Shelley Alward-MacLeod 0:00
Hello, and welcome to Season Two of Within Our Reach, a podcast all about accessibility, inclusion, and leveling the playing field at work and in our community. I'm Shelley Alward McLeod, and I'm joined by my co-host Blake Hunsley, and today we're joined by, and I'm just going to read this, Dan O'Brien, who's a trauma-informed service dog coach, director, canine development and Training with Service Dogs Atlantic. So, welcome, and we also have with us our very own therapy dog handler, Evan Dobbie. Welcome both to the show. We're very exciting. I'm sad that we don't have, like, any of our pet friends,

Blake Hunsley 0:42
and there's not a single dog in the place now. Whether we could bring a well-behaved dog is, you could, okay?

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 0:53
So, so, Dan, why don't we start by, you know, you telling us a bit about yourself and what, what got you into this field,

Dan O'Brien 1:01
sure. Well, I'm actually a.. I say I'm a semi-retired graphic designer. I have my own graphic design company that I've run for many years, called Design North, but I've had dogs all my life, and I got into the service dog world through generally, mostly through guide dogs. First, I'm actually on the board of CNIB. I chaired the board of CNIB for a while, and now I'm now I sit on the board as one of the directors, and I've worked with the guide dogs in Guide Dog Puppies. When 19, sorry, sorry, 2017 we started the guide dog program with CNIB, and I was one of the first people to have a puppy to raise for the guide dog program. I've raised four puppies since then, that kind of got me into the whole world of service dogs, although I've been a dog trainer for many years before that, just on the side, it's part from my interest in dogs, but I moved on to service dog work and getting trained as a service dog trainer. I'm not certified as a service dog trainer, I'm certified as a coach at this point, only because I haven't written the test and paid the big bucks to get that certification in place, and I don't need it right now, because, but mostly what we're doing with Service Dogs Atlantic is advocacy work.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 2:28
Okay. All right, so tell us a bit about that advocacy work. Right,

Dan O'Brien 2:32
so through Service Dogs Atlantic, we do, we're doing two things. One, well, three things really do, we do a certain amount of training. We actually have three dogs that we're training right now, but we also do advocacy, where I, we have a presentation that we do to different groups, letting them know the difference between all the different kinds of dogs that are out there, so we're talking about service dogs, guide dogs, working dogs, as in police dogs, and such, and in what some people would call emotional support dogs, ESDs, which is not really a thing, and we can get into that later. Into what

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 3:17
we were, I was gonna say talking, but really, we were ranting. I would love

Blake Hunsley 3:26
to start, though, just because I'm sure that's the first question the listeners are going to have, is about the difference between service dogs and guide dogs. Explain a bit, just to make sure everyone knows exactly where we're starting from here. Yeah, yeah,

Dan O'Brien 3:38
so yeah, there's a number of different, different dogs, and they're all under different protections in the law, and under different, different designations, the names that they're called, they all fall under this, you know, the working dogs all fall under this umbrella of service dogs.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 3:58
Okay,

Dan O'Brien 3:59
so service dogs, in general, there are a few kind of served as mobility dogs, there's psychological support dogs, and there's there are other kind of service dogs that they do, so it's mostly mobilities and psychological service and some other kind of work, and I'll get into the details of that later, and then we have guide dogs, and guide dogs. Sorry, first of all, service dogs are protected in Nova Scotia under legislation called the Service Dog Act.

Blake Hunsley 4:29
Okay,

Dan O'Brien 4:30
only Nova Scotia, British Columbia, Alberta have a Service Dog Act. Newfoundland has a Service Animal Act, which is a little bit weaker.

Blake Hunsley 4:40
Okay,

Dan O'Brien 4:41
and I'm working right now with the provincial government in PEI to start their service dog act, that'll be enacted probably within the year, within this year. So,

Blake Hunsley 4:53
well, that's very exciting. So, since we have someone who's going to be one of the architects of the contents of this act, what. It really needs to go into that sort of legal framework around this, around service dogs.

