One Year of the PSD Blog!
For just over a year, Patriot Service Dogs has shared puppy announcements, graduation photos, behind the scenes info on training, and more through our blog. In that time, we have loved reading your comments and answering your questions about service dogs and our training program and we look forward to developing the blog in its second year! To celebrate this one-year anniversary, we are sharing the five most popular blog posts so far! For those of you who have been subscribers from the beginning, it will be a fun look back at all that has happened in the last year, and for the many more of you who have subscribed recently, it will give you chance to look through our archives.
Thank you for your enthusiastic support of the PSD Blog!
1. REAL VESTS, FAKE SERVICE DOGS: HOW PET DOGS IN VESTS IMPACT TRAINED VETERAN/SERVICE DOG TEAM:
You’ve probably seen it, a dog barking in a restaurant or dragging their owner down the hallway of a hotel or even lunging at other dogs; they have a vest, maybe one that looks just like a PSD vest, but they don’t have the training to go with that responsibility. Once you’ve met a fully trained service dog or even a puppy in service dog training, it’s easy to spot a pet in a vest.
The dogs barking or lunging in these situations are not to blame, their people are. As service dogs have become more common to see in daily life, more people have taken advantage of the laws protecting service dog teams. It might seem like a harmless bending of the law to “pass off” a pet as a service dog, but real service dog teams—including our veterans—are paying the price every day.
2. PUPPY DAYS: INSIDE THE FIRST DAYS OF TRAINING:
September doesn’t just mean the last days of summer for Patriot Service Dogs, it means we’re entering a new season--no, not fall--puppy season! In the last few weeks we have welcomed two new pups, Sam and Richard. Both boys still have that super soft puppy fur and those super sharp puppy teeth, but they have already begun their training. So, we want to formally introduce the first members of the Class of 2023 and give you a behind the scenes look into the first few days and weeks of service dog training.
3. BERNIE ON THE BEAT: INSIDE TANK’S NEW JOB WITH THE NASSAU COUNTY SHERIFF
“Unique” has always described Tank--from the moment he joined Patriot Service Dogs as a ball of black and brown fluff, to his goofball personality during training, and now, to his final placement. Tank, PSD’s only Bernese Mountain Dog, is not going to be matched as a service dog for a wounded veteran, but he has found his calling in life and is still doing important work (even if he doesn’t realize it). Our Bernie Boy is now the Agency Comfort Dog for the Nassau County Sheriff!
This week, Patriot Service Dogs has been running our second Advanced Training of 2021! If you follow PSD through the digital newsletter, social media, or sponsor updates you’ve likely seen photos and news on this class of veteran/service dogs teams. It’s an exciting time for everyone in our community, but we know that it can be hard to understand all that goes into this final step in the dogs’ training from short posts and photos. So, we’re answering the most common questions we get about Advanced Training here!
Every time we pick up an eight-week-old puppy to start their training, we know we are asking him or her to live an extraordinary dog life; we also know that it might not be the life they want or were born for. Through two years of training, we put our all into each puppy and try to give them every chance to become a service dog, but sometimes it just doesn’t work. Roughly 35% of the puppies we start don’t become service dogs. In almost all of those cases, we release them for one of these four reasons.
