Service dog group to host annual conference

WINSTED — Assistance Dogs International, a worldwide coalition of nonprofits who raise and train service dogs, will host its annual ADI conference next month, featuring local dog trainer Lu Picard as a speaker.

ECAD or Educated Canines Assisting with Disabilities, was started in 1995 by Lu Picard in a twocar garage in Winsted. Her father suffered a stroke shortly after retirement, and it was helping him deal with the recovery which set her down this path in life.

She was already breeding dogs as companions at the time, and she decided to teach one to pick up the TV remote for him and pull him up out of his chair. “And then within like a week he was moving again. He was talking to the dog. He was making little jokes with the dog,” said Picard.

She says the dogs she teaches learn around 80 commands, though those commands can be adjusted to a variety of situations.

“There’s only really 26 letters in our alphabet but we make millions of words. Same thing with the commands,” Picard said. “A dog that can tug, well, he can tug the sock off your foot. He can tug the door shut. He can tug an alarm for you. He can tug your blankets off, so it depends at that point,” Picard explains.

At the ADI conference, Picard will be speaking about her work with Pace

University in New York. Her work focuses mostly on the medical students, educating them on what to do when a patient who has a service dog gets admitted.

If a hospital has no policies set in place to deal with service dogs, she doesn’t want the situation to arise where they end up having to ask the patient. “And to ask you to figure it out, well you’re already in crisis!” Picard exclaims.

Picard admits it’s hard to teach doctors who are already practicing. It’s best to

train the next generation of doctors that patients having service dogs is normal, and that those service dogs have rights.

“If you’re in the hospital, we want the hospital to have the mentality of wanting to say yes to you. Yes, that dog can stay with you. So how do we get to the yes?” Picard says.

This will be the subject of her ADI speech, the way in which patients can get the hospital to the “yes” how to make them agree to let the disabled keep their service dogs with them.

Though hospitals are the main focus of her speech, Picard has worked for years

to get service dogs easier access into every type of public building.

Debbie Tannenbaum, a client of ECAD who suffers from MS, has experienced being kicked out of a restaurant for owning a service dog.

“I couldn’t get out of the place and the guy was yelling in my face, so I ended up passing out,” said Tannenbaum.

She woke up in the hospital to a call from Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, asking her if she wanted to sue. “And I said, ‘no, I just want a sign in the window saying they welcome service dogs and an apology,’” said Tannenbaum.

Picard helped her fight the case, and the business was forced to educate its employees about those with disabilities and to put up the sign.

Some 64 storefronts around Pleasantville, N.Y., post this sign, welcoming service dogs. And, as Picard says, they have spending power.

“If I was shopping in Winsted and there were three stores to choose from and one of them had the welcome service dog (sticker), and I had one, that’s where I’m going,” said Picard. She went on to explain, “I do not want to get hassled. And you never know if the person on the other side is going to [hassle

you].”

Picard understands the position that bringing dogs into businesses can cause problems, but her argument is that children aren’t banned from restaurants, so why should welltrained animals be?

“If I brought my child and they spilled their water, what would you do?” Picard asked. The parents would clean up after the child and the restaurant would have to be okay with that.

So, according to Picard, what makes it so different when a dog spills its water bowl? Why does the dog get kicked out of the restaurant without the chance for its

owners to clean up after it?

They are extremely welltrained dogs, specifically taught how to act in public. “It should be like your purse. You put it down, and it waits for you to need it. And that’s a service dog,” Picard explains.

Picard is always looking for volunteers at ECAD, both on site, and those willing to raise her golden retriever puppies for the first few months until they are old enough to be trained. To find out more, visit ecad1.org.

The Assistance Dogs International Conference will be held in Noblesville, Ind., Sept. 8–11. Learn more at assistancedogsinternational.org.