or, to redirect them, if the parent feels that that’s a wise choice at the time. These are the skills that obviously, you know, a lot of our parents are also just using the responsibility of having a dog and the routine that a dog creates. So getting the kid involved as much as possible in things like grooming and exercise, and feeding, putting the dog in the crate, taking the dog out of the crate. So, when we’re looking for a dog for this program, and as you referenced, the folks with autism are on a spectrum, and so we still have a spectrum of temperaments that we can work with, and we have a spectrum of trainability, and how dogs — how each individual dog learns — that we can work with to place in this program. So it’s not to say that a dog that’s highly food motivated should or shouldn’t go out to a family with a kid with autism. If I were to generalize, I would say our hearing dogs tend to be incredibly food motivated and incredibly driven, almost to an annoying way. And they’re very aware of their environment, they have a lot of energy. Whereas, again, if I’m generalizing, our dogs that tend to go to families with autism tend to be a little bit more relaxed, laid back, a little less distracted or environmentally aware, more focused and willing to just hang out, versus our hearing dogs are always, like. We want them to be confident enough to leave their handler to go investigate the sound and come back, whereas our preference for our autism dogs is that they’re, they like their person and they wanna hang out right there and see what comes next. So how they’re trained, most of our dogs are trained with food. We are all positive based reinforcement schools, that that’s how we teach the skills. There’s other skills that the dogs know that some of the families integrate, like squish, where the dogs literally will just lay on top of you, the ultimate of deep pressure. Then there’s other things that the dogs do, like if they can push like a therapy ball or a soccer ball, play, like pass back and forth between a kid — or a parent — and the dog. They can wave, if you’re in public, you wave and tell the dog to wave and that can be very engaging, if they want to engage with the general public.
Amanda: So my own experience, growing up, I wasn’t diagnosed with autism until I was 31, but kind of what you said about the physical sensation of like a dog laying down on me or like just touching or like, you know, putting their nose to my hand.
Gwen: Uh-huh.
Amanda: My parents’ dog would do that for me, too, and they weren’t even service trained is so it’s like I totally get what you’re saying. And not all autistic people like the deep pressure sensation, ’cause it can feel kind of suffocating to some of us. It’s definitely important to like check in with the person. Are they okay with touch, are they okay with hugs, yada yada. And obviously you would match the dog based on that. I would say for me personally, it was definitely about having like the companionship, the deep pressure as you said, and also the routine. Like it really did teach me empathy and responsibility. Like my mom specifically, it’s not just dogs. It’s like my mom would specifically use animals to teach me boundaries and how to kind of level my voice.
Gwen: Mm-hmm.
Amanda: My earliest memory of this is we were at this farm somewhere on a field trip and I was holding a baby chick and my mom had her two thumbs in between my hand and the chick. First of all to make sure I wasn’t gonna drop the chick and making sure I also wasn’t gonna squeeze the chick. And she also told me to use a gentle voice around the chick to make sure I wasn’t screaming around this poor animal. My mom really took a lot of steps to make sure me and my sister knew how to behave around animals, and I feel like that’s something a lot of parents kind of struggle with too. It’s like, using very quieter voices, not like getting into like kind of reading the animals behavior as well. And that’s where it can get a little dicey sometimes because, sometimes kids just aren’t taught boundaries around animals or how to respect their body language. But the thing about autism, especially nonverbal autistic people, is that we rely on nonverbal cues. It’s like I read body language myself quite a bit when interacting with other people to tell if I’m upsetting them or not. There’s like this pattern I follow and it’s like, okay, so they’re changing the subject, or their voice changed, or their eyebrow is twitching or something like that. That tells me that they’re upset with me. I think dogs kind of pick up on that too, where it’s like they do notice immediately, like there is some kind of behavioral change, and that tells them that they need to change something or they need to get away from a situation.
Gwen: Agree, absolutely agree with that. At Dogs For Better Lives, we also use hand signals and some of that stems from our founding in hearing dogs. So the dogs do learn a hand signal. They learn a verbal cue. But we hope over time that, the dogs, that they become more part of a kid’s routine. They’re gonna pick up on those nonverbal cues. They’re gonna know. And whether it is through patterning or they’re reading the kid’s body language, they’re gonna know that this is the time when little Sammy would like the dog’s head to rest in his lap. Or don’t! This is the time to not do that. So the dogs definitely learn and pick up on the cues of what’s going on in the environment with the kid, with the mom. And certainly, we can use that to our advantage to get the dogs to do the things we want them to do. If they offer a behavior at the right time, really capture that reward. Cause the dogs are always learning, and so, you’ll hear the stories from the parents that are like, “I just think he can read, he can read my son’s mind.” And we’re like, well, probably not, but he probably can read his body language. So you’re absolutely right.