Dan O'Brien 5:05
Well, it's legislation in for, and we'd like to see legislation in every province, not every province has it, so it's mostly just it's an act. So we want to get the law written, and we want it clearly written that you know what the rights are for service dogs in their person, so it's a team. Service dog is always a team. You can, if you have a service dog, it has to be the person who's been working with that dog, who the dog is working for, is they're the only people that have access with the dog, right? So, if you give your dog to your to your mother to look after for a day, she doesn't have access anywhere with her dog. It's just a becomes a pet as soon as the vest comes off. The dog is a, is a pet dog. And you'll notice with a well-trained service dog, when they take their, their vest off, they just become dogs. They'll become, you know, they'll become a crazy dog like any other dog. We've had a few

Blake Hunsley 5:59
episodes in here where we've had our friend of the show, Milena, we've had her guide dog, Hope, in here, and Hope's very quiet and professional when she has the rigid harness on. In the second that comes off, you have a large puppy in the room, for sure. I

Dan O'Brien 6:13
know Milena and Hope well, so that's good. Yeah, that's a good, that's a good example of what what we're talking about there, but yeah, so the other kind of dogs that are involved in this are we have working dogs, such as farm dogs, you know, dogs that are very well trained to do certain work, police dogs, for instance, and for instance, a police dog would not have access to, they don't have any access under the Service Dog Act, the service dog act does not cover police dogs or any other kind of working dogs. It covers only service dogs, and in Nova Scotia, guide dogs are not under the service dog act, they're under another act called the Blind Persons Rights Act.

Blake Hunsley 6:55
And is that something just provincial in Nova Scotia? That's

Dan O'Brien 6:58
provincial Nova Scotia. British Columbia, for instance, has a service dog and guide dog act that's all one. Most provinces have a, have a blind persons act, I think all provinces actually have a blind persons act. So, all guide dogs are covered under those acts.

Blake Hunsley 7:15
Okay,

Dan O'Brien 7:16
all guide dogs and service dogs are also covered under the Human Rights Act federally, but it's vague, it's not. There's no specific language in the Human Rights Act to come, so it's, it's, it's wishy-washy. No one's ever successfully used the sort of Human Rights Act to successfully push against the.. we've tried over the years to enact federal law. I was on a technical committee twice for trying to have a federal service dog act passed, and we've never been successful. I'm

Blake Hunsley 7:51
curious, what's the obstacle at the federal level?

Dan O'Brien 7:54
There's a few obstacles. One is guide dog, there's different guide dog federations. There's a, you know, there's a CNIB who has guide dogs now, that's new. There's the guide, there's Guide Dogs Canada, and then there's the Lions Club, who have leader dogs, and there's one other group too. The the guide dog people are push, push pretty, and they lobby pretty hard against having the service dog act in the federal law, because they feel that that might encroach on the guide dogs and the use of guide dogs in the world's

Blake Hunsley 8:39
kind of going to dilute the respect they've been able to build in, exactly, and it's going

Dan O'Brien 8:43
to, and it may, and their fear is that it's going to put other dogs out there that aren't as well trained, possibly into the world, and we're trying to convince these groups that it's actually the opposite, that by having a federal law, we're actually going to be making sure that there's fewer fake dogs out there, or people pretending their dogs are service dogs, and when they're just bad dogs, and but it's hard to say.

Blake Hunsley 9:13
Shelley and I were talking about this right before we got there, yeah, and it's

Dan O'Brien 9:16
hard to lobby against that now, right now, because we have a provincial law in Nova Scotia. If you have a dog and you're walking around with a vest on that you got on Amazon that says service dog and it's not a certified service dog, there's a fine of $3,000

Blake Hunsley 9:31
Oh, interesting. That's okay. That's good to know.

Dan O'Brien 9:34
Yeah, no, they

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 9:35
think they're supposed to have them. They're supposed, they're supposed to put their license or their certificate. That's

Dan O'Brien 9:40
right. Well, I'm also a service dog validator for the Department of Justice in St. John Ambulance, so that's one of my jobs too. So, and with the validation, what we do is you have to apply for validation through Department of Justice, and it's a fairly. Long procedure, it's there's a lot of paperwork to fill out. There's doctors' notes that have to be passed, and and proof that the dog was has been trained either by a by an accredited service dog training program, or if you've self-trained it, you have to have the logs and show everything that's been done. And then once Department of Justice says, okay, we think you have a legit service dog. Then they pass them on to me and one, or one of my colleagues - there's three of us now - who do validations in Nova Scotia, and we do a public validation. So, what this does is, we're not validating your dog as a service dog, we're validating to make sure that he's safe, that this dog is safe to be in public, right? It could be in the wrong

Speaker 1 10:43
react,

Dan O'Brien 10:44
and so we have 40 tasks that we test for. They have to pass all 40 tasks, they can't fail any task to get to be able to be validated. And so my validation, along with the Department of Justice signing off on it, you get a card, and that card validates your dog as a service dog for two years,

Blake Hunsley 11:06
for two years, yeah, two years,

Dan O'Brien 11:08
every two years, you have to go through the whole thing again.

