What breeds make the best service dogs?

hi guys so today I'm going to briefly hit a topic that actually takes a little bit more than 15 minutes to get through correctly so I have also written a blog post to go with this that has all the information on a service dog breathe so I have a blog post that goes with this that's the link in the description above so that you can get all the information on kind of how I think it's in what I think is important to consider when you're choosing a breed for service work and this is a question that we get a lot and I see a lot online you know what breed makes for a good diabetic alert dog or what breed makes for a good psychiatric service dog or you know can pitbulls be service dogs or can st. Bernard's be service dogs or you know stuff like that so I wanted to talk today about what breeds make good service dogs and why and this is going to be the start of a whole series of information on choosing a service dog evaluating a service dog and then getting started with training because we've polled our group and everybody wanted to learn more about how to get started training a service dog and so that's what we're moving into here in March so I thought we'd start at the very beginning and we would start with how to choose a breed in general so the first thing that I want to say especially for anybody who's watching this who already has a dog is that it is true that you can find a good service dog candidate in any breed I know breeds of all types that are you know dogs of all breeds that are successful service dogs that are excellent diabetic alert dogs or psychiatric service dogs or anything like that and so I don't want you to think oh she said German Shepherds don't make good service dogs and feel offended or something because I know lots of German shepherds who are good service dogs oh hi everybody yes I see your comments coming through since I'm on my phone today um so so that's just what I kind of want to preface this with is that please know that I am NOT saying that your breed or the breed that you want is a bad service dog I just want to give you the things that you should consider when you're choosing a breed so like I said this is a much bigger topic than I can do in a 15 minute video so I have also written a blog post so that there is all the information that I think you need to consider so the first thing when you're choosing a service dog breed that you need to consider is and I have notes that's why I keep looking down is what job you need the dog to do right so if you need a balance dog or you need a dog to pull a wheelchair that's gonna require a much larger dog than any kind of alert work so a diabetic alert dog can be 15 pounds and still do its job right a balanced dog needs to be quite a bit bigger for safety reasons and so that they can actually do the job so that's something that you want to consider when you're thinking about breed is size and how that relates to the job that you need the dog to do now the other thing that you want to think about when it comes to excuse me inhales wrong there so the other thing you want to think about is the personality of the dog and how that okay I think I'm back now so the other thing you want to think about is how breed relates to what job you want done is the temperament of the dog so for example German Shepherds have a tendency to feed off their owners anxiety and become anxious or aggressive themselves know again I know German shepherds who are very good psychiatric service dogs but in general German Shepherds tend to be hyper aware of their surroundings they tend to be protective you know and they tend to feed off their owners anxiety and so that doesn't really lend itself to being a good service dog now again I know lots of great German Shepherd owners that have really great German Shepherd service dogs but in general they tend to feed off their owners anxiety so that's something that you want to think about and then the other thing to think about is if your looking for any kind of scent work you really want to go with a breed that has a good nose and uses it very naturally so all dogs have excellent noses they actually did a study with scent detection dogs where they compared German Shepherds pugs and greyhounds to see which ones had the best noses and actually the pugs outperformed the German shepherds and they couldn't even motivate the greyhounds enough to get them to learn the task so the greyhounds maybe had better noses but they couldn't get them to do the assignment and so they have no idea so if you're looking for some kind of scent work then a dog who has an excellent nose and uses it very naturally it's going to be very helpful so that's where we look into a lot of the sporting breeds so you know any kind of Retriever or poodle or spaniel now you know having said that I just placed a border collie as a diabetic alert dog and he's doing wonderful but in general right looking to a sporting breed is gonna be a little bit it's gonna be a little more helpful um and next week we're gonna get into evaluating individual dogs and that's we're all kind of explains you how to evaluate for these things but another example you know of using the nose naturally this is what I mean by this so Kenzie our Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever she uses her nose very very naturally so without having to teach her anything I can tell if jessica has been in my backyard yet today by how Kenzie reacts when she hits the grass so if jess has walked through the backyard Kenzie will get off the deck and she will immediately start to wiggle and then she will track just to wherever she has gone so Kenzie uses her nose really naturally I have four other dogs in the house who love just just as much as Kenzie does but they don't do that okay they only get excited once they see her so that's another thing to think about if you're looking for any kind of scent task is a dog who uses their nose very very naturally so you know the first thing you think about is your task and what that will require out of your dog now the next thing to think about is your lifestyle right so do you travel a lot because if you travel a lot a smaller dog you can get away with the easy it's gonna be because they just fit on airplanes better and they fit in buses better and you can get a giant dog you know