Amanda: And kind of going off that a little more, would you say that part of the placement process is also teaching the parents and the child, the dog’s body language cues?
Gwen: Absolutely.
Amanda: And how to respond to them?
Gwen: Absolutely. There’s a whole section in placement about reading the dog’s body language. Since we only have a week with the family, the training is largely focused on training the adult that’s gonna be responsible for the team. and getting that parent or that grandparent to really understand that, “Oh wait, hold on a minute, let’s give the dog a break,” or, “Oh, we can keep going, the dog’s really enjoying this.” So yeah, absolutely. Teaching people to read body language, I’m not gonna pretend that that really gets accomplished in a week, but we try to lay the foundation and at least get them to know their dog.
Amanda: Another thing to kind of remember about learning, really any animal body language is that like what you said, it’s just not gonna happen in a week, but it’s about just learning those basic cues first and learning how to respect them. ‘Cause when you spend a lot of time around any animal, you’re gonna, you’re just gonna unconsciously notice their different moods.
Gwen: Absolutely.
Amanda: So it’s also just kind of getting comfortable with the dog. And I don’t know if this ever comes up with families, but it’s just about reassuring them and, and building up their confidence that even if you don’t get this right away, even if you don’t have a lot of experience with dogs right now, you will get to know this dog. And it’s not a contest about how good you are compared to someone else.
Gwen: That is absolutely true. In my previous career — I’ve always worked in the service dog industry, but I worked for a very large service dog school that did group placements. And so naturally, in parents in particular, everybody’s gonna have their strengths and weaknesses, and every dog has their strengths and weaknesses. And so we would match the dogs up with families and at points in time, you know, certain things would be more… come more readily for some families than others. And it was very natural to feel like maybe you were failing if you were the one that wasn’t having as much success. And it is absolutely imperative that folks understand that integrating a service dog into your life is a process. Whether you commit a week to learning this dog or two weeks, it’s going to take, honestly, it takes years before you become a highly tuned team. But it definitely takes months before we kind of know each other and the dog relaxes into being who they actually are, not just who they think they are in training and with the trainer who’s always going to be redirecting them and keeping them on good behavior, and getting comfortable in your environment. So it — it’s absolutely not a competition, and I would really empower anyone that’s thinking about a service dog to think about: What is your end result? What do you hope to achieve with this relationship? But know that that’s gonna be a journey. It’s not gonna be something that you get like the minute the leash is in your hand, or even the first three months that leash is in your hand.
Amanda: Another thing that I’d like the audience to understand about dog training in, or really any kind of animal training in general, is that this isn’t something you’re doing for three to six months, or whatever training program you sign up for with your animal. This is a lifelong, behavioral change process. You’re building a better relationship with your animal.
Gwen: Absolutely true.
Amanda: So I don’t know if you ever have challenges like that. It’s like, “Okay, yeah, I’m here a week, but you need to keep doing this after I leave”. But to me, that’s a big challenge that at least I’ve experienced with talking to people with dogs who are higher energy? Like most notoriously Siberian Huskies and German Shepherds, it’s like, “Yeah, my dog, it’s so well in training, but it’s like after I took him home, but after we stopped training, he like started eating the couch again.” I’m like, well, did you? I’m like, well, first of all, how much exercise are you doing with the dog? And second off, did you keep up with the training? Are you being consistent with your training? And another big issue is like partners are not consistent with the cues, or they don’t practice when they should. There’s just like a plethora of issues with dog training, but it’s like, this is not a temporary thing. This is your new schedule with this dog. And eventually it will become natural, but for now it has to be on a schedule and you have to be consistent on it. Like how hard would you say that is to get across to families?
Gwen: Incredibly hard. So, you know, you definitely see it with pet dog owners. And sometimes I worry, it translates even more so in situations with a service dog placement because the families have this perception that they’re receiving a dog that is trained. And while the dog is trained, dogs are always learning whether we are actively teaching them something or not. So to your point, getting folks to understand that they maintain the same expectations. When we hand them the leash, that dog is not pulling on the leash to walk. It’s, it’s very well mannered on leash to take a walk in the neighborhood or walk it through the store. But if they don’t continue that expectation, they let the dog pull out to go sniff the person walking by or allow the dog to grab a piece of popcorn off the ground, it will be very quick that the dog no longer walks nicely on the leash. And in essence, that has happened not because the dog wasn’t trained, it happened because the person didn’t maintain the routine and the expectations that the dog knows. We see that in the service dog world. You know, the good news is in service dog land is the dogs do understand the expectation. So when we can remind the person what they need to do, and if they do it, the behaviors will come back, the desirable behaviors will come back.
