Take It To The Board with Donna DiMaggio Berger
Take It To The Board with Donna DiMaggio Berger
The Truth About Service Animals and ESAs-- Real vs. Fake
Millions of people depend on assistance animals to help them engage in major life activities. On the flip side, some people try to pass off their pets as assistance animals to skirt the rules in pet-restricted communities, restaurants, airplanes, and other places where pets are not allowed. So how do you spot the difference between a legitimate service or support animal and a fake one? Join us for this episode of Take It To The Board as host Donna DiMaggio Berger uncovers the world of training assistance animals with Terry Harris of West Tennessee K9 Training, a top-rated dog training facility in West Tennessee.
Together, Donna and Terry take listeners through the differences between service animals and emotional support animals, shedding light on the rigorous training requirements needed for dogs to assist with various disabilities. There are many different disabilities that proper training can address including: mobility, hearing, vision, PTSD, autism, seizure disorder and more. Discover the specialized skills that these legitimate assistance animals possess and the important role they play in supporting their handlers' daily lives.
Choosing the right breed for service work is crucial. Donna and Terry look at which breeds are best suited for various tasks. Terry also shares where you can find his free online training resources, ensuring you're equipped with the tools needed to effectively train and engage with your canine companion. Don't miss this comprehensive guide to the world of service dog training!
Conversation Highlights Include:
- Training requirements for service animals and emotional support animals
- Various disabilities that service dogs can address
- Training methodology
- Certification and documentation typically required for service and emotional support animals
- Behavioral standards expected from service and emotional support animals in public spaces
BONUS: Find out the most common mistakes people make when training their everyday pets!
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Hi everyone, I'm attorney Donna DiMaggio-Berger and this is Take it to the Board where we speak condo and HOA. The topic of emotional support and service animals remains top of mind for many people living in communities which restrict pets. These boards and residents often want to know what kind of training is required for assistance animals, how much that training costs, and how to tell the difference between a legitimate service and support animal and a fake one. There are millions of people who depend on highly trained animals to help them engage in major life activities despite having challenging disabilities. On the flip side, there are people who own pets but purchase homes in pet-restricted communities either, oblivious to the existence of those pet restrictions, are hopeful that they can turn their pet into a passable assistance animal.
Speaker 1:My guest today is Terry Harris, who founded West Tennessee Canine Training, a top-rated dog training facility in West Tennessee in 2013. Terry started West Tennessee Canine as a home-based business and then transitioned into a 4,000 square foot facility, which just shows that business is booming. Terry and I are going to debunk some of the myths out there about what constitutes an assistance animal from a training perspective, what such training entails, including costs and methodology, and whether certain breeds are more receptive to training than others. So with that, terry, welcome to Take it to the Board.
Speaker 2:It is good to be here with you and thank you for having me.
Speaker 1:So I'm wondering if we can start out by explaining the difference between service animals and emotional support animals in the context of training.
Speaker 2:Absolutely so a lot of what I'm going to talk about here. I'm just referring to the ADA guidelines. That's our rules. It's the only rules we have. Also, the Fair Housing Act has a section that goes along with them. So your question was service dogs versus emotional support dogs. So a service dog, the person has to have a disability, something that requires a service dog, something that requires them to do and to assist them with life, to be a medical provider, a medical tool for that dog right. Emotional support animals the ADA does not recognize as service dogs. There are psychiatric service animals that fall into the service dog category, but emotional support dogs all through the ADA guidelines. You can go online and just look up ADAgov All the guidelines there. Frequently asked questions emotional support dogs are not service dogs.
Speaker 1:So emotional support animals. The individual still needs to prove that they have a disability, that they have impaired major life activities, which is sleeping, socializing, working, eating, things like that. But they don't require the training. Let's start with the service animals, though Can you talk about the different type of disabilities that animals? Because under the ADA it's two types of animals miniature horses and dogs. Tell me about the type of training for the type of disabilities they can treat?
Speaker 2:Gotcha. So it's really unlimited. I have not found a limitation on what dogs can be trained to do. I've been training dogs for 30 years and the minute I think there's something like, oh, that's impossible, then we try to figure it out and we usually do right. So dogs are amazing. They run a gamut of abilities.
Speaker 2:When you have a service dog like, say, a stability dog, a dog trained to hold you up if you lose your balance, is a lot different than training, say, a diabetic alert dog, time and training is different, the cost is different because it's specialized. So you have a dog that holds you up and you teach the dog to support, you teach the dog to lean, all that stuff, whereas a diabetic alert dog like you start them at eight weeks old and you start with the saliva of the person that when their blood sugar is low, and then you're working them for two years, right, at least two years, um, and and even longer in some cases. So, depending on what the dog has to do, the risk of life involved. So a person that loses their balance and falls is less likely to have a serious injury than someone who goes into a diabetic shock, diabetic coma, and could die. See what I'm saying, and so, with every skill these dogs are learning, we have to look at like okay, is this a life-threatening thing? Is this a thing?
Speaker 2:Just to help you navigate a little bit of my background I grew up with a mom that had folia. She was disabled, she wore braces, and that's kind of how I started messing with dogs in that context. Because, like a dog, what if our dogs got in front of her? She would fall over, right. But when she fell over she couldn't get up by herself. So this big old dog, we had to come over to her and she would climb on him and stand up. I've just always been good at that. Oh, wow, ok. So as a kid I started out working with horses, rodents, birds.
Speaker 2:I've just always loved training animals, seeing what I could get them to do, and so I just I just progressed into it my whole life. I just something I'm good at right Now. When you're teaching a dog to do a specific task, when they perform in your home, that's one thing, but can they perform in public, around distractions? There's so many factors that go into this. The dog gets halfway through training and, just you know, does everything great, except maybe growls at people. He can't do service to them.
Speaker 1:So I wanted to talk to you about that, because a lot of people, myself included, have the perception of service animals that they are not aggressive and that they don't really engage with the general public. They are there, as you said, almost as a medical tool for their disabled human, and when I'm seeing true service animals in the airport or in a restaurant, they're really not interested in other people.
Speaker 2:Is that a correct perception? Absolutely. We teach them to ignore everything and we do that by putting them in super busy environments and training them in those environments. But all of it's tuned up. The reason you can't pet a service dog. We ask you not to not because the service dogs don't like to be pet because they do.
Speaker 2:Because every time they see a human now they're going to say, oh, that affection, I want that reward, and then it gets them off of their job. So, yes, a service dog should be out of the way. It should be tucked under a chair or a table. It should not interact with the public. You know, and as you have young service dogs coming up like you'll, you'll think they're solid and you get in public. And, uh, experience we had a few weeks ago with one of the dogs. We were one of the dogs we were proofing um, we're in the airport and the police officer was driving those big hover around I don't know what they're called and the dog was like, oh my gosh, like we don't have one of those at the facility, right, it was a new component.
Speaker 2:It hadn't seen you and, like you know, it's big, the police officer. He's going, hey, puppy, and and you know, to the dog that's a big alien right. And so the dog got a little disruptive. We took it to the side, calmed it down. But then we use that. We're saying, hey, mr officer, can we use you as a training tool? We start desensitizing the dog to that thing. So your your question.
Speaker 2:Dogs have to be calm and public. They have to be under control. That's the huge component. You can have a service dog that does great in your house, but take them into public and they're lunatics. I would say one of the biggest requests we get with service dogs, even after they've gone through service dog training, because a lot of times they're trained out of town. They come home and the people have problems with them. It's usually in public. So we call it public access training, sliding doors, just weird things that you just can't train for everything. Public access is so important because it sets the stage for this service dog. It's an example for what service dogs should be and then when you see something outside of that, you're like that's all.
