Filling the Gap - Leash of Hope Assistance Dogs
Description
It's a long process, and it's not cheap. We chat with the founders of Leash of Hope Assistance Dogs who are doing everything possible to meet the demand for service dogs to help the world become more accessible for people with disabilities.
TRANSCRIPT
Filling the Gap - Leash of Hope Assistance Dogs
We are back with DDA's Encouraging Abilities podcast, where we talk about all things related to disabilities. I'm your host, DDA Communications Manager, Evan Kelly. Today we are joined by Danielle Main and Tessa Schmidt, who are founded Leash of Hope Assistance Dogs. I've wanted to talk to them for a little while now. That of course sums up what that is. We're talking about doggos. We're big fans of dogs here at DDA and anything that makes things more accessible for people with physical or developmental disabilities.
Thank you for joining me today. My pleasure. Thank you. All righty. So Danielle, tell me a little bit about yourself. So as mentioned, I'm one of the co-founders of Leash of Hope. One of the things that we're very proud about, and I'm very proud about is the fact that our organization is run by two women that both have disabilities. I am low vision blind with optic nerve dysplasia.
And amongst running Leash of Hope, I'm also a full-time registered massage therapist and train as a competitive rower. So, oh, wow. That's a that's a lot of physicality going on. Yeah. And Tessa, what about yourself? I. I have a special career, and my main role in Leash of Hope is to train the dogs and the clients.
And alongside of that, I work with children as a BI. Oh, okay. That's interesting. So did you both found Leash of Hope Assistance Dogs? Or is this mainly your thing, Danielle? We both found it together. So when Tess and I came together, we both had...
very complimentary skill sets. And we noticed that there was a need within the industry and the community of people with disabilities that we felt like with our unique skill sets that we could kind of bridge a gap and fill. So the two of us together, me having more business background and my background with dogs was, more dogs with like behavioral issues. And then Tessa having a more formal background education and...
service dogs and dog training. We felt like our skills were very complimentary to be able to start something from the ground up. So what is your background with dogs?
So my, oh sorry, go ahead. No, Danny, I think that was in the... Oh, I'm so sure. So my background with dogs, first and foremost my education was doing equine sports massage, which led into extracurricular education in canine massage, and from there I spent some time working in vet clinics and then as well as
working in a grooming salon as a grooming assistant, as well as being a professional border for dogs, especially dogs with behavioral or medical needs. So that was my background with dogs before starting Le Chappot. And what about you, Tessa? I apprenticed under several service dog trainers.
that works with multiple different organizations and have learned a lot through hands-on and working with the Balanceable Canine Program as well. Wow, that's interesting. Now, Danielle, equine massage, canine massage, is that... I mean, equine massage, I've got friends who get involved in horses, so I understand sort of the need for that, but I've never heard of canine massage before. Is that a thing that people... Like,
look for that kind of a service? The main reason why I would get requests for that type of service would be anything from like dogs that were in some kind of sport, same as kind of with people, same as with horses. And, you know, the dogs might have very physical sport needs of whether it's dogs that are doing like agility or barn hunt or any kind of like,
canny cross and so just like people end up developing aches and pains and imbalances and then I'd also work on a lot of like steamer dogs with aches and pains and imbalances so Interesting So you you started Leash of Hope because you saw a need tell me tell me about that in you know I'm not someone who identifies with a disability so I Wouldn't recognize the need for a service animal or a service dog what?
What are the barriers that people are facing in order to access this type of service?
Um, so I would say that the biggest barrier would be availability, especially for properly trained dogs and the most evident way that that can be seen is the amount of people that are trying to self evaluate the necessity for dog and then train on their own because they don't feel like the resources are available for them to get.
professionally trained service dog. And if you look at, especially when we founded the organization, what was available at that time, it was very minimal, especially within BC. And so because of that, Tessa and I, both being people that were very active, that had unique needs, recognized that there was kind of a lot of gaps within services that are being provided, mostly because
of how long wait lists are for some of the bigger programs or how much people were having to go out of province to acquire a properly trained dog. And then the alternative to being people trying to, like as a lay person, raise and train their own dog and self-evaluate if it's appropriate didn't seem like the best option either. So we decided to go into this venture trying to fill that gap.
For someone like me, I'm quite ignorant about this process. Now we're talking about service dogs. Is that the same thing as a seeing eye dog?
Um, it falls under the umbrella of an assistance dog. Service dogs are considered generally like different as a seeing eye dogs specifically, um, or, or guide dogs specifically see seeing eye dogs or there's actually a school. Uh, so a guide dog specifically is a dog that's meant to guide and navigate, uh, someone with sight loss through a rigid handle often, or some form of handle.
But they all kind of fall under the umbrella of an assistant or a working dog. So what about the animals that you two train? What are they designed to do essentially?
We have three categories of dogs. So we have three divisions within Leisure of Hope. One is the guide dog division for people like myself who are low vision or blind. We have mobility dogs under a mobility division. And those are dogs that are trained to provide assistance to someone who has mobility challenges. Maybe they're wheelchair users. Maybe they're able to walk.
with an aid or they need walking support, people to walk, to ambulate properly and comfortably. And those dogs are tasked trying to often to do things like press buttons and pick things up, take off coats and socks. Yeah. And then the last division is our medical alert division. And those are dogs that are trained for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, may have other forms of invisible disabilities like PTSD, autism.
And the dogs are trained to do things like alert to when it's time to take medication or turn lights on, you know, sometimes even pull blankets off of kids and going, come on, we've got to get you a bed or find an exit if someone's in a state of distress because of the environment they're in. So all three divisions have very different specific tasks that they do for their handlers. Now, now Tessa, I would imagine.
given that there are three categories of training, there's gotta be three different approaches to training. Now, would you, like, say you select a dog. I'm gonna get to that selection process in a minute or two, but if you select a dog, is it, it's then trained specifically for one category, or can you train a dog for all categories? We do, that is a specialty of our program. We do cross train our dogs.
but they're all trained to a baseline of tasks. And then once they are matched with the client, the individual, then we finalize the training and put in more specific training if required to the individual. Now, how do you go through the selection process for an animal or a dog rather? Like how do you decide, this one's gonna be really good, let's train him, this one not so good, we'll...
find them a family or something like that. Where's that selection process?
So we do a lot of testing throughout the dog's entire time in the program during their in training period. We have our assessment upon intake and then monthly assessments after that where we where we go a little bit they're inclined to work still that they are are wanting
can be in this field.
And do you get into the training process and then discover that maybe this, you know, one particular dog isn't a good fit and then you sort of got to start over again? Yes, sometimes that does happen. Okay, so that and where like, where do you where do you get the dogs? Are there specific breeders that that sort of target your industry?
We do work with a few selective leaders. The majority of our dogs are actually rescuer dogs. Oh really? Yes. So you're sort of solving a couple of problems, not just assistance dogs, you're giving these dogs purpose and a home essentially? Correct, correct, yes. And we rescue dogs from all over North America. Oh wow.
What about Mexico? There's lots of good dogs down th
United States