Respecting a Service Dog or ESA Vest
Amanda: Yeah, totally. And that brings me to a question on here that was, kind of passed through earlier, but to what you just said now, can you please explain to the audience why it is so important to respect the service dog vest or the ESA vest?
Gwen: Yeah, absolutely. So, folks that have a working dog and they’re taking it with them in public, obviously the dog has a task or a skill, or multiple tasks or skills, that they really want the dog focused on performing when needed in a public place. And so when the general public, you know, notoriously just comes up and starts petting the dog, and usually says, “Oh, I have a dog just like this!” You know, it’s a purple polka dotted Pomeranian when you have a yellow lab at the end of your leash. But they tell you, “My dog is just like yours, and I’m petting your dog because it’s just like yours.” And even when you are asking them, “Please don’t pet,” a lot of times people will continue to pet and it is very, very distracting for the dogs. It does take them off of their task, it gives the person one more thing to manage and one more thing to worried about. And I say that. It requires more attention cause you’re already focused on what you’re trying to accomplish. You’re focused on managing your dog, and now you also have to make sure that the general public isn’t coming up and distracting your dog. A lot of folks though, do love to talk to you about the dog at the end of their leash, and so, as a person in public seeing a working service dog, it’s always great to greet the person, “Hi, I noticed you have a beautiful dog here. What’s your dog’s name?” And sometimes that person may say, “My dog’s name is, and I invite you to pet him, if he’s sitting still.” a lot of times there’ll be some scenario where you interact, but it has to be at the direction of the person holding the leash.
Amanda: Yeah, totally. And correct me if I’m wrong, a lot of service dogs, if not all of ’em, are trained to basically be like, okay, I’m on duty now, I have to be focused on work, whereas the vest comes off, they’re like, “Okay, time to play.”
Gwen: So as someone who’s been a trainer for 29 years, the dogs do unintentionally learn that. It is our preference that the dog kind of always thinks the rules are the same, regardless if they’re wearing the vest or not, and that the person is the one saying, maybe they have their vest on, but they’re, at their friend’s house and it’s fine for them to sniff around or go grab a bone, lay down and chew on it. So what we really would like the dog to be keyed in on is what their human is telling them to do and what is okay and what isn’t. For me, the vest is more of a signal to the public that this is a working dog, and please ask before petting or talk to the person. Do not just automatically pet the dog. but. The dogs definitely do learn. If people have really high expectations when the vest is on, and really low expectation with the vest is off, you will see that difference in behavior develop in the dogs pretty quickly.
Amanda: That’s very interesting. ’cause that was a misconception of mine, obviously. ‘ cause I’ve seen people with service dogs do that, where it’s like I’m talking to them and then their dog would be totally focused on whatever their task is, and then they take the vest off and the dog is like all over me and wants to play. So that’s kind of where my assumption there came from. But what you said totally makes sense. You want the dog to behave consistently all the time. That totally makes sense.
Gwen: Yes. But what you’ve observed is, is what happens in practice. So it’s very fair how you came to that conclusion.
Amanda: I think another good point to what you said is to always ask the person before petting the dog regardless if there’s a vest or not. Because my perception is it’s a safety thing, ‘ you just dunno how the dog is gonna act with strangers. Yeah, it’s a pretty dog and it seems well behaved with the handler, but it’s like you don’t know how it’s gonna react to you, especially when you’re going up to their handler and they might get protective, they might get possessive or they might perceive you as a threat ’cause of the way you’re standing in front of the dog unintentionally. There’s just a lot of things that can happen. So to me it’s just always good to kind of keep a fair bit of distance from a dog that you don’t know, and then ask the person before touching them. I dunno, that’s just my kind of 2 cents on it too.