Speaker 1:So that's interesting. Is the training ongoing, terry? In other words, I collect my service dog. Maybe you've trained this dog for two years to detect seizures. I had an uncle that had a seizure dog. Particularly important when he was driving Dog would alert him. He could pull off to the side. But let's say he picks up the dog. The dog has had extensive training but, as you say, out in the field new conditions are encountered. Would that person then reach out for additional training for the service animal?
Speaker 2:Absolutely the training for these dogs. It never ends. You're always going to follow those brush ups because also, in addition to the dog just getting rusty, especially if they're not in an environment, a lot, or a new dynamic in the environment that changes things that it hasn't experienced before. Dogs are always going to react to the things they don't understand Right, and so if they don't understand something they only have their mouth to make it go away, right. So it's a growl, a bark, a lunge, right? Another component to that is dogs are trained, usually service dogs, very young. Occasionally we'll have a dog that, just like, picks up on his owner's diabetic needs, right, just starts to get it, but can't be in public because it's a lunatic. So we do public access. So that's a component too.
Speaker 2:But when you have these young dogs you're bringing through training, putting all this time into, you know they're usually out of our hands roughly by two. They're not here every day. Well, just as we age, dogs age the same way. So between zero and one the dog is puppyish, you know. From one to two it's starting to develop hormones and by two it's fully developed and sometimes you get some pushback. So you may have problems that you did not have when the dog was 18 months old. But now you're starting to experience. When the dog is closer to maturity and all that is hormone. It's just like a teenager. It wants to buck. The system wants to really show you because I know it all, and then we get the dog through that. It's pretty simple.
Speaker 1:But then as the dog starts approaching four or five years old, they start to go into cognitive decline as early as four or five.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because if you do the math so four or five puts them probably about 40 or 50 years old in our age. I'm just doing rough math. You can do the dog math if you want. So, that's a fairly old dog and we'll have dogs that have-.
Speaker 1:I'm not liking what you're saying about 40 or 50 and humans being old.
Speaker 2:Me either about 40 or 50 in humans being old, me either, um, you know, and none of us, even as humans, admit to our cognitive decline, but we know we're forgetting things, right, right, um, and don't have the energy we did. Well, dogs go through the same thing. So you have, may have a dog that's going doing really great, having a great training and and doing its job, and then, about four or five like it, may start to get grumpy toward people, may start to to do things that it hasn't done before, and the dog has started a cognitive decline. It doesn't mean the dog's washed up, it just means now we have to do some training to address those things.
Speaker 2:Also like humans, as dogs grow and develop and different things like if you've had a traumatic event in your life that's given you a panic attack, then you're leery of the situation. If you go eat at a restaurant and that food makes you sick, what's the likelihood you're going back to that restaurant, right? Well, dogs don't have that option. So they go, say, to a restaurant and some little kid steps on their paw or does something silly, or a tray of something falls over and startles them Every time they walk in that restaurant. Now that's going to come to their head and they're going to be different, and so life changes. Life experience is also requirement training. So it's never finished, ever, ever finished.
Speaker 1:You know the old saying that you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Is there ever a point where a dog just can't be trained as a service animal? It's just too old.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. And you have to look at performance too mobility, size of dog, all of that stuff. Can a dog reasonably get in and out of a car? And as far as age goes, you also have to look at like to train a service dog. You're looking at about $20,000 to $30,000, right? So if you have a five or six-year-old dog with a life expectancy of 10 years, it's going to take you two years to train it. Well, when you get the dog back you only have a few years, right, that's if it doesn't go into excessive cognitive decline. So getting them young is is the goal. You can train.
Speaker 2:We have trained some stability dogs that are a little older because there's not a. It's not very expensive, it's not a huge process to them. They just have to learn to do counter pressure. But there's an age where they kind of age out. It's harder to teach dogs that have been through a lot of stuff over time than as a dog who you're getting right out of the gate, who knows nothing about nothing. Because it's easier to build a dog than it is to reprogram a dog.
Speaker 1:So we've talked about a few disabilities We've talked about. You mentioned diabetes, I mentioned seizures, you mentioned a stability dog, vision impairment, hearing impairment, ptsd. What other disabilities do you train for?
Speaker 2:We do train psychiatric service animals. That would be PTSD type stuff to push you, push away, to corner you, to use pressure. I would say there's more categories than types of services. The minute I say these are the things we trained our service dog for, something comes up Like I'll tell you a new one that's come up probably over the last five years is autism for autistic kids, nonverbal autistic children. That wasn't a thing five years ago. Like you didn't hear about it, it was happening. My daughter, who runs my national location. She's a child psychologist who specializes in nonverbal autistic kids. Inserting dogs into their life changes everything. So that's a new one, but it's every dog in that area is different. We have to look at how the child responds to the dog. There's no cookie cutter training for that. I would say that's one of the newest ones that we've had to start developing things for.
Speaker 1:So you have started developing, Terry, training protocols for service animals to treat not to treat, but to help people with autism. You've started that training protocol, Absolutely so tell me about that. What would those dogs be trained to do?
Speaker 2:That depends on the need. So we look at the need and so if you have a dog and also with this autism, the kind of nuance to it is, you're looking at how the child responds. Sometimes the dog just being around calms the child, that's it. He has autism. You take him out to the grocery store. There's too much input, you know it's too much stimulus and they just like do this. Well, the dog gives them something to focus on. So the dog may not have to do much of anything except be there.
Speaker 2:Get breeds that don't mind their hair being pulled a little bit, very calm dogs. You don't want a dog that's too small. But you're looking at the person in front of you with any service dog and saying what are the main things that person needs? Sometimes, like I said, with autistic children, it's just being around, being there, being available, going to doctor's appointments and having that dog sit beside them. And they're all into the dog and they're hyper-focused on that. So the doctor can do anything. And you wouldn't think like, well, what kind of training does that require? Well, more than you think, because the dog probably isn't very comfortable being there. But for the children and for autistic people we haven't got any adults, it's all been children. You know, adding that dog, that distraction, that's something to hyper on, that's not all of the inputs around them helps them navigate life and helps the parents navigate life.
Speaker 1:That totally makes sense. You mentioned a $20,000 to $30,000 price tag for some of these service animals because of the amount of training that goes into getting them ready to help their disabled humans, goes into getting them ready to help the disabled, their disabled humans. Do you work with any charities that? Because I imagine there's plenty of disabled people out there that do not have the funds to acquire the dogs they need Do you are there charities in the private sector that step in to help people?
Speaker 2:Sometimes you know every there's so many people going to those charities that we try not to. It's awesome. We try to use local businesses fundraisers. We teach that. We try not to sell. So we try to use local businesses fundraisers. We teach the clients how to fundraise. And this is not like you write me a big fat check. It's over a couple of years and the thing is is that there's really no money in service dogs. Honestly, if you're doing it properly Like if you have a dog halfway through let's say a diabetic alert dog and the people come to you and they're like, hey, we've had a rep. We just can't do this. There's no way that any reputable service dog trainer would send them on their way. We keep training the dog. So almost all programs have some type of other income. Our pet side pays the bills and our side for service animals. We hope to break even.
Speaker 1:So a service animal who graduates from west tennessee canine training, what kind of certification do they get?
Speaker 2:certifications don't exist. We do the training the dog performs, we can sign off. I'll write letters to people like hey, this dog has been through training do they get a completion certificate from you or anything?
Speaker 2:yeah, they can, but it doesn't mean anything. It means you know anything. I can type my own up. It means absolutely nothing and that's the whole disconnect. The ADA guidelines are there in case you need to sue someone. There's case law there and that case law is always changing. I haven't read it. Who's been on the show twice before? Who is an FHA expert here at the firm?