Blake Hunsley 11:11
Great, honestly, because I know we, there are a lot of concerns about there, I know we've had, there's there was a story in the news today about more violent interactions with dogs that are off leash and city dogs that aren't properly trained, so I can see people having concerns about this based just on those kind of stories, and you know, we talked a little too about emotional support animals and people faking this. Yes, is there.. do you feel that it's increasingly undermining the actual legitimate service dogs, this kind of fakery of credentials out there, it

Dan O'Brien 11:41
is. It's less now because there are fines in place. There's fines in place for both for having the fake service dog, you know, for faking a service dog, and there's fines for places that are rejecting people who have legit service dogs for being in. So, if you have a restaurant and you're being asked not to. They say, "Oh, sorry, no dogs allowed, and you show them your, just your, your, your Nova Scotia card that says this is a legit service dog, and they still turn you away. They can be fined $3,000 Also, the company is that I wish that was higher, to be honest. Yeah, well, it can, it can be, it can get higher because it becomes, if it becomes a human rights violation, if they go through human rights at that point, yeah, then they can have a much higher, it can be up to $25,000

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 12:32
and not, you know, not to be defending these businesses that are saying no

Dan O'Brien 12:40
to

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 12:41
all dogs, but it's likely the people who have been doing the fakery. I love that word, the fakery with trying to bring any dog into the restaurant. The owners, business owners, are just like blankets saying, "Forget it, there's no dogs allowed, and unfortunately, a, it's against the law for those that actually have the right to have the dog there, but it's ruined it for a lot of, it's ruined it for a lot of people. Well,

Dan O'Brien 13:10
it's actually dangerous for people who have legit service dogs, especially people who have guide dogs. You can imagine a person with a guide dog out there, these dogs are their eyes, they're these dogs are how they move around the world, and they're dependent 100% on these dogs to, to, to get them around. So, if they're, if this dog is distracted, remember, it's a dog. Dogs can be distracted, no matter how well they're trained. They can be distracted if you have a dog, especially an off-leash dog that comes running up to someone who's blind.

Blake Hunsley 13:38
Yep,

Dan O'Brien 13:39
it's very dangerous, yeah. It can, the person can fall down, that can they can they trip, they can fall, they can. They don't know what's going on, they can't see, yeah. And it's very dangerous, so you know, if you.. so that's just that's true for people who are just walking their dogs around town with no leash on. Yeah,

Dan O'Brien 13:58
there's a fine for that. I think it's $300 possibly. Um and a lot of people don't realize that, and they continue to walk around with their dog, and they say, "Oh, my dog's good dog. Well, you know,

Blake Hunsley 14:09
sometimes dogs run at my dog, and the owner says, "Don't worry, friendly" and I say that's delightful. Mine is not. No, exactly. Put your damn dog...

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 14:16
What happens if what, like, I'm walking in, you know, someone's got a service dog, which we think it is, or even in a restaurant, like, they think it's not a service dog, despite the fact that they're wearing the Amazon purchased vest. The restaurant can ask to see the validation card, right. And then, what, what if they, they don't have one, like or you know w, is there anything that the business owner can do, like, is there not, do they call the Department of Justice, like, who do they, sure, well, they can, the

Dan O'Brien 14:54
restaurant owner, or any business owner, has the right to turn anyone away from you. Them for no reason, they don't need to have a reason, you know. The person can then go after them through human rights, whatever, but they can turn anyone away. If the person refuses to leave and they don't have credentials for the dog, they can call the police and come and remove them. Yeah, even if they have a, if, if someone comes in with a, with a guide dog or a service dog that's validated, and the dog is being disruptive in any way they can ask that dog, that person to leave the dog, of course. Just like if it was a person being, if a person came into a facility and was being disruptive, they're going to be asked to leave. Still responsible for the behavior, right? Yeah, the person, yeah, the person is 100% responsible for the dog behaving properly, so yeah,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 15:42
so you talked about another type of, of, I'm getting confused by guide dog or service dog, but you call them a psychological,