Gwen: Oh, I a hundred percent agree with you. We hope that the person holding the leash really does understand who their dog is and gives you good advice, but at the very minimum, absolutely ask before petting. As someone who has a German Shepherd who is a lovely dog and will let people pet her, there are times where she makes a German Shepherd noise out of nowhere, and I don’t see it coming. So in general, I prefer people don’t pet her, even if she’s looking adorable, holding her crispy. Because she’s unpredictable. Yeah, in the moment you might be seeing a really cute, adorable looking to be amazing little animal that you’d love to pet, but you don’t know if that dog sometimes behaves differently than that. So, very good advice.
Amanda: And another thing that a lot of people don’t think about, and I think this comes up with horses more often than dogs, but if there’s something in an environment that like spooks an animal, they will just react very differently than normal. Especially like if it’s another animal, like a dog, is dog aggressive or a dog fearful of other dogs, they will turn into a completely different personality on a dime.
Gwen: That is absolutely true. They are truly living in the moment. Anything changes in the environment and you may see a different dog, that’s for sure.
Amanda: And I don’t know if this comes up with placements or training, but I feel like a lot of people take it very personally if they feel like the handler works better with the dog. At least that’s what I’ve noticed in my own personal experience. They just take it more personally if the dog responds to you more. The way I try to explain it is it’s not ’cause the dog likes me better, it’s just that I’m being consistent with my cues and I know how to hold myself and I know what body language cues I’m giving the dog. I’m very physically aware of what I’m doing.
Gwen: Absolutely. I, I mean that is so true. The dogs are reading you just like you are reading them. I think, those of us that have the, you know, every dog in the household will listen to what you say or however that might show up. It has more to do with exactly what you said, our body language, perhaps our confidence, the subtle cues that they’re reading from us, like the subtle expectations that we’re projecting, and how we’re reading them. One of my favorite examples is my mother comes to visit and the dogs don’t listen to her at all. But she’s of course, you know, talking in her high squeaky voice and telling them, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit, sit. And of course they don’t listen, because why would they? And she sounds super fun and, and she doesn’t have that self-awareness to, you know, if she really wanted them to sit, she could stand up straight, take a deep breath, use a competent voice, get the dog’s attention and tell them to sit, and she’d probably get a very different result than how it typically looks when she comes for a visit, as a crazy example.
Amanda: I think that’s pretty common. and the reason I say that is ’cause I also want the listeners to understand it’s not a competition. Each of your relationships with your dog or any animal’s going to be individual and unique to you. And it’s not a competition. I used to take it pretty personally when my in-law’s dog loved my father-in-law more than anyone else in the household, because everyone else would take care of this dog, but my father-in-law.
Gwen: Uh-huh.
Amanda: But here’s the context behind that: This dog was born at my father-in-law’s mother’s house and my grandmother in-law’s house, and he smelled the most like my grandma. So of course she’s gonna have the most affinity towards him.
Gwen: Absolutely.
Amanda: And it wasn’t like she disliked the rest of us, it’s just that
Gwen: Right.
Amanda: The excitement when he came home was just so obvious. And this was like a little dachshund/chihuahua mix. So she barked like crazy, of course.
Gwen: Absolutely. And it’s certainly not a competition. I- You know, the more time you spend with animals and, and see animals in different contexts with different people, you really appreciate that, while you have a very specific relationship with that dog, they have a unique relationship with other people as well. And I do think the dogs understand that. I see my own personal, my German Shepherd thinks I am the person that feeds and walks them, and my teenage son and his girlfriend are her relaxing, petting, interaction buddies. And if I spend too much time petting her, she doesn’t want that, ’cause she expects me to throw the Frisbee. And so just really value that the relationship you have is very unique. and it’s absolutely not a competition.
Amanda: Another thing I feel like with dogs in general, I feel like people kind of need to just enjoy the process with the dog. It’s about learning about yourself and learning about your dog. And I kind of talked about this Chihuahua/Dachshund Dog mix. I can tell you that my in-laws dog would’ve been fantastic at Food Motivation and she would’ve learned very quickly, but she would’ve been a terrible service dog because she just barks and bites at everyone cause she’s smart enough to know how to get what she wants. She is like, okay, I’ll pretend to be good.
Gwen: Absolutely.
Amanda: Another question I had for you with small versus big dogs. This is something I kind of caution people a lot about when they ask me what recommendations I give them for dogs. If they have small children, I definitely recommend larger dogs like labs and retrievers, versus like smaller dogs, like a dachshund, chihuahua, papillon, pomeranian. And to me it’s because kids, kind of like I told you from my own childhood, they’re learning how to interact with animals, and I feel like larger dogs can kind of take the trauma of little kids a little more, and I think I really kind of want parents to understand that it’s not that I think their kid is trying to hurt an animal consciously or anything like that, it’s just they don’t know better. So when you are with families, with younger versus older kids, do you ever take into that consideration as well?