Speaker 1:And she's she deals with this all the time. But you're right, A lot of people will print out those certificates and they'll get. Do the training vest? That's a service animal. Do you provide those? We don't. They don't have to have it. But to your point though, Terry, because if it is, let's say it's my service animal. I'm in a restaurant. I need this animal. I don't want people coming up and treating it like a pet. Is that perhaps the motivation for people, for some people, to put the service animal vest In all?
Speaker 2:service dog people. They use vests for that reason. That is the only reason they use them. They're not required, but it just makes it easier for people to identify a service dog. You're not required to use a trainer to train your service dog. You're not required to have a vest or any type of identification with your service dog. Actually, ADA guidelines say that the stuff you get online is irrelevant, does not matter, means nothing, You're not required to have a letter from anyone saying that you have a service dog.
Speaker 1:So at some point I don't know how it all works, but we're going to have to figure out how to rein this in- Right, because one of the things I started out talking about in the introduction is there is no shortage of fake service animals out there. So, terry, when you're in the airport or in a restaurant and you see an animal with a dog, with a service animal vest, and it is not acting like a service animal, what do you think?
Speaker 2:it's not a service and you know, in all all the guidelines, read them, everyone that talks to a part I'm looking at apartments, churches, gyms they can ask you to leave if your dog is not under control. They can say you have to go right or your dog has. You can come here, your dog has to go. You know they have the right to do that. Every business you go into, every apartment you go into, has the right to say hey, that dog is disruptive and it can't be here. Dogs can't be sitting at the table with you, you can't be sitting in the booth, you can't feed them from the table, you know. Then you go into health department laws and rules and whether it's a service dog or not, these are the health department rules. You know, in our facility with all the dogs like we can't have a whole bunch of service dogs in there because we have training dogs and so the people who have service dogs, they put them outside the training area in a kennel.
Speaker 1:That's what they say during. You know, what's happening, though, terry, is that a lot of the business owners are not aware of that or they've been threatened by people, with the animals saying no, you can't ask me anything, you can't talk to me about this animal, leave me alone. Now, the business owners who are a little more sophisticated in this area know that. Again, as you said, the animal needs to be under control, it needs to be acting in a manner that a service animal would be acting, but in a lot of spaces, I see people who are really afraid, and they know that this really isn't a true service animal, but they're a little frightened because they've been threatened of litigation or something else. That's becoming more and more of a problem and, as you said, if we can just get a handle on it, A lot of people call the police.
Speaker 2:They don't want to have my service up. You know what the police say, what we have no control over, that it's not what we do. Right, you have to get an attorney, you have to do this stuff. This is not a law. These aren't laws. Like they're not a law, it's a guideline to follow and the guidelines change based on who won the last suit. Right, and would you agree that the ADA guidelines are not laws?
Speaker 2:Well, they're guidelines, so if there is a suit, then the court is going to take into account what the guidelines say and whether or not they were followed, but that in and of themselves they're not Right and so that's just it. They're a rule book for us to try to peaceably live with. So say you have a service dog. It's not a service dog, but you take that dog to Starbucks with you or any restaurant you walk in. The dog has a vest on. That dog goes under the table, lays down. You eat your meal. Nobody knows the dog is there. You get up, leave the dog goes with you. Do you think anyone will question that service dog?
Speaker 1:I think usually not.
Speaker 2:No, that's the thing. How is the dog behaving? We went to a restaurant a couple of years ago and this little fluffy dog on a retractable leash walked by us and had feces stuck to its backside, got in a booth beside us, got up in the booth with the people and I didn't say anything. I just asked to be moved to another booth.
Speaker 1:But they did it, found out, ended up asking the people to leave and there was a big commotion, right, but the dog smelled like well, the dog smelled like what it was carrying around, but yeah, so like that was likely an emotional support animal, which is a completely different beast. And I have seen pardon the pun, by the way, um, I have seen more restaurants and businesses pushing back with signage that says we are only going to admit legitimate service animals, not emotional support animals, right, right.
Speaker 2:But, and you know you can't really ask. But let me also tell you this I have a my other one passed. I'm training a new age, six month old. His name is scoot and we call him little dude, that ptsd. And when I I take a dog with me, right, when somebody asks me what that dog is for, I tell them I don't say, well, you can't ask that, right. Anybody with a legitimate disability growing up with a mother who had one, a serious one when people would come up her kids would stare at her She'd say come here, you want to feel my brace, you know, to educate people. There's nobody with a serious disability or a legitimate disability that is going to not be happy to tell you what their dog does, because they want people to know what service dogs are, how they look, how they perform. So the first indication that sums up is I don't have to tell you anything.
Speaker 1:So the defensiveness.
Speaker 2:And if I walk in my place with my dog, I don't medically have to have my dog all the time If I walk into a place, sometimes when you go in a restaurant and it's people from like India or different nationalities like they're terrified of dog. My former service dog was a Doberman not the best choice of dog for a service dog. It just happened to be what I had and needed at the time.
Speaker 1:I had one growing up.
Speaker 2:They're amazing dogs but you know people see them. They're like, oh my gosh, a Doberman. I could tell when I walked in. Their eyes got giant and so I walked out, put them in the kennel, air conditioned in the car right it's running, and I went and ate, you know, because I saw that it made them very uncomfortable. People with service dogs will absolutely see that you're uncomfortable and try to accommodate, and then the restaurants have to accommodate you to a certain extent, but you also have to accommodate them to a certain extent.
Speaker 1:Doing what you've done all these years. I'm assuming you know a lot about dog psychology, what they like, what they don't like. You've seen a behaviorist of sorts. I've always asked this question for the emotional support animals, not the service animals that are there because they're helping somebody, but the emotional support animals where people are bringing them wherever they go to the movies or the restaurant or this. Do dogs really like being dragged around everywhere like that?
Speaker 2:if they're acclimated to it, they don't care. Whatever you make part of a dog's normal everyday life, it's what they adapt, is theirs. When we get a new client, we have a this huge questionnaire we give them where do you go? What do you do? What are your hobbies? All of this stuff. And if they're a movie buff, like, guess where we go with the dog to the movies. If they like going to sports games, guess where we go to the with the dog to a sports game first, right. So the dog has been acclimated to all this stuff, then the dog is impartial. They don't care. But when you take a dog that has not been experienced or hasn't experienced much or been been trained in that area, and you take them to a new environment they don't understand and that scares them, then you have the barking and all of the stuff, right so you.
Speaker 2:You have to train in the areas that people are going to be the dogs. The dogs are different. Some dogs are more confident. We do get dogs that you know they do great with training but they are not confident enough to navigate like a sports game. Sometimes people get two service dogs, one for the house, one for out, and that way they can get a rotation.
Speaker 1:As long as they're accustomed to it. And so you answered my question, because I've always wondered that when I'm looking at all these different dogs, some look very happy, some look miserable. I had a boxer. We had a boxer in our family for years, bachi and he would be much happier at home on the couch, yeah Than um bocce, and he would be much happier at home on the couch, yeah, than being dragged out everywhere.
Speaker 2:And that's just the way it is. We have one of my dogs, like we start as a private security company. She's my detection dog. She'll find drugs and guns and people, right? She doesn't like to go anywhere. She doesn't like people. She wants to be left alone. Just leave me alone. I want to go do my job. Right? We, when people come over, we don't let her out in the house.
Speaker 1:She doesn't't care to be around people.