a Great Dane if that's what you need for mobility work you can still travel with a Great Dane but if you don't need that size then something smaller is going to be a lot easier fit places when you go to travel if that's something you do a lot you also want to think about your ability or willingness to exercise your dog so I saw on a post recently um somebody asked if a Dutch Shepherd would make a good diabetic alert dog well kind of I mean they have excellent noses and they have excellent working ability but they are so high-energy that unless you're gonna run 10 miles every morning then train the dog then go run errands all day and then babysit your kids at night a Dutch Shepherd has way too much energy for you okay they just do so if you are a runner or a biker or you're very active and you need to bring your dog with you on those things if your job has you up and moving a lot if you run a lot of errands then you're going to be able to handle a dog with more energy than if you just never really leave the house so exercise is a huge thing to think about I cannot tell you how many owners we have had come to us who bought a pointer or a husky or a German Shepherd for service work and didn't realize how much exercise that dog needed so your ability and interest in exercising your dog has got to be one of the things that you take into account very heavily when you're choosing a breed and then grooming is another lifestyle thing you want to think about so is anybody in your house allergic to dogs that's something you'll need to consider are you interested in or willing to groom your own dogs or are you able and willing to pay a groomer to groom your dogs so let's break that down a little bit right so something like a lab has that short double coated hair right it's very washing where it needs to be brushed to keep shedding down it but it doesn't have to be trimmed so that's a very low maintenance coat they do shed so that's something that you have to keep in mind if you want something that does not if a learner he's a really big deal to you a poodle is going to be your best bet so there are a lot of doodles out there that make excellent service dogs a lot of them have the good qualities of the lab and the good qualities of the poodle you know all that stuff but a lot of them shed pretty heavily and some of them mat really badly so doodles don't necessarily have good coat types and so that's something that you'll want to talk to your breeder about and see if their line suits what you need now having said all that when it comes to allergies any dog that is groomed every 4 to 6 weeks meaning you took them to a groomer they had a bath they were blown out and they were washed they're not going to shed very much and that's going to help a lot with allergies so grooming is definitely something that you want to consider and you want to consider whether you have the money to pay somebody to groom the dog whether you're willing to learn whether you know you have to consider all that stuff because service dogs can't they need to be well groomed out in public and if allergies are a big deal and that's something you really want to consider as well so you know once you consider all of those things there are a lot of reasons that labs golden retrievers and poodles are very rep use me very popular service dogs and that's because they have the temperament to do the job they're very adaptable to energy levels and exercise levels of their owners they have good coke types so labs you know like I said they're very wash-and-wear poodles don't shed and mixes of these breeds so that's why they're so popular and that's why we recommend them a lot in our program we use a lot of poodles and Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever 'z and we use the toilers because they're quite a bit smaller than the goldens in the labs and that makes them easier to travel with but we will use all kinds of breeds but those are the ones that we lean towards the most because we have found them to work very well for people so there's a reason like I said that those breeds are so popular and so don't discount that and another thing to think about too is that if you have an off breed is if you have like a Dalmatian or a big Mastiff or something like that as a service dog you're gonna get stopped more often because it's going to draw a lot of attention and public people are gonna want to know if they can pet your Dalmatian and they didn't know Dalmatians could be service dogs and the whole hat stuff and in some areas of the country you're gonna be more likely to be stopped as well and have public access issues with the dog that isn't a traditional service dog breed because everybody has this association and their breed in their brain between labs and service work and so that's just something to keep in mind as well as is I know Dalmatians come up periodically and I love Dalmatians I think they're really really neat but you are gonna get stopped all the time because everybody is fascinated by Dalmatians so that's again just something to think about so like I said all of this stuff is very general I'm speaking in general here and next week we'll get to you know in evaluating individual dogs but when you're choosing a breed you've really got to think about your lifestyle okay what it is you need the dog to do and your lifestyle not just what type of dog you'd like to have so like I said check out the blog post because it has a lot more information in it and a lot more things to think about help guide you on this decision and then tune in next week cuz that's where we're gonna start talking about how to evaluate an individual dog and if you're going with a shelter dog that's excellent loads of shelter dogs make really really good service dogs next week is where we'll talk about how to evaluate an individual dog and that's where you know if you're a shelter dog person then that's the information that you need more so than breed because most of the dogs at least in shelters around here most of them are mixed breeds so let us know if you guys have any questions and definitely check out that blog post see you later

Channel: My Service Dog and Me

Views: 10,230

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Id: eJHTh8If6AI

Length: 12min 36sec (756 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 19 2018