Gwen: Yeah, I mean, in our world, most of the dogs that go out are Labrador retriever-size, they’re 40 pounds or more. So fortunately that’s not necessarily a conversation we have to have, but I definitely agree with you and I even, I have personal experience with that. Well, you know, when my kids were young and we got the little dog that they could pick up, it was also the little dog that they could accidentally drop. To your point, it’s not intentional, but getting that medium to larger sized dog is solid advice.
Amanda: I also feel like labs and retrievers are energetic enough to keep up with little kids, but they’re not overwhelming with their energetic needs. Like, I love German Shepherds. They were my grandpa’s dog. I partially grew up around German Shepherds. I absolutely love them, but to be honest with you, I probably wouldn’t recommend them for a family with small children, unless that the family had experience with German Shepherds beforehand, and they understand how to teach their child how to interact with this dog.
Gwen: We definitely have a lot of success in the service dog industry with the Labrador retrievers or lab/golden mixes. Those are just fantastic for this type of work, and, just because for the reasons you just said, they’re very easy to live with typically, have some energy, but not always too much energy, and, just kind of go with the flow, whether it’s a really busy household and kids are crying and screaming and throwing toys or everyone’s taking a nap, the dog tends to be really malleable.
Amanda: Oh, definitely. I feel like German Shepherds could potentially be service dogs, ADA service dogs, but again, you have to have pretty specific temperaments and they would have to be trained very specifically.
Gwen: Exactly.
Amanda: And there’s a specific reason why German shepherds are usually police dogs, search and rescue, bomb detection. Same with malinois, I love watching malinois work, but I would never wanna own one. I’m not delusional enough to think I can handle a malinois because this is another thing I tell people about choosing a dog, and I don’t know if this ever comes up with placements, is be very brutally honest about your lifestyle and if it can accommodate this dog.
Gwen: That is such a great point. And it does come up with placements. A lot of times when people are trying to get a service dog, they know they want a service dog and they want to tell you absolutely what they think you want to hear. The reality is we wanna hear what’s real. We wanna hear what your actual schedule and lifestyle is not what you think we want to hear. And being honest is so important. And hope the person that is helping you pick the dog, or providing you with a service dog, is not going to judge whether your lifestyle is or isn’t what they think it should be. They just wanna know what it is so we can make a good choice. That’s a very good point.
Amanda: And for me, being autistic myself, I fantasize about owning a German shepherd. ’cause again, they were my grandpa’s dog, but I only have a specific amount of energy allocated to daily task, and I just know I’m not active enough for the needs of a German Shepherd. And that’s the thing about autistic people. We tend to, at least in my opinion, we tend to be more honest about ourselves in our energy levels, or it’s like we tend to be a little more open about it in private, at least Uhhuh. And it’s like, okay, I want a dog for companionship. This is kind of who I am, and this’ll be my own relationship with this animal. Or at least that’s me. I shouldn’t speak for all autistic people, obviously.
Gwen: Well certainly from the standpoint of trying to make a placement with someone, that open honesty is key to having the best possible match. I think that in a lot of ways, people will end up having the relationship they have with their dog, whether it’s ideal or not. They’ll make it work. But if you can come into it being honest about who you are and what you want, you can end up in a really amazing situation with a great dog and a great relationship.
Favorite Dog Breeds
Amanda: So going to breeds, what would you say are your favorite breeds?
Gwen: So as someone who’s spent their entire life really making service dog placements, I’m very partial to Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers, and crosses of the two breeds. But since coming over here to Dogs For Better Lives, and seeing this shelter dog world and how many dogs really do need homes, there are some amazing mixed breeds out there. If you can really go into this, looking at the dog’s personality and temperament versus how it looks or, what kind of fur it has. I have some very, very nice preferences for some mixed breeds that have come through our program doors in the past couple of years. Very nice dogs that’s mixed breeds as well.
Amanda: And to kind of go away from training a little bit, another thing I want the audience to be aware of when they’re adopting a dog, especially a pure bred dog, be aware of the health issues that are gonna come up with these dogs. Like I love German Shepherds, but they are the poster children of hip dysplasia. Labs typically get fatty tissue tumors, sometimes benign, sometimes malignant, unfortunately. But for some reason, Labs in particular are really prone to those. And I’m not here to discuss breeding issues, but suffice to say just be aware of what you’re buying. And mixed breeds, to what you said, I actually do kind of recommend them, more than purebreds for several reasons. One of them is like all the genetic issues I mentioned previously, they’re less likely to have them. It’s not a guarantee that they won’t have them, but they are less likely.