Dan O'Brien 15:55
psychological service dog, so that's psychological, so

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 15:57
talk, let's talk about that, sure,

Dan O'Brien 15:59
so there's there's dogs that are trained, and most of the dogs that I'm training are for people who have PTSD, for instance. Okay. Yes, that's what the dog is trained. Dogs are to be a service dog. The dog has to perform two specifically two specific tasks for the person that they're, that they're working for. So, with PTSD, for instance, the dog might be what we'll often do is train the dog to they'll anticipate a dissociative mood happening, or you know, and what happens is people typically have a tell before they go into, before they start to dissociate, for instance, most people don't really know what their tell is, they can't, you know, so we're part of our training is we look, we figure out what the tail is. We can see, okay, so you're making fists just before you go. You're, you know, you're the way you turn your head and close your eyes or something. They can be subtle. We train the dog to watch for these, and then the dog will nudge the person if they see it happening. They'll, you know, if it needs a bigger tell, they'll, they'll sit and paw at and sometimes what they'll do is guide the person to a safe place to like a corner or you know someplace where they see it looks quiet and safe so the person can sit down on the floor and you know get better basically so that's one thing we train for, we train for people who have night terrors, that the dog can wake them up.

Speaker 1 17:25
Interesting.

Dan O'Brien 17:26
Okay, yeah. So they'll, and we're training one dog, one of our dogs, right now to do that, and he's actually learned it. I mean, some dogs pick it up very quickly, and not every dog can be a service dog. That's the other thing. Well, this is

Blake Hunsley 17:40
something I'm very curious to, as a dog owner, who I have two dogs that are occasionally resistant to training of any kind, but I am curious, what you look for in how do you assess just a sweet little puppy and go, yeah, you know what, I think this is one that's going to make it's

Dan O'Brien 17:55
hard with puppies, but we do start with puppies, you can tell there are certain things they'll do that we can, that we watch for, because we'll, you know, we'll assess a puppy early on to see, okay, are we going to put them into the stream of service dog work or not. Sometimes it's very obvious, you can look at a bunch of puppies running around in a room, you can see, okay, that puppy over there is, is obviously never going to be a service dog. Oh, look, there's There's before we hit

Blake Hunsley 18:23
record, we need to stop talking before we hit record, but we were talking about all of the ADHD people in this room, which is presented as running around as small children, and that's what I'm imagining. I hate to, I'm allowed any ADHD puppies running around or not necessarily all

Dan O'Brien 18:38
dogs are ADHD and and also probably obsessive compulsive to, and so what we're kind of doing as dog trainers is steering that uniqueness in dogs into work, and

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 18:58
I love that

Dan O'Brien 18:59
analogy,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 19:00
because that is right, like using that obsessive compulsive into good, that's

Dan O'Brien 19:06
right, yeah, because it can be good or it can be bad,

Blake Hunsley 19:12
truck by barking is the same dog that can be trained to always respond to the clenched fist by taking you somewhere, that's right, exact connection, interesting, there might be hope for my dogs.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 19:21
What about breeds? Are there's.. we often, you know, you often think about certain breeds that would be like great, like labs and German Shepherds. Like, there's a few

Dan O'Brien 19:33
things with that. As a validator, I've been very surprised by some of the dogs that have actually passed through validation, who I thought kind of dogs would never do a beagle, for instance. I passed a beagle last month. I never thought I would ever see a beagle be a service dog. This dog was incredible.

Blake Hunsley 19:50
Okay, my experience, they're quite, they're reactive, they're very

Dan O'Brien 19:55
nose to the ground because they're hunting dogs. Yeah, but this dog was. Was spectacular. He was just very well trained. He was self-trained by the, by the person.

Blake Hunsley 20:05
What if I'm asked what kind of service he

Dan O'Brien 20:07
was? He was a PTSD. Okay, and so what he, what he's doing for the person, I don't know. I'm not allowed to ask. And also, that's another good point to make, is that no one is allowed to ask what service dog does for the person,

Speaker 2 20:22
okay? The

Dan O'Brien 20:23
only questions anyone can ask, if they're, you know, if they, if they, besides looking at the validated card, they can say, what does the dog do for you?