Speaker 2:Other dog wants to be around people all the time. So a lot of it is the dog's personality or natural inclination to what they're drawn to, and that's what we look for when we're choosing a dog to train a service dog. How confident is it? How people-oriented, how does it do with different distractions in an area?
Speaker 1:Is there a gender difference, terry? In other words, know female versus male dogs in terms of their uh, in terms of their potential as a service animal?
Speaker 2:so technically no, but I'm going to tell you my personal take. Okay, the science behind this is just trained dogs. Boy dogs seem to want to please you more. Female dogs are a little, can be a little more abrasive oh boy, you know our listeners, I can tell I don't know there's any science behind that. That is my personal observation I'm doing. Thousands can be a little more abrasive. Oh boy, you know our listeners. I can tell it right now. I don't know if there's any science behind that.
Speaker 1:That is my personal observation. I'm doing thousands of dogs, but the boys are also bigger whiners.
Speaker 2:It's like men, right? I love your take on this, terry, yeah, so that's just my personal view.
Speaker 1:A female service animal, that animal would never be bred Shouldn't be.
Speaker 2:People do it though. They do Because they have a good, solid working dog and they find another good solid working dog and they try to make a better dog. It's not recommended, but people do it.
Speaker 1:I don't know if there's anything to advise against it.
Speaker 2:I will say that I had a Doberman last year and she was a working dog. When she had her first litter of puppies I couldn't work her anymore. She had changed her.
Speaker 1:Like I can't explain how it changed her. She was a mama now yeah less confidence.
Speaker 2:Like it was just weird, the hormones would change and there it changed her how old was she at that point? She was two and a half. Oh, okay, and so she had just got.
Speaker 1:So then you retired her as a service animal at that point.
Speaker 2:She was a work. We were a private security company. She was on a patrol dog, so she wasn't a service dog, but she was a working dog.
Speaker 1:You know, I wanted to ask you that question because the larger breeds I've had large breeds. I grew up with a Doberman, my husband and our kids. We had a Boxer. We had the bigger breeds but they have a shorter lifespan than some of the smaller breeds. So do you find that people gravitate more towards the smaller breeds because they have a longer lifespan?
Speaker 2:Totally opposite. They gravitate toward the bigger breeds. So if we have a stability dog, for instance, people want to do Great Danes and we do them. We've done a lot of them, but you know, at six they're done Right, like they're done, uh, newfoundlands, all those large breeds, uh, wolfhounds, and then also they're so difficult to get in and out of places, right.
Speaker 2:So if you have a, if you need a stability dog, like you can't get a mini doodle. Mini doodle is not going to hold you up. But if you need a diabetic alert dog, like a little mini doodle that has a good drive, because they're you know. If you don't know what doodles are, it's like a Labradoodle, golden Doodle. They're a combination of working dogs, right, and so you can get a little miniature doodle, just call them doodles. It can be an amazing diabetic alert dog and it just fits in your pocket. Almost People get dogs and they want to take them everywhere. They talk about service dogs, but up to a certain size, and I'm sure we'll talk about breed in a minute. But up to a certain size, like it. Just it's hard for them to access places like how do you put a great dane under a table at a restaurant, right?
Speaker 2:but if you're out on a farm, amazing maybe an amazing mobility some people might have a great dane they train to do stuff at home and a smaller dog they take out. You know you can have more than one service and some people do just the rest of the other dog.
Speaker 2:They're truly depending on that dog two things. If you're working that dog every day, likelihood of burnout come also. If you have one dog, then you have no dogs, you have two dogs and you have one dog. If your dog something happens to it, hurts its foot, you can't take it with you, like you just kind of stuck. So a lot of people will train a backup dog. Maybe the backup dog is not as good, it doesn't really matter why, but they'll train a backup dog just so they have something. When this dog gets hurt or this dog is out of the picture or has to retire, they don't have to start over again.
Speaker 1:That gets expensive, though based on this training, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:It is so expensive it's on the verge of unreasonable.
Speaker 1:Well, let's talk about the housing choices, because this is called Take it to the Board, and we've got a lot of people living in high rise condos and homeowners associations. You mentioned the Great Dane. I'm thinking that a condo building is not necessarily the best housing choice when you have to shuttle them back and forth in narrow corridors and perhaps small elevators. Do you think more people should take their housing option into account when they know they need to have a service animal?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely. And what are the rules? Just because you have a service animal doesn't mean that the rules don't apply to you. They still apply to you. Damages, are they being allowed? Do they fit within the size requirements? Do they fit within the insurance guidelines? So my wife and I had a management company for a lot of years. We managed about 200 homes and a 200 unit apartment complex. Right, Our insurance would not let us have Rottweilers, Pits, Dobermans. They eventually included Shepherds it's not my call, right, we cannot have them there. So you have a service dog that's a Great Dane Like. Where does that fall? Our insurance says they will cancel us if we have these breeds.
Speaker 1:Well, I can tell you from the legal perspective, because we deal with this a lot If the disabled person meets the legal requirements, which they have a letter from a treating medical provider defining them as having a disability which impairs one or more major life activities, and that the dog is needed for these, then the housing provider has to allow it as long as it's reasonable. It becomes unreasonable if that animal's displaying aggression towards humans or other animals, if the owner's not, if they don't have them under control, they're off leash or they're on one of those retractable ones the owner's not picking up after them, the owner leaves them in the unit all day and it's barking, so at that point the accommodation wouldn't be reasonable. I did want to ask you about true service animals. Do they ever display aggression towards humans or other animals?
Speaker 2:Yes, because they're dogs. So I'll give you a personal story. I had my dog in an airport, my doorman, under the seats. We were in a little corner, nobody could get to us. He's asleep. I'm sitting there reading. I look up and this person's going dog and moving toward me. Look up and this person's going, no, and moving toward me, and he opens his eyes and sees this person coming towards and lost his mind. Dog sleeping open, strange person oh, my gosh, my. I've used their mouth to make them go away. Of course I said no when he stopped, but not before the whole airport staring at us, right. Then I asked security if I could take him through an outside door on the tarmac and calm down, and he accommodated, right, you know. So yeah, they're still living, breathing creatures.
Speaker 1:What was that person trying to do? Pet him.
Speaker 2:I don't know. I don't even know how she saw the dog, how I had it right Like I don't know. But dogs are still living, breathing, thinking creatures. You startle them, they will bark at you. They hear something they don't understand. They will bark service dog or not? So dogs are going to be dogs and it's up to the handler to rein them in. The dogs are standalone medical devices.
Speaker 1:Yeah and listen. Dobermans in particular I know this from experience are extremely protective of their owners. I mean, it's one of the reasons our parents got them. I grew up in a family of four kids and Rocky, our Doberman, was extremely protective if anybody came up to us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know not the best choice for a service dog.
Speaker 1:Perhaps not. Well, let's talk about breeds. If, in your opinion, what are, can you give me the top three breeds that you think make the best service animals?
Speaker 2:Oh, gosh Retrievers usually do. I'll go to breeds. I'll go to types of dogs.
Speaker 2:Retrievers because you can have anomalies in any breed, right? So you're talking working class, working working class breeds. They have to have drive to work. So a lot of people get pits that want service dogs like we lovingly nickname them potatoes because they don't want to do anything. Right, there's no drive to work there, not to mention because it's a pit type breeder looks like that. Getting them into places, you get more pushback than any other breed, right, it's just it's not working.
Speaker 1:Um they have a bad. They have bad pr terry and it's.
Speaker 2:I've never been bit by one. I've been by more chihuahuas and german shepherds, and I don't think I've ever been bit by ever.
Speaker 1:They just don't want to do anything.