Gwen: Absolutely true. And that comes up in the service dog world as well. When you see, a lot of the schools breeding labs and goldens together, or you know, a lab Golden Cross to another lab or a lab Golden Cross to another golden. Because you’re getting that genetic diversity, and less of the really prominent, physical issues that go with either one of those breeds. You’re kind of diluting that a bit.
Amanda: One thing I noticed more recently, with Labs specifically, is that I’ve seen American and British labs kind of crossing. And it’s really, it’s very interesting to see the two variations of the breed side by side, ’cause they actually are very physically and morphologically different. But the reason I think that’s interesting is because the British variation of the breed is a little more desired with service dogs because they tend to be calmer and they tend to be shorter and stockier than the American variation.
Gwen: Absolutely true. Why service dog schools start their own breeding programs is because a lot of the Labrador breeders really want that field trial dog, that dog that wants to get that duck, run, run, run. And, you know, that’s not really an ideal quality for a future service dog. So, to your point, um, with the example of British and American Labradors, if you see a typical Labrador coming out of a guide dog school or, a large organization like Canine Companions that’s had breeding programs for decades, in some ways those dogs, look like Labs, but they have qualities that are very, very different from your typical pet dog or, other working role Labrador retriever that you’d see in America.
Amanda: Yeah, definitely. And it also increases the genetic diversity in between the two variations, which I think is great. Because when you get down to like really rare dogs, like the flat coated retriever, a huge issue you’ll find is that because there’s so few of these dogs, you have a lot of inbreeding issues because of that. ’cause the demand is still there, but there’s too few of these animals and you get a lot of inbreeding issues like disease, bone density issues, breeding issues, obviously. I just don’t think it’s very ethical, unfortunately.
Gwen: Agree. You’re in vet school, right?
Amanda: Yeah. Well I’m gonna be in vet school in the fall, and some of my breed generalizations kind of come from what I’ve seen in the veterinary industry as well. German shepherds are also like really notorious for being like very anxious in the vet office along with Huskies. They scream, they just don’t want to be away from their — A lot of that is separation anxiety. A lot of,
Gwen: Yep!
Amanda: And it’s like. They just don’t wanna be away from their owner. And I’m like, oh baby, I feel so bad.
Gwen: Yeah, I, yep, I have that German Shepherd that, I, I hear you. And it’s, it is, it is really hard. It is not something I thought about when we got her. I knew that in general, there would probably be some anxiety, there’d be some energy. We get a lot of exercise. I felt confident in managing that. The part I didn’t think about was trying to get her into the vet’s office, and that is four years later, still one of my biggest challenges with her. So, yep. Your experience is valid.
Amanda: One of the things I hope to do in vet schools is kind of approach really anxious dogs like that in a calmer way. One thing I’d like to do is just have like an introduction meeting with the dog and the owner, kind of make the vet office itself a place of calmness and treats and just happy association. ‘Cause part of what really sets animals off from the vet, is just the first experience. It’s like they’re in an unfamiliar place, unfamiliar smells, it’s overwhelming. All these sounds, the gloves smell nasty to them. It’s like they’re being manhandled by a total stranger. So I don’t blame them for not liking the vet. Not at all.
Gwen: I agree. And I think there’s been a lot of vets are doing a lot of things to try to make that better with some of the fear-free practices that are in place in different clinics, but it’s just so hard. You don’t have enough time to get them where you need them to be so that they can get their vaccines and go home. I do feel for those in the vet industry, when you see these different behaviors that enter the clinic and you’re have to somehow care for that dog.
Amanda: I’m hoping to accomplish this in vet school, my goal would to be like, to sit down with the owner, like in two different chairs so the dog can sniff me, calm down, see that the owner’s okay with me. I would hopefully be able to pet this dog and kind of watch for it being okay with me where I can touch this dog without freaking out on me, learning the dog’s personal limits. ‘Cause to me, I get where the dog is coming from on a really emotional and intuitive level. ‘Cause it’s an autism thing. It’s like I freak out when I’m in an unexpected, stressful situation. I can tell you the first time I got a blood test, I was worse than any German Shepherd at any vet office. It took three nurses to hold me down and I was screaming probably so loud that I’m pretty sure several blocks over heard me. You think that they were murdering me or something, it was that bad.