Blake Hunsley 20:31
Now, this begs a question for me, because some of our clients, including some we've named already on this podcast, have been turned away from restaurants because their guide dog or service dog, you know, has gotten the, oh no, dogs in a restaurant, man, immediately just stonewall, they don't want to hear anything beyond that. What, in your experience, is training like in workplaces in Nova Scotia? Because a lot of the time you're not having the owner of the restaurant come out and say, oh no, you can't do that, you might have some poor 19 year old on their first, you know, college summer job, faced with this situation, going, I've never come across this before, but I know that animals are allowed in a restaurant, so get out. Is there any sort of training out there that you've seen, or is the level of education part of

Dan O'Brien 21:15
what what service dogs Atlantic is trying to get into? So, we, we have done presentations to the restaurant association, for instance, to let them know, here's the different kinds of dogs are out there, and here's the laws around these dogs. So we're trying to get that education out there more. So we've done a few with the restaurant association. I mean, you could do those every month, because there's so many, there's such turnover, and whether the restaurant association, not all the restaurants are part of the restaurant association, so, so you know, but that's the start. We've done them at the public library, for instance. So we do a couple of different presentations. We do one called the service dogs in the workplace and service dogs in healthcare, for instance. So we've done them for the IWK industry hospital and the QE two, and so because the rules with service dogs are slightly different, depending on, you know, if you're in a healthcare setting, for instance, there are places that the dogs can't go, just like there's places where children can't go. I was gonna say, just from

Blake Hunsley 22:17
a, you know, germs and ability perspective, yeah, to keep things very high, so it's

Dan O'Brien 22:21
a little bit different, not a lot different. I mean, the dogs can go almost anywhere. There's very few places I haven't been able to take a service dog in the hospital. Okay, I used to have a therapy dog, for instance, and that's one thing we haven't talked about, was therapy dogs who was trained to be to go into an or with with a child, so he could be on the gurney, get wheeled into the or, and then as soon as the child goes to sleep, the dog was removed and taken out. Oh

Blake Hunsley 22:48
my god, if I never have to have surgery again, I want to have one

Dan O'Brien 22:53
right now who's trained to do that.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 22:58
So you talked about the this training, like with the libraries, healthcare restaurant association. Have you ever been asked to do any training like with the airlines?

Dan O'Brien 23:12
Yes, we've done one for the, we've done a couple with the airport. Yeah, so we'll go again to out there, and we've done, we've just recently did one with the with the airport here, and and then different airlines have asked us to come and train, you know, do training work with their, with their people when they're in training. So part of their training, part of what Service Dogs Atlantic wants to do, and we're working on this, is a curriculum for training service dogs at one of the universities, like Dal, or one of those, one of the community colleges. Okay,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 23:47
okay. So,

Dan O'Brien 23:48
where we were, we've got a curriculum built, and now we're, we're trying to advocate for getting that, getting that put into place, so people can be actually trained, and part of that will be advocacy work, training, you know, to

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 24:02
right, so

Dan O'Brien 24:03
so they can get, and the other place where advocacy is happening a lot with us is through veterinarians,

Speaker 3 24:09
right? A

Dan O'Brien 24:10
lot of vets are not familiar with what a service dog is, and what you know, so when you take your pet into, into, into a veterinarian, for instance, they ask you to wait in the waiting room while they take the pet into the work, that's typical. You can't do that with the service dog, asking someone

Blake Hunsley 24:28
to leave their wheelchair with them.

Dan O'Brien 24:30
Yeah, so we're trying, we're letting vets know that it's very important that the dog be with the person, you can't leave a person sitting in a waiting room full of people who has, you know, PTSD problem has anxiety problem is dependent on that dog to control them in a

Blake Hunsley 24:46
strange environment with other people around and take away their dog will also

Dan O'Brien 24:50
not, the dog will also sense they'll know that you're taking them away from this person. Yes, and the dogs may behave well, so the dog will be stressed at the point, so. Very important that the dog and the person stay together,

Blake Hunsley 25:02
because then the vet doesn't get an accurate reading on the health of the dog, their personality is all out of whack. Yeah,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 25:07
that is every podcast we always learn, but for me this is a big aha moment, like I never would have expected a veterinarian who looks after dogs? Okay, not to understand the whole service dogs, very good, like,