Speaker 2:Um, there are exceptions to that, but not a lot. Uh, so you're the doodle breeds that I have with the labradoodles, golden doodles. As long as they have a good blood line and a good drive, those have proven to be very good, very good dogs. There are a lot of upkeep and maintenance. So you know, breeds like german shepherds, like they are, they can be trained to be a good dog, good service dog. However, they lean on the tendency of being reactive and very particular. Guardian dogs, right herding dogs, don't make the best dogs in public, you know so talking about, like the Spaniels and the Beagles.
Speaker 2:No, the Australian Shepherds, cattle dogs, oh okay, they're smart. We can get them to perform a lot of tasks, but they don't. They don't usually perform well in public. They don't like people messing with them, right? You know, I would say those are some of the breeds that we like the best, but we open the door to any breed that'll work as long as they have a drive to work. That's what we're looking for. Every breed has anomalies, like you say. You know, these dogs make horrible sort of songs and you get one and you're like well, how come the rest of them aren't like this? And so it's really hard to narrow it down to a specific breed. You just want to make sure you can give them easy access in and out of your car. They're easy to carry around. Somebody can assist you with them if something happens to you, right? But I don't know that. I would say there's a specific breed. We like the hunting breeds. Um, just because they have that hunt drive and they want to what are some of the dogs in the hunting category?
Speaker 2:All your retrievers. The doodles are technically in the hunting category Diabetic alert dogs. Beagles make decent diabetic alert dogs, but you can't really train them to do much else, right? What about?
Speaker 1:Jack Russell Terriers.
Speaker 2:They're a ratter, so they're a hunting dog. They would work if you got the right one, and you have to look at the person too. In their level of mobility. What are they using the dog for? And if the energy level of that dog? Those are high, high energy dogs.
Speaker 1:Super high energy dogs.
Speaker 2:So if you're an active person that needs a diabetic alert dog and you're on the go all the time might be the dog for you, but if you're in a wheelchair rolling around or you know very non-active lifestyle wouldn't be the dog, lifestyle would be the dog. So so, yes, your answer your question.
Speaker 1:jack russell's make good dogs, as long as they fit the element, fit the hand. How important is the intelligence level of the breed? For instance, you meant you keep mentioning doodles and poodles are known, I think, to have very high intelligence levels. Then you've got something like the shibu inu. That, I think, is sometimes people say they're a little too intelligent, a little little too stubborn. Does intelligence become a huge factor in the potential to be a service animal?
Speaker 2:Absolutely, because they have to be able to process and retain what you've asked them to do. It's all reward-based. So you're just saying, hey, do this, you get something, do this, you get something, then you do it. Enough and they get it. But if you have a dog that has no drive or is just not smart, like you say, when we get those they wash out.
Speaker 1:I didn't say that, terry, I would never accuse any breed of being. I don't want hate mail?
Speaker 2:I would never say that we get some that aren't so smart, aren't so motivated to work, aren't so drive. And also, on the opposite of that, you don't want a dog that has incredible drive, like a malinois, you know, or a dutch shepherd or something along that lines, that is so driven to work. You can't get them to stop right, right, because then if you're teaching them to get water bottles out of the refrigerator like you just have the whole refrigerator in your living room they just never stop right. They're always like can I do this? Now? There's like if you're in your going, can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this? So you know, you're trying to find that middle ground where the dogs that you know are slower and not as bright and then the dogs who are extremely intelligent and super high drive. You disqualify those and try to find something in the middle.
Speaker 1:Something in the middle.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:So, legally speaking, emotional support animals. They don't require specific training, they just need to provide a source of comfort to their owners. Well, I'm assuming you're going to tell me those dogs still need some level of training if they're going to be taken to the pool or they're going to be walking through a lobby or they're going to be in an elevator. So what do you recommend? Because that's the bigger problem, frankly, terry, in our condos and our HOAs is these emotional support animals that don't need training. Most of them have never been trained. They're just somebody's pet. They've moved into a community that doesn't allow pets, so now they have morphed into emotional support animals Not saying that's always the case, but we have seen a fair amount of that happening. What kind of training do you recommend to those folks so at least they can have their animal? Go out in public with them, walk down the hallway, get in an elevator?
Speaker 2:So the number one thing that we're contacted about are emotional support dogs, and what we teach them is public access, and so we take them. We do the same thing. They're not trained for a specific task and they're still not a service dog when we get finished, but we take them in public and we get them used to being in public. If a person has a pool in their apartment, we take them to a pool, and that public access is the key to stopping people from complaining right and keeping dogs in check.
Speaker 2:A number of times I've been in an airport and you have to unclip your service dog so that it walks through the metal detector, right, and we kind of stand there and wait like who's chasing this dog? Right, and as soon as they take that leash off, that dog's gone right. And so those are things that disqualify the dog as a service dog. The public access. Immediately you'll know if that dog is a service dog or not and how the owners handle it. But public access is the number one thing we teach dogs and it teaches them to ignore things. It teaches them to just do nothing, I would say for- Not jump on people.
Speaker 2:Just do nothing, right? What is your job today, dog? Your job is to do nothing, and that's actually a command right, just to turn the dog off, off switch. So no matter what's going on around that dog, it doesn't even look right because it is under command, no different than sit or lay down. The dog is under command to do nothing. You put a dog service dog under a table or support dog under the table and you tell you know, tell them to down. They should not move until you tell them to do something different. And that is the difference between knowing this is a trained service dog or somebody who's saying they have a service dog.
Speaker 1:Or it's even just a trained ESA emotional support animal. Your point is so significant, though, terry, because I think you're right. I think what's driving a lot of the angst is the behavior right. Like you said, even if it was a fake ESA, if it's a well-behaved fake ESA, it's going to probably draw less attention and less hostility, because it's just sitting there, as you said, doing nothing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I don't know anybody that would say that's a problem If you have an issue. If you're an apartment, like they know, you have this dog and so you can be at the pool. If you're a guest that comes in, there's going to be a little more, I guess. Yeah, you know. So you're gonna have to clear that with management first, before that dog can come. The process of clearing is very unclean.
Speaker 1:So we've got people who don't want to pay for any training. Let's talk about just pets. It's not an ESA, it's not a service animal, it's just your pet, and they don't want to pay for any sort of training. They think they're going to train this animal themselves. What do you think the number one mistake they make? It's probably going to be not getting them trained professionally, but what do you think the number one mistake people make when they're trying to train their own pets?
Speaker 2:That's a good one. It's actually a pretty easy one. You know everything we do at the training center. I have free online everything With YouTube.
Speaker 2:There's no reason you can't train your own dog. The number one thing that people miss when they're training their own dogs is lack of structure, lack of schedule, lack of rules. You know, when you have a service dog or a pet dog and they're running your house like there's no rules, there's no consequence for your actions, right? And when I say consequence, I don't mean violence, I don't mean anything like that. But you know you absolutely cannot do this Having a dog on a leash in your house.
Speaker 2:You know, if you take the way, if you completely take away the term dog training because we're really not training the dogs, right, we are patterning the behavior. We're doing the same thing with dog over and over and over again, until it becomes a pattern behavior. If you want to lose weight, you start to. If you change your behavior at once, you'll stay on your diet for a month. If you gradually change it and start to make it part of your lifestyle, right, and create time for it, then you will create permanent change. That's, that's what we're doing with dogs. That's what people miss out on. They teach all the stuff that they never get the dog in a structured environment where there are rules, where there is a bedtime, there's a time you get up. You know when you're new to my house, you're strapped to me and I'm taking, I'm showing you my routine. Structure is the number one thing that changes a dog's. To put this, it's a lifestyle.