Gwen: The second time you had to have blood drawn, I’m sure it wasn’t much better! Because you didn’t have a great experience the first time.
Amanda: It’s not just about it being a new thing for me at the time, it was about the fact that I was suddenly expected to have like a needle jammed into an arm, that wasn’t natural. Shots I do okay with, it’s just a simple poke and it’s done, but it’s blood draws for me personally creep me out a little bit because watching blood leave your body is just unnatural, at least for me. But I understand that it’s medically necessary. But I get where these dogs are coming from, is my point. I’d like to develop techniques where I’m just introducing myself to this dog as like, okay, I know that I’m never gonna be your favorite person, but I want you to know you’re safe with me.
Gwen: Right. A rapport before you have to start, manipulating them.
Amanda: Yeah. Petting them like under the chin to start off with, not over the head, petting them towards the chest and just see how far I can get down the legs, scratching their butt. And just, you know, just kind of like, “Hey, are you okay with me touching you? Are you okay with me being around you?”
Gwen: Yes, absolutely.
Amanda: So, because that’s the thing with anxious animals, they tend to be very intelligent. They tend to be very observant with what’s going on, and they tend to be very highly survival oriented. That’s why their instinct is to try to get away from the situation,
Gwen: Yes.
Amanda: Autistic kids, autistic people, no different. If we’re in a situation we perceive as dangerous or uncomfortable, our instinct is to get away from it. And it’s like Temple Grandin, I mentioned her in the questions but didn’t really get to her. Her book, Animals in Translation, she talks about animal behavior, the importance of nonverbal cues. And why autistic people tend to connect with animals really well. To me, her greatest work has to be in agricultural work, where she just designed better ways to drive cattle and other livestock through chutes, and understanding why they were freaking out at specific points in the sorting process.
Gwen: I have not read her books, but I am very familiar with her work, especially in agriculture, and I have so much… I don’t know what the word I, I know the word is respect, but it’s also just… I’m almost envious that Temple could empathize in the way that she did to understand what was happening with the animals. What a gift. I mean, really. And to then be able to turn that into action and, and I feel like a lot of Temple Grandin’s work indirectly has made the service dog industry take a better look at things like training practices, equipment, animal welfare. She’s incredible.
Amanda: The reason why Temple Grandin’s able to do that, and I kind of want other animal activists to keep this in mind too, is ’cause she’s providing solutions. She’s providing solutions to an industry that makes them more money, and that automatically makes her more powerful in her proposals. I don’t wanna sound too critical, but when you just make a bunch of social media posts about how cruel someone’s being to an animal, or just the cruelty of factory farms, or the cruelty of this and that, it’s just kind of perceived as a temper tantrum. It’s not really doing anything and it just kind of comes across as self-gratifying to me. But Temple Grandin’s approach is blocking out all the social media noise and just finding solutions. And that’s kind of what I do too. And I definitely want to model that. I’m finding a solution because I don’t like how this animal is freaked out in this process, and I wanna make it as comfortable as possible for them. And that’s all there should be.
Gwen: Absolutely agree.
Amanda: I would love to meet Temple Grandin one day, but that’s kind of just a fantasy of mine.
Gwen: Me too. Temple was presenting here — I’m in Columbus — and she had a presentation in April, and I happened to be traveling that week and I was. So sad.
Amanda: And one more thing about animals and autism for me, is that animals tend to be more comfortable for autistic people because we’re not trying to interpret what they’re actually saying, if that makes sense. There’s like a bunch of invisible social rules and cues autistic people have to follow with interacting with humans, other humans. But with animals, it’s like, this is what you’re gonna get. No strings attached.
Gwen: Yeah, absolutely. There’s no pretense and you’re not approaching it with any necessarily expectations. just being in the moment with the dog who’s also in that moment reacting or behaving in a way and, and able to just be there as a part of that moment with the animal.
Amanda: And a huge thing to me, between the handler and the dog regardless of whatever disability the handler has, is trust. The dog is trusting the human to lead them, and the handler is trusting the dog to react.
Gwen: That is so true.
Amanda: And you’re not gonna build that up in three months or a week or however long the training program is. That’s a relationship that’s gonna take years. I want the audience to understand that this is a lifelong relationship you’re signing up for. This isn’t something that is gonna happen magically over the course of a 90 minute Lifetime movie.
