Quote:
Originally Posted by daylilyfan
Here is a link to some YouTube videos. The woman in these videos is disabled, and uses a power chair. Her dog, Laurel, is owner trained. Linda not only trained Laurel for service dog work, but she also competes in obedience, and dog agility. She started the Service Dog club that I belong to.
http://www.youtube.com/user/lkalberda#g/u
You can absolutely train a dog from a chair.
Linda has RSD, MS, and several other conditions. There are times when several days go by and all that she and Laurel do is stay in bed together. Other times, she feels better and they go eat out, run errands etc. Linda recently got a new puppy to train. Laurel is 5 and since it takes a couple years to train a service dog - especially for chair work for someone not as mobile as I am - she is starting him now. Most Goldens and Labs retire about age 8 or 9... and, Linda needs a dog for medical alert 24 hours a day. With two dogs, each one can have some down time while the other is working. |
I am very, very intrigued by this. However, I have hit upon a stumbling block. We absolutely cannot even come close to affording the tens of thousands to purchase and train a service dog. I've looked at the nonprofits that will adopt dogs out for a lower cost but they want homes without other pets in them. We have two ten year old dogs that I'm absolutely not willing to part with; it would tear our family apart, for one thing, and would no doubt break our dogs' hearts as well. They are both rescues and have been with our family since 2001.
And finally, while I really love the idea of training a dog myself, we have a limit of two pets per family here in our military base housing. We have already checked with the housing office and a service pet would be excluded from that count, but a dog that we adopted and began training ourselves would not. Everything I've read states that the dogs that we have are too old to be service dogs.
Does anyone have any suggestions for me or ideas that I'm just not thinking of right now? Thank you so much. I really think a service dog would be ideal for me, given our family's love of animals and my mobility issues.