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Brown-bag program planned on service dogs

Dogs are great company and fun companions, but a select few also are valuable personal aides.

Representatives from Companion Training will talk about service dogs and how those animals transform people’s lives Thursday (June 28) at noon in the Headquarters Auditorium. The program is part of ITD’s brown-bag lunch series.

Companion Training prepares dogs to help people perform physical tasks they can no longer do for themselves, such as pulling a wheelchair, retrieving dropped objects, opening doors and drawers, and flipping switches for lights and automatic doors.

The highly trained dogs also help people with mental disabilities including Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and severe depression. Some dogs are trained to help with medical conditions, such as hearing loss, seizures or diabetes, or even carry life-support equipment such as oxygen tanks.

Learn how these dogs are trained, what it takes to be a good service dog and how important this human-animal partnership is to those whose lives are improved by service animals.

The program will be available to all ITD districts on the department’s network.