Gwen: That is true, and as the years go on, as time goes on, typically that relationship just gets stronger and more a part of your life and a part of who you are. And so it’s definitely worth the investment at the front to make sure that you’re pairing yourself with the right temperament, activity level, maybe training, and then continuing that training and those expectations throughout the dog’s life. Like you said earlier, it becomes part of your routine, it becomes part of the dog’s routine. And over that time, that relationship will grow and change and, and change you. It sometimes even change the way you look at the world, and it very powerful. It’s very powerful relationship. But it doesn’t happen overnight, that’s for sure.
Amanda: And one more point I wanted to make about training is something I personally have had had to deal with recently in a different program I was in, but: Parents cannot take a dog to like a 90 day training program and expect it to become a service dog afterwards.
Gwen: That is not gonna happen. That is absolutely not gonna happen. There’s just so much more than training the behaviors, you know, the, the trained skills, to be honest, the trained skills are the easy part of having a trained service dog. You know, teaching them to do a task. That’s the easy part. The much more difficult part is all the stuff that happens in between doing a task. Being well-behaved, unleashed, sitting calmly, regardless of what else might be going on in the environment, not eating food up off the floor, not jumping on people.
Amanda: Yeah. We’re not gonna magically make these dogs not dogs. There were two like really expectation issues in this training program I was a part of. We had one subject who was a sweet kid, really sweet mom, but this dog was so used to being outside, was used to being this working dog, and it freaked out inside because it was on carpet. It was like trying to eat the carpet. It did not know what to do with itself. Inside it was trying to get out. It was so stressed out. And we were somehow expected to have this kid, who was very severely disabled to have this dog listen to him with commands when this dog and him barely interacted. And one suggestion I had was doing agility with this dog, with this kid. And not like a competition agility, but just like setting up their own obstacles and just kind of running through it together. ‘Cause both the kid and the dog were high energy and this was a bonding activity they could have done together.
Gwen: Right.
Amanda: The dog isn’t gonna learn how to sit and stay right away. But in my opinion was that if we started from the place where both the dog and the kid were, we could work up to basic commands. ‘Cause we would build that repertoire between the dog and the kid. So we’re not gonna magically create a relationship between a dog and a kid. And another subject was, we cannot magically make a male dog, not a male dog. This other subject had a dog, stunning Pitbull/Cane Corso mix. Beautiful dog. Absolutely stunning. I get why they didn’t neuter this dog because they were obviously gonna breed him. The problem is he was a hormonal nine month old Cane Corso/Pit Bull mix. and they let him get away with a really bad behavior of letting him mouth, hands, and sleeves. So the child was, unfortunately, really afraid to do training with him because he was allowed to think it was okay to take treats right outta hands, not gently. So it was really hard to break through that and. because you’re working with kids here, you can’t really talk to them or the parents about the importance of neutering this dog. And the reason I’m kind of bringing those two situations up is that we cannot change a dog’s natural behavior or temperament.
Gwen: We cannot. And I think that’s a really good point, because I think a lot of people looking to get a service dog might be expecting the dog to be a robot, but they’re not robots.
They are dogs, and they will behave like dogs. And we want them to behave like dogs this way. We love them. But yes, that’s a very good point. If you are thinking about a service dog or even just a dog in your home, you really have to remember they are a dog.
Closing Statements
Amanda: So we’re about out of time, but what’s a closing statement you wanna give to the audience, or what do you want the audience to take away from this conversation?
Gwen: Well, I really enjoyed talking with you, Amanda, and I feel like we talked through service dogs, we talked through dog breeds, we talked through dogs in general, we talked through training and expectations. So I just hope that the audience has enjoyed our dog talk. And, if they are thinking about a service dog, definitely research the different organizations that provide them. Every organization has a slightly different method of both training the dogs and training the people, and making those placements. I think one of the best points, if you’re thinking about bringing a dog into your life, even just as a pet to really just think about what you want, be honest about your lifestyle and, try not to let the dogs looks interfere with your choice of, of who you start to bring into your family.
Amanda: So thank you for joining me today, Gwen. I hope the audience enjoyed our talk on dogs too. But personally, this is the most fun I’ve had in any podcast. ’cause this has been a special interest talk, which has been pure joy.
Gwen: Well, I certainly enjoyed speaking with you as well. Thank you for inviting me. Proud to be here and represent Dogs For Better Lives, and if anyone in your audience has any questions, um, can learn more about Dogs For Better Lives at dogsforbetterlives.org, or Amanda has my contact information if anyone would like to reach out directly.