Handing off the Leash

“My Grandma's business is called CARES Inc. It's a service dog school where she breeds and trains service dogs for people with disabilities. I've been [working there] since I was little, and have always had a natural gift for working with dogs and people. I started out just feeding and taking care of dogs, then I started working with them to maintain their training. Once I got better at training them, my job became selecting the forever homes for the dogs. I help run a five day class several times a year where people learn how to utilize the training of their service dogs. There is a public access test at the end of the class that has three sections. If a service dog team passes, it means they can go out into public with their service dog. The dogs have to behave in a restaurant, do their tasks and commands out in public, and visit the prison where the dogs are trained to pass the test.

We train the dogs in a prison because the inmates can be with them 24/7, so the dogs get the most training possible. The dogs go to prison at 8 weeks old and stay there for 6-8 months. Then they go to volunteer at social homes where families socialize the dogs until they are around one year old. They go back to prison for refresher training and finally get placed when they are between 1.5 and 2 years old.

I've been helping since I could walk, and finally was doing enough work that I wanted to be paid for it. I take dogs to school, communicate with applicants, do office work, take care of dogs, and train dogs until they go to their forever homes to become service dogs. I am also a volunteer social home, so my job is getting the dogs used to things they don't see in prison like cars, kids, and everyday life.

No other career really ever spoke to me more. It's what I've wanted to do my entire life. Once I graduate college, I'm basically already trained to take over CARES. All I'm missing is the business aspect of it. I'll go to college and get a business degree. As soon as I graduate, I will take over. My goal is to make [the business] a lot bigger. I [want to] really work on the media aspect. My grandma is currently running it, so a lot of the things we do are old fashioned. I want to modernize it and grow our numbers.

I love getting to work with the animals, but most of all I love getting to help people. The service dogs change people's lives and that’s my favorite part. Medically, dogs can save lives. Emotionally, they completely change the people they go to. I’ve seen nonverbal kids say their first words and people with PTSD go out in public for the first time in years. I’ve seen parents with kids [who have] diabetes be able to sleep throughout the night without worrying if their kid will have a medical emergency. People think they are pets, but they are highly trained to mitigate disabilities, and they are completely different from an average pet.”