Puppy love
Service dog agency readies its first litter of therapy poodles
CAMBRIDGE — Friday morning at the National Service Dogs facility in Cambridge, five squirming, yipping, licking, piddling and thoroughly engaging poodle puppies were delighting staff and visitors alike with their antics.
As cute as these pups are now, as adults each will play an important role helping children and adults with physical or mental health challenges deal with everything from autism to posttraumatic stress disorder.
“If you meet the families, you know how much these dogs mean to them,” said Gail Densmore, caregiver to the pups’ mother, an elegant two-year-old standard poodle named Ru.
Every few months, litters of pups from the organization’s breeding program are brought to the centre where they are then picked up by puppy-raisers; volunteers whose job is to take the pups home, socialize and provide basic training from the age of eight weeks to 18 months.
The dogs are then returned to the centre for advanced training before being given, without charge, to a qualified applicant.
A concert this past Saturday night at the Hespeler Legion is just one of many annual fundraisers the organization relies on to survive.
The 110 volunteers in the program are used to seeing Labradors, golden retrievers as well as mixes of those breeds, but this litter of standard poodles was a first.
Garry Stephenson is National Service Dogs puppy program and breed manager.
He is also a dog trainer with more than four decades of experience, having started as a kid with his parents’ dog-training business in England.
Stephenson knows dogs and he knows what it takes to make a great service dog.
Are poodles intelligent? “Yes,” said Stephenson “But they can be clowns and will use their intelligence to get away with things.” The trick is in the training. The 22-year-old organization has a long-established program where dogs are bred to ensure specific personality traits: calmness, focus, intelligence and confidence.
They have also accepted donated dogs, which is how they came to launch this new poodle program.
“We’d thought about it (poodles) for awhile,” said Stephenson. “Then somebody offered two dogs as good foundation stock.”
The poodle sisters, Taylor and Ru, were shipped from a donor in Calgary to the Cambridge facility and then taken into the homes of volunteer caregivers, including Densmore. Ru was the first to be bred, using a male standard poodle belonging to Lions Foundation Dog Guides Canada in Oakville.
Once Ru was ready to whelp, she was sent to Stephenson’s home, where he took care of every element of the birth and he cared for the pups until they were old enough to wean. At eight weeks, the pups were ready to move on to their next stage in life and Ru was returned to Densmore.
At the centre on Friday, the pups, all fluffed and buffed, were ready to be picked up by the puppy raisers. The next batch of poodle pups, Taylor’s brood, will be ready for puppy-raisers later this year and the organization is now accepting applications.
Of Ru’s 11 puppies, five came to National Service Dogs, the other six went to Dog Guides. Stephenson said it was only fair to divide the pups between the two organizations, given both had provided a parent. Besides, finding puppyraisers for 11 pups might have been difficult, he admitted. It’s a new program with these standard poodles, so they want to start slowly.
Why poodles? In fact, why Labs or golden retrievers?
The dogs, including poodles, were all developed as hunting dogs and unlike, say a terrier that has its nose to the ground, these breeds look to their owners for guidance — a necessary trait for a service animal. As well, all three breeds are recognized by the public as safe, family dogs. On the downside, the poodles do require regular grooming, including clipping.
Densmore is happy to be part of the whole poodle program. She lives just down the road from the Cambridge organization and has been volunteering for eight years. Her roles up to now have included coming to the facility in the evenings, offering relaxation, massages and walks for the adult dogs who live at the centre while being trained.
She also takes dogs, like Onix, home at night.
The black Lab is two-and-a-half and presently in intensive training during the day at the facility, but he does not enjoy living in the kennel. It happens, sometimes, and rather than stressing the dogs out, volunteers like Densmore simply take the dogs home in the evenings and on weekends, giving them a more natural and homey life outside of the hard work of becoming a service dog.
Taking in Ru as a semi-permanent house guest, one that will often be waddling around pregnant, was yet another challenge for Densmore. On the upside, Ru doesn’t shed and once she has finished being used for breeding, Densmore has the option of permanent adoption.
“I live with her 24/7,” she said. “I even take her to work.”
Densmore’s work is with a Cambridge accounting firm that welcomes the dog, particularly during tax season.
“It calms people down,” she said.
Volunteering for National Service Dogs and seeing the result of all those volunteer hours invested, the poop-scooping, the grooming, the saying goodbye to beloved dogs, has been deeply gratifying as well as emotional for Densmore.
“I love it, I feel like I’m doing something important,” she said. “I meet some of the people, get to meet the people with PTSD, autism.
“It changes their lives, it’s all worthwhile.”