Speaker 2:It is a lifestyle.
Speaker 1:You eat at a certain time, you go to bed at a certain time, almost like with children.
Speaker 2:It is. It is like with children, exactly, except it's easier because they can't reason with you and they, you know kids, it's like all my kids always told me why why they needed to stay up later. Right, I've never had a dog do that, but keeping that structure, when you know, I have a little puppy, uh, scooter, and from day one, like we had him on nap schedules, just like a human right, and at nine o'clock he'll stand up. He's six months old now. He stands up, walks to the door and he's. And we have a kennel building outside where he sleeps and he walks through and wait for you and he'll lay there until you come to the door and then he walks into the kennel building, he gets his kennel, we shut the door. I gave him a little peanut butter with kong in it because it makes me feel good, right and um, and he's good, but but he's been on that same schedule since he's been with us, you know, and that that is what truly changes dogs and then creating a negative run water behavior.
Speaker 1:That's it I have to ask you if there's any emerging trends in training. And, and before we delve into that, I'm going to give you my own observation. When we grew up, our dogs were house trained almost immediately as puppies. Now I find that dogs are not fully house trained. People have these pee pads and it seems like the there's pick. There's a lot of accidents and what's. I don't think the dogs have changed.
Speaker 2:I think human behavior has changed oh, absolutely, and I'm not gonna, um, guess your age, but but I kind of know I've read, I've read about you, right, and so, like, also, when you were growing up, dogs are largely outside dogs. You didn't have all the dogs inside like we do now. Right, there was a. Usually mom had a small dog inside and the big dogs are outside, but for the most part they were still dogs. And so you can go back 15 years ago, 18 years ago maybe, and see the line where marketing made the dog part of the family and so marketing made you look at this dog as if they were a human and we don't know how to relate to dogs other than the way we relate to humans, because we're not dogs. And so a dog comes in and we have to give them all the stuff, and you know we have to. Oh, it's okay, baby, it's, you know. And here's a, here's a comfortable bed for you. They should. Why don't you show up your bed? I'll get you another one, right, and so, through marketing, genius marketing. It's why we're so busy, right? It's because they made dogs part of your family.
Speaker 2:Now, dogs before were dogs, they were pets, they were in your family, but they didn't generally watch TV with you and do all the stuff, and you didn't dress them. Did you ever dress your dogmen up in clothes? No, why not? Probably because they didn't have them. Now you can go to the store and buy a whole wardrobe for every day, right? And so a lot of people are not having children in there. Is is early and they're adopting dogs and getting dogs to fill that void, to see if they're good parents, and so we've humanized dogs, um, and, and that trend during covid um escalated 500 percent.
Speaker 1:500 percent during code so are dogs evolving and getting to know us better.
Speaker 2:No, dogs are a product of their environment. They're a product of what they come out of. When I get a dog, I can tell you after spending a day with that dog. I can tell you largely what the home conditions are like. Right, they're strictly a product of their environment.
Speaker 1:Give me an example of what a dog's behavior would tell you about their home environment.
Speaker 2:So we had an Australian Shepherd come in a few weeks ago. The dog was just all over the place, I mean would not focus on you, it's just. I mean it took us probably a week just to get the dog to focus on us, right, and it was just very aloof, very flighty, very into every, into everything. We got the dog trained. The whole family came to the training turnover session and they had five kids, three of which were triplet boys about four years old. Those triplet boys will be the best career criminals you will ever meet. They were good, they were good. They were good.
Speaker 2:Two would distract you, the other one would go get into stuff. Then you go get that one and you come back. Now there's only one, but the one's following you and they're in like they were in my desk drawers. They were in the back trying to let dogs out of the kennel, like that. And the mom was just like I. I don't know what to do. I, I give up, and so the. What I saw in that family dynamic was exactly how the dog acted when it came in. Right, if you have somebody, mom may be nice, dad might be too gruff and hard on the dog, borderline, abusive, right, girls train the dog fine. I walk in and grab the dog and the dog slams to the floor. Because I'm a man, I have a deep voice, because what's coming next right, and so we have to work them through that. So there's rarely a situation where dog comes in where we can't say this is the home dynamic dog sells door.
Speaker 1:I can tell it's so interesting and I think I think we don't recognize that that the dog is a reflection of the, the home right and what's going on in it because it's not how we think we think.
Speaker 2:We think like humans, like your reflection of your home. You know, like you're a reflection of your own. You know we are a reflection of the people we're around the most and usually that's our family. We have a toxic family. We have a toxic outlook on life. Right, if you have an argument in a family, we're argumentative, right, but our house is calm. And dogs you hardly ever hear from them Because we it's calm. And dogs you hardly ever hear from them because we do this, we don't do this, or big ups and downs. We try to keep as steady as we can.
Speaker 1:For our listening audience. Terry is doing a flat line across the Zoom screen.
Speaker 2:Yes, Not a roller coaster, not a roller coaster. Yeah, we don't want a roller coaster, we want a flat line as close as we can get. There will be some peaks and valleys. We want them to be minimal because we we level those out right in terms of the dog training.
Speaker 1:Do people still use those choke collars?
Speaker 2:yeah, they're all kinds of tools. So choke call is what I was raised on um and you're just yanking the heck out of the dog, right, their technology is so advanced now the training is so less invasive, like when you start everything with food slip leads. We have electronic collars that work like tendons units. We have prone collars. Used properly, they're really good tools. But once the dog gets trained, like all those are training tools. Those are just training Right.
Speaker 2:Once you get the dog, dog to a point and all the technology speeds things up. So where in the past, something that may take us six weeks because of technology and new ways and training and new training tools, we can keep that dog motivated and achieve something within days. What used to take us weeks, that's it. But if you're not trained on how to use them, you can really mess up a dog With the inconsistency Inconsistency too hard of a correction.
Speaker 2:You have to teach the dog how you're communicating with it. The leash is the communication tool, right, but if the dog doesn't understand what it's supposed to be doing, if you've taught the dog to do something and they do it pretty well and then you ask them to do it and then you give them say a leash correction with a no, and then you ask them to do it and then you give them say at least correction with a no, and then you give them the command again and they don't do that two or three times don't don't do what you ask them to do. There's a huge, huge possibility that they don't know what you're asking them to do, right, and so, instead of going harder on the dog, screaming at them or yanking whatever like, go back two steps and do more repetitions. When a dog knows what to do, like they know they're getting something for doing it, so why wouldn't they do I?
Speaker 1:mean I was always taught to use one or two word commands. I see people today using sentences dog has no clue.
Speaker 2:And when we start training dogs we talk to them very little. The communication is that leash, right, as I talk in a whisper. When I talk to staff in the training center even my wife they're like what are you saying? Because I talk so soft every day? Right, because I want to be able to tell a dog that right, I don't even think you can hear that. Or a little hand signal cut it out, right, when you see people training dogs, it's loud. Yes, go, go Like, do that in a restaurant.
Speaker 1:Well, you make a really good point. You make a really good point. You do want to use your indoor voice because at some point you're going to need to give a correction when you're in public.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and if you do ever have to raise your voice, then it means something like I don't cuss very much, I just don't. I was in the Navy, Like I just never rubbed off on you. But if I drop a cuss word, the whole room stops because I never do that, Right, so something's out of order, something serious, Right. Or if I raise my voice like I don't use it to raise my voice, but if I raise my voice the whole room stops because now it has value Like we have to teach these dogs what has value. Dogs what has value they have no to value to them is getting in your trash, jumping on you, bugging you for affection, scavenging for food, eating your undergarments Like that's satisfaction for them, right. Where if say no, no, that's going to get you in trouble. But do what I ask you to do. Look at the food. You get the praise. You're always with me, right, so you have to flip that script.
