Thursday, July 21, 2011

New Mobility Magazine:Service Dogs: Making the Grade

Making the Grade
Many people don’t realize that not all dogs have the calm attentive temperament it takes to become a service dog. “If the dog doesn’t have the basic personality and hardwiring, it just won’t work,” says Jeanine Konopelski, director of marketing for Canine Companions for Independence in Santa Rosa, Calif.  “To increase our success rate here at CCI we have our own breeding program of golden and Labrador retrievers.”

Even with CCI’s selective breeding and training, only about 35 to 40 percent of their dogs graduate to become full-fledged service dogs. Dogs “wash out” for a variety of reasons, including “typical dog behavior” — like being distracted by cats or birds, or whining or barking in public. “I have a dog that was released from the program even though his obedience is perfect,” Konopelski says. “He picks stuff up for me, he grabs the paper for me, but he barks out in public and that is unacceptable.”  Read More

4 comments:

bbes tribe said...

Very interesting!Thanks for sharing.
ernie,sasha,chica,lucas & m barb

Melissa Mitchell said...

Yuou're Welcome! Thanks for reading!
Melissa and Shilo

Hopesclan said...

Roving, I am new to blogging and am unsure how to go about this. I want to use the CCI statistics from this article in a blog article I am writing. How exactly should I go about doing that--properly.

Frankly, I couldn't read the whole article and got confused, but the really wish to use the statistics and why there is such a low success rate. Can you help? Hopesclan.

P.S. My new blog: http://blog.workndog.org/hopesclan/

I am not sure if this is appropriate to write all this here. I am looking for any blogging pointers though. I'm lost.

Melissa Mitchell said...

Dear Hopesclan,
from a journalistic point of view, it is best to go to the source for the stats and the reasons yourself.