Dan O'Brien 25:29
yeah, yeah. No

Blake Hunsley 25:31
overlap that people keep missing. I think, like, I would expect the vet to know all about animals, of course, but a vet doesn't necessarily know anything about disabilities, right? So then, when you have that crossover between those two sectors, it seems like that's where you get all your expertise so focused on the core of your profession, you miss those things. I

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 25:47
think there's advocacy work, like in all of these places, and I, you know, I liked how you said, because I'm also a big believer in that, like not all restaurants are part of the restaurant association, but you have to start somewhere, and it actually gives people, because people don't move around in the industry, and you know, we just need to be making that's one of the points we always make on the podcast, is every time we make somebody aware of a disability or an inclusive or an accommodating act, that's one more person now that's in

Dan O'Brien 26:22
the know. One other thing that we trained service dogs to do, and it's, it's something a lot, a lot of people don't realize, is often we'll have the dog will be there, they'll perform certain tasks for people, like say you have cerebral palsy, for instance, and you, you know, you need help picking something, like if you drop your phone or something, we can train the dog to pick, pick things up for you and help with mobility. The other thing that dog does for someone who's out in the world with CP, they often look drunk to people, they'll say that's just a drunk person, or they'll get pulled over by the police because they're driving cars, yeah, and they'll say, well, you're obviously drunk. They see a person who has an obvious issue, then they see the service dog, they put two and two together, and they say, okay, it's a neurological issue, this isn't this, you're obviously not.

Blake Hunsley 27:16
that, that's necessary, but I

Blake Hunsley 27:18
completely understand how that works, so

Dan O'Brien 27:21
it's just more of an instant, yeah, you know, that you know people can put two and two together quickly, especially, you know, law enforcement people, or whatever, can say the ability to visible legitimate questions, yeah, about their disability, yeah, so you have people who have obvious, you know, blatant obvious visual disabilities, and but then you have people with hidden disabilities, like PTSD, who you don't know what you don't know, I don't know, yeah, and we don't need to know, all we all we need to know is that they need accommodation, and this dog is providing that accommodation for, I'm glad that's

Blake Hunsley 27:56
part of the framework too, that it's not, there's no onus to explain why you have this service, because they're no, there absolutely shouldn't be. It's the same as asking, so how did you lose your sight? Well, actually, as I recall, it's none of your damn business. You can't

Dan O'Brien 28:10
ask a person, what does the dog, what task does the dog perform for you? Yeah, all the person has to say is they help me.

Blake Hunsley 28:16
Okay, that's all you have to say.

Dan O'Brien 28:17
You can, that's your, that's the pat answer, they say the dog helps me,

Blake Hunsley 28:21
perfect,

Dan O'Brien 28:22
and that's your answer, and that's the answer they have to take, and that's fine,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 28:25
right? Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, you said that you have trained four puppies with CN IB, right? So, were they all the same types of puppies?

Dan O'Brien 28:39
No. Oh, yeah, so you had asked earlier about breeds. Yes, so most of the dogs you see, most of guide dogs you see, are labs, yes, yeah, or lab golden crosses. A lab golden cross is actually the best dog, mostly because they have good health issues, you know, because it's a cross, it's not a purebreds tend to have a longer life, they tend to be stronger in bone structure and such, and they tend to be pretty smart dogs, the and so all the dogs I've raised are labs or lab golden crosses. The four dogs I raised, and when I say raise, we're just raising from puppy to one year old, so we're basically doing the basic puppy training, getting them to do general crazy year of their life, that first crazy year, and getting them exposed to places, we take them everywhere, and you know, so they get exposed to a lot of things in the world. We don't do any of the dog training specifically, once they're past the first year with us, they go to Ottawa for CNIB to the campus, their guide dog campus, and that's where they go through six months, six to eight months of training, and matched with their person. Only 30% of these dogs make it through. Yes, because it's being a guide dog, guide dog training, and the service dog. World is the highest training, yeah, and it's very expensive. These dogs probably are closing in on the $100,000 mark by the time they get into the hands of a person.

Blake Hunsley 30:13
And then, how long of a kind of working life do these dogs tip? Usually

Dan O'Brien 30:17
eight to 10 years, but usually closer to eight years. Still, that's quite impressive, because we also like them to have at least a few years of being just a dog at the end of their life. But these dog government, even dogs, get to retire. I actