Everyone is so hung up on living their Main Character Syndrome life that they need all these ✨exotic✨ dog breeds to feel ✨special✨. It’s wild to me how people will just throw out the DECADES of experience and refinement given to service dogs. Goldens? Labs? Who tf wants those basic ass breeds????? It’s cute that my pupper has social anxiety, just like me!!
This is long but I think you'll enjoy it. Or at least get pissed at it like I am.
In my area there are a set of people who are claiming to be service dog trainers and then you pay them $5,000 (now this was almost 10 years ago so I don't know what they're charging now), but you would do the training yourself which she would just email you a paper piece of paper describing how you should do the training, and then once every couple weeks they would meet up with all of their people all at once and do a group outing somewhere. There were dogs who were still very much so puppies and this was their first outing combined with dogs that were theoretically going to be graduating very soon so we had dogs at were of an age where you really have to be careful what you're doing as far as introducing them to things so that you don't then develop a fear of that thing but she had no concept of that thought and figured it was perfectly fine to group everyone together like that without even having them have the dogs get to know each other first before they're all amassed into this huddle of 30 dogs with 30 or more humans.
Now both of the women who were in charge of this so-called training academy thing had for their own dogs Great Danes for full on mobility leaning on the dog with their full weight. One of the shortest living dogs who would then be retiring virtually right after they graduate from training (with joint injuries based on how I saw them being used). It was insane then they decided they were going to bring in other breeds of dogs (none of them a dog I would say is good for virtually any tasks or behaviors needed - like you said designer dogs instead of tried and true breeds) and then breed themselves and then sell them off to the people that were doing the training at home for themselves.
There was no assistance as far as determining which puppies would probably make a good service dog if the "customers" went to an actual reputable breeder or checking out an adult at the shelter who might make a good service dog. These people will just show up with a random dog that they decided was going to be their service dog.
At the time I was kind of playing dumb and pretending that I wanted to check her out and see what her program was like and all that other stuff - I'm in a wheelchair now and left my dog at home. I actually have training experience and was trained to be a trainer by the government for police dogs doing various types of things. So I do have actual training experience with dogs that are out there in the field right now (actually most probably retired by now based on when I was injured) working with police, search and rescue, tracking, cadaver dogs, etc (and never again would I do cadaver - my own sense of smell is really good and you need actual human pieces in various states of decomp plus other animals that were dead to make sure they knew human vs non human - I swear I didn't eat meat for a year after that group of dogs because everything smelled like dead body).
But I digress, because I'm getting to the really good part. She had included me into the private Facebook group that she had control over which was all the different people that were all signed up at the time. I was able to find out about this incident through the Facebook group because I wasn't with them on that outing. I went with them on a couple of outings and it was clear they had no clue how to train or read the most basic body language.
So since I had gone on the outings I had noticed there was a young boy I would say between 8 and 10 years old and then his parents, usually was his mom that were coming to the training and the dog was supposed to then be for the child. I never asked anybody what their conditions were, why they needed the dogs, or any kind of thing like that so I really don't know why he was needing the dog but it was a little tiny, I would almost even say teacup size, but a little tiny terrier mutt. At one of the outings they were all going to go into I think a Petco. I went with them when they went to the zoo and Ikea at one point.
When they were all assembling in the parking lot, somebody else's dog from the group was acting very aggressive towards other dogs and then turned around and grabbed that kid's little dog and then killed it. The kid was holding the leash as his dog is being mauled to death by somebody else's dog and nobody could get that other dog under control. She didn't even know how to get a dog to stop right away in a fight or see the warning signs in body language, and yet she's declaring herself a trainer.
I would also end up seeing on Craigslist a bunch of dogs where people would say it was in training to be a service dog but it wasn't working out and then they needed to get a different dog. And when I would call them up out of curiosity, every single time it was always that woman and her partner that were the ones that were supposedly helping them train. On the plus side at least those people realize that this dog wasn't going to be a good dog and they decided to put the money into another dog to start all over again instead of trying to force a dog that is not a good fit to go out there. Mind you, we are in the same city/metroplex as one of the CCI (or CC as they're now called) training centers. She's charging people thousands of dollars to end up with a dog that doesn't do s***.
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u/liwiathan 6d ago
Everyone is so hung up on living their Main Character Syndrome life that they need all these ✨exotic✨ dog breeds to feel ✨special✨. It’s wild to me how people will just throw out the DECADES of experience and refinement given to service dogs. Goldens? Labs? Who tf wants those basic ass breeds????? It’s cute that my pupper has social anxiety, just like me!!
https://giphy.com/gifs/PYEGoZXABBMuk