Speaker 1:You don't want them chewing on your expensive shoes, terry, oh no, and then.
Speaker 2:But but they're, they're good in our shoes. The reason they chew on our shoes is because we have scent glands in our feet and it smells like us.
Speaker 1:Oh, is that what it is?
Speaker 2:Panties, bras they go for that stuff. Very rarely would they grab your T-shirt. They do. They chew the armpit out of it.
Speaker 1:True, we're getting a lot of good information here, folks.
Speaker 2:we're getting a lot of good information. What are your thoughts on doggy daycare and dog parks? Um, that, like, we do a daycare, our facility, but it's a structured daycare. There's no crazy playing, it's limited to five dogs per group. Um, we rotate dogs out, they're working on training stuff, they're learning to be calm, they're learning how to interact. So it's like doggy daycare is like throwing humans into a mosh pit. Right, if you don't know what a mosh pit is, a bunch of people dancing, slamming around with each other. Right, it's a great amount of fun if you're into it, but if you're not, like you're terrified. Right, and throwing dogs and doggy daycares in that environment. Dogs are responding to pressure and and it doesn't tire dogs out like people think it actually keeps them in a state of arousal all of the time.
Speaker 2:Dog parks, dog parks. I used used to take my dogs to dog parks all the time. Now they're so popular, all the dogs are out of control and even if your dog is under control, something's going to happen with a dog that's out of control and what ends up happening is there's so much pressure being put on these dogs in these environments that the only way they can make it go away is by using their mouth. So now they start fighting and so it becomes a part of the behavior. Remember, it's patterning. So now when a dog comes to me, close to me, I just go for the bite. Some dogs thrive in a doggy daycare. I know some dogs have been in doggy daycare since birth and they're, you know, five or six years old. Most dogs do not. It's just too much chaos, not enough structure, too much pressure on the dogs. Also too little staff for the amount of dogs we have. For every five dogs in daycare we have one person.
Speaker 2:You know you go to a doggy daycare. There's 30 dogs with two people.
Speaker 1:People used to leave their dogs at home, home alone, when they would go to work, and now I think a lot of people think my dog's going to be bored or not get enough exercise so I need to take them to daycare, and your response to that would be Downtime is when dogs process.
Speaker 2:If you, as a human, want to learn something and you stay up for three days just cramming, you don't sleep, you super immerse yourself in it, how much of that do you think you'll retain? Like not much, right, because you have no processing time. You really learn after you've done the thing, after you've been to class. Then you're going to sleep, you're processing, then, bam oh, it all came together. Right the glue. When they're always in a state of chaos, like none of that can come together.
Speaker 1:That makes total sense. You've been so great with your time. I've just got a few more questions, because this is fascinating to me In a lot of our condos and HOAs, terry, they impose a weight limit.
Speaker 2:Yes.
Speaker 1:They'll say no more, you know we'll allow pets, but no more than 25 pounds or 30 pounds. And when I've asked clients why the weight restriction, they always seem to think that the bigger the dog, the bigger the problem. I guess that leads back to potentially a larger dog can be more aggressive and cause more damage. But is that really the case?
Speaker 2:Not necessarily One of the departments we managed. The lady had two men pen service dogs, total tiny dogs and just I'll save you the graphics, but we nicknamed that dog that house the poop house. We had to have environmental engineers come in and deal with it. That's about $2,000 to like $10,000. And these were two little teeny dogs that she never took outside right.
Speaker 1:Also, the little dogs sometimes bark more, so in a lot of the communities they don't want the nuisance. But is it your experience that?
Speaker 2:large dogs bark more than small dogs. Oh, small dogs can be, yeah, yeah, large dogs can bark too, but it's also adjusting them to their environment. You know an apartment thing. With an apartment, I went from a house to an apartment for about a year in an interim period of my life and it was a duplex and I had to had to work on my dogs not barking at the neighbors next door because they're like we're in the house, we're hearing this banging. So that too goes to training. I wouldn't say that small dogs bark any more than big dogs, just more people in apartments have small dogs.
Speaker 1:I'm just trying to wrap my head around the basis for the rule, because we see it a lot. But listen, I've also seen Burmese mountain dogs in condos and they're very well behaved and so it depends. I think in some of the newer upscale communities they're not putting weight restrictions because, again, there's trends Right In terms of which breeds are popular. I think we've got a lot of popular large breeds right now.
Speaker 2:And I would be interested to know if those weight restrictions are put in place by the complex or by their insurance carrier. Interesting Because our insurance carriers on all of our properties. We had multiple properties and groups of properties and they were insured with different people and all of them had a different requirement, whether it be, you know, weight or breed, size, height. It was all across the board. So it would be interesting to know if that was put in place by an insurance carrier or if it was put in place by the apartment complex.
Speaker 1:From my experience, it's the board that's making the decision, or it was the developer originally, for the developer created documents, but more often than not it's a subsequent board, post-transition, that has decided. We want to, you know, implement these weight restrictions and sometimes breed restrictions.
Speaker 2:Then look at, look at the what you're asking, though. So say, you're in an 800 square foot apartment with two great Danes yeah, and they're in that apartment all day long and they can't be in kennels because they're great Danes. Like, imagine what that apartment's going to look and smell, like you know, in six months.
Speaker 1:Not to mention the comfort level of those dogs. I mean that gets back to the question I asked a few minutes ago about you know, taking into account your dog's needs when you're making a housing selection.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely, and also knowing that the folks that own these properties have the ability and the right to make their rules. It is their place. So if you come visit me and you bring your dog, we have a kennel building out. Your dog can come in and visit with us, but at night, if it doesn't sleep with you, it sleeps in the kennel building or in a kennel. Those are my rules in my house, because I don't want dogs wandering my house. Right, it's my house. If we have people that come pick up their service dogs all the time, the rules still apply. Right, because a service dog will pee on my couch. It smells another dog, just like any other dog. They're dogs, right? And so we have to at some point say well, these people own the property, I'm leasing it from them and, as long as the rules are reasonable, I have to abide by them or you don't live there.
Speaker 1:Well, Terry, I'd like to have you on all my boards. You sound like you run a really tight ship.
Speaker 2:The thing is, you have these guidelines, you have your lease, you have a property owner and says I'm going to build this property and it's going to be amazing and we're going to keep it amazing because we're not going to allow German Shepherds and all these big dogs to make people fearful. For one, your neighbor sees a German Shepherd coming at them like oh, German Shepherd, you know. So we have to take into account that there's two sides to this whole thing, not just the service animals. Right, I get you have a disability, I get you need a service animal. However, in life there are rules, always rules.
Speaker 1:Those rules are in place because something happened, usually bad to make a rule right, but the pendulum has swung very far in the direction of people using legal loopholes to get dogs in pet-restricted communities. So hopefully the pendulum is going to swing back towards the middle, and we've seen this with the air carriers, terry. They are now taking a stricter stance. I mean, we had peacocks and turkeys and all sorts of crazy animals on airplanes as emotional support animals and the air carriers are now pushing back against that a little bit. Also, I've always wondered, because I've been on planes with a number of emotional support animals in the event of an emergency, I'm wondering how people would get around some of these animals trying to deplane.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, I'll tell you, the animals in an emergency situation are not considered important. Humans are considered important. The animal is an afterthought because it's not a human life. That's horrible to say, but it's the truth. The animal is an afterthought because they're not. It's not a human life. That's horrible to say, but it's the truth. The dogs are not people. Dogs are not human, it's not a human life and it's treated differently.
