Give Back NH – Assistance Canine Training Services

Every other week on NHPR, we like to highlight a local non-profit that’s providing a great service for the Granite State. On this week’s episode of Give Back New Hampshire, our focus is on Assistance Canine Training Services.

Founded in 2007, Assistance Canine Training Services trains service dogs for people with mobility disabilities and facility dogs for professionals using animal assisted therapy.

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kathy Metz: I’m Kathy Metz, director of operations here at Assistance Canine Training Services.

Kelly Brown: I’m Kelly Brown. I hold the role of executive director of Assistance Canine Training Services, but I’m also a volunteer puppy raiser and a client. I have one of our facility dogs.

Kathy Metz: Our mission is to raise, train and place service and facility dogs. So our service dogs are for mobility, people who have challenges walking, many of whom are in wheelchairs or use scooters. And also our facility dogs go with professionals who utilize them in animal assisted therapy – teachers, therapists, occupational therapists, counselors, anyone who can utilize a dog in a therapeutic way for their patients or those they serve.

Kelly Brown: I speak more to the facility dog front. Our service dogs are wonderful and they work with one person. They provide a service or multiple services for a person in need. The facility dogs are just a little bit different in that they work with an able bodied human being. We have several dogs at different hospitals, people who are going through cancer treatments. They go in for their cancer treatment and there’s a dog there just to provide comfort and support while they’re there. As a schoolteacher, I have one in my general education classroom, and the dog is there all the time. He’s there every day.

Kathy Metz: Most of our puppies come to us at eight weeks old. Whether they come from a breeder or another organization, starting from the time they’re born, they get what we call enrichment, constant handling, constant exposure to different stimulus, different sounds, everything that get them comfortable with their world and make sure that they’re ready to start working and start training.

Connie: Hi, my name is Connie and my husband, Mike and I are volunteers with the ACTS organization here locally, and we have raised one of the dogs for the organization. His name is Hickory. We had him a total of about two and a half years. So Hickory is no longer with us. He’s been placed. And so now we help out as an auntie and uncle.

Mike: Hickory was our first dog when we moved up here from Pennsylvania a couple of years ago. We saw in the newspaper that ACTS had a nice article, and they were looking for puppy raisers and said, yeah, maybe we might make good puppy raisers. From my perspective, the most rewarding part is knowing what the dog is doing for an individual.

Connie: It’s a lot of fun to raise the dogs. A lot of people ask us, isn’t it difficult to let the dog go, especially when you’ve had them for a couple of years? And it is. And we went into this realizing that we had a job to do. And in our case, Hickory had a job to do. And I say if we both did our job correctly or all three of us, then the magic happens. And that’s exactly what happened with Hickory.

Robin Crocker: I’m Robin Crocker, I’m board chair, and I’m formerly the director of canine development, retired from that position. I still do a lot of work advising and working with training of the dogs. The people who work with the dogs are so dedicated, and the clients are so amazing, and the work that the dogs do with the client is just heartwarming. And I can’t step away. I just keep coming back.