Speaker 2:I was just reading a recent case from the airlines and they are being strict. I just helped another trainer of mine. She's moving from here to, she has to go to Germany and then she's moving to Spain. Well, her dog is solid. I wrote a letter, all the qualifications this airline needed. She paid her stuff and they needed some more information and they told her no. They told her no, she lost her money. She had to go find another airline. That is their right to do that. It is it to do that. It is. It is their right to say we've given us everything we've asked and, and I would say probably, because it was a german shepherd if I had to guess.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, you know, you've done everything you ask. However, we do not feel like this is a good, good decision for us to make and you have to go with that I was gonna say did.
Speaker 1:What was her reaction? Did she push back, did she threaten?
Speaker 2:the dog trainer. She's in the dog world, she knows that, that they can do that right taking your dog to the zoo. Like they can say no, they have hundreds of animals, lives at risk if your dog brings something in right and we have to respect the business owner, the apartment owner, the if your tenant homeowner like. There has to be some respect, for this is their stuff and they know how to manage it. It's not anything against you and your dog but historically these things have happened and we know this is a bad deal.
Speaker 1:Well, you know that there has been some erosion of respect across the board, so some people just don't like to be told no when it comes to rules that may apply to them. I'm that person.
Speaker 2:If the wall says, if there's a sign on the wall that says wet paint, I want to know how wet that paint is. Right, it's just my nature, I want to test boundaries, right. But if you're in life you understand like, this is their house, it's not mine, this is their restaurant, it's not. And I have to be willing if I, if it doesn't fit within their guidelines, I have to be willing to go somewhere else or have a conversation with them to say what can I do to make this work? You know I like to eat this restaurant. Now I have a service dog you don't like service dogs in here like could I sit on the patio? Is there a back corner booth that can sit? And how can? This helps the people. How can we work? Most people are reasonable. If you're reasonable absolutely great point.
Speaker 1:Most people are reasonable. They want to. They want to help you.
Speaker 2:Um, if you're reasonable you have to give me as well. I don't have to do anything. Right, you have to do this. Approach it like okay, so I need an apartment here. Let me tell you in advance I have a service dog. It's not ideal to have this type of service dog, but this is why I have it. And lead with that, not sneaking around the back end. You're trying to get out of a pet feed, any of that stuff you know. Lead with that.
Speaker 1:And there's plenty of people that absolutely need these animals and they come to places like West Tennessee Canine, West Tennessee K-9 to get the training.
Speaker 2:Right, and if the people say no, they say no.
Speaker 1:I am going to say as the lawyer there are some legal consequences, so make sure you're speaking to, if it's an association, make sure you're speaking to association counsel before you say no, make sure you properly evaluated the request.
Speaker 2:Can I add on to that? No, If they say no and they're in the wrong, then they're in the wrong right. But if you, as the dog owner, have done everything you can do, provided the information that's been requested, and they still say no, then that's different, right, terry?
Speaker 1:I always tell them boards should not rubber stamp these applications and they shouldn't deny them out of hand. They need to be thoughtfully evaluated.
Speaker 2:And let me take it further, case by case and not by the apartment manager. There needs to be some place that can be elevated. So it takes emotions out of it and also, if whoever's looking at these on the board says no, it relieves the apartment manager from having to be in that position.
Speaker 1:It's not their decision.
Speaker 2:This is our rules. Let me elevate it to the board, or whoever that person is, the owner or whoever, with all the documentation, and let's see what rule they make.
Speaker 1:Work with counsel, there are legal repercussions and whenever the question is, is there a liability if my suggestion is reach out to attorney. So, whether it's the attorney for the apartment complex, or the attorney for the apartment complex or the attorney for the association, I did want to ask you a completely off the wall question. Is that OK, terry? Yes, but as long as I have you here, yeah, cloning of dogs. Have any of your service animals ever been cloned?
Speaker 2:No, they haven't. But you know it's going to happen eventually.
Speaker 1:I think so because because somebody can get so attached to that particular animal right.
Speaker 2:They would. But you know, would they would if they were cloned? Like would they have this? Would they just be born with the same understanding and knowledge, or would you have to teach them again, like I don't know? I don't know anything about cloning.
Speaker 1:It's a fascinating question, though, isn't it? I mean, right up until now. Now, the only people that I've read about cloning animals are celebrities cloning their favorite pets, but I'm wondering, in the service animal space, this is an animal that you depend on to be, and, again, if you're using a larger animal that only has a seven or eight year lifespan, yeah whether or not this is going to be something we see in the future I'm going to go, yes, because just the way things are going.
Speaker 2:technology is advanced, so we still don't know like, will they come out trained or won't they come out trained?
Speaker 1:Yes, they don't come out trained, but they come out with the same personality that made them a good choice in the first place.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:As a circus animal. I've told you that I've had a couple of dogs. I had dogs growing up. I had we had a dog for 12 and a half years. But I am now a proud cat owner, Terry, and I would like to know how come there's never any formal training for cats.
Speaker 2:Well, in Cats, Be Trained. One of my trainers actually used to train cats at SeaWorld. I mean I said, well, how would you handle it if the, if the cats didn't do what you want to do? She said we take them back to the shelter and get another cat. Oh, that's mean, Because there they use all shelter animals for all their stuff. But the thing with cats is you can teach cats to do stuff, but if they want something and want to do something and you keep them from doing it a certain way, they'll just find another way to do it. Like. The cats are never really completely tamed, Like if you, as long as your cat has claws, if you turn it outside today like it would live, If you never fed it again and put it outside, like it would live.
Speaker 1:Well, isn't that true for a dog?
Speaker 2:No no.
Speaker 1:Really.
Speaker 2:Not at all. Dogs are not instinctive hunters like cats.
Speaker 1:If I put my dogs out, like I would have to wake up to let them in they would not leave, they wouldn't go chase down a squirrel.
Speaker 2:No way, okay, no way. If they did, it would be a lucky even the hunting breeds they make turtles and things, but to you know they would go through trash. They would. They would do that. Dogs are dogs are opportunists. At this point, they're so domesticated that there are certain breeds that and dogs that would be able to do that. The majority would not.
Speaker 1:Well, how do we domesticate these cats?
Speaker 2:I mean, I have a lovely cat. It's their DNA, it's their genetics. It's, like you know, trying to make you an elephant. Like it's not going to happen. It's because you're genetically a human. Like you're not going to. We can't flip a switch and say this week I'm gonna roam the plains of africa as an elephant.
Speaker 2:You know, it's just, it's who you're bred to be. Go, go google like cat cans and stuff like that, and watch like cats are in the bed with people. They go out a little cat door, they have a camera on them. They go rob a bird's nest. They're covered in blood, they clean themselves up and they get right back in bed with their own.
Speaker 1:Like it's pretty gross they have secret lives, they have secret lives.
Speaker 2:That's a good way to put it.
Speaker 1:They, cats, are troublemakers oh boy, I I know I can't really dispute this, I really can't, but I do love my cat. Well, I want to thank you so much. Where can people find your online training, terry?
Speaker 2:I'm just west tennessee canine. Um, easy enough. Find on youtube social media. We have 10 years of consistent social media. Everything we do at the Training Center is free on YouTube. Find our social media. If you ask us a question, we will answer it, because if you're asking us a question, there are hundreds of other people that need that answer too.
Speaker 1:I learned so much today. Thank you so much, Terry.
Speaker 2:You're very welcome. If I can help again in the future, please let me know.
Speaker 1:Thank you for joining us today. Don't forget to follow and rate us on your favorite podcast platform, or visit TakeItToTheBoardcom for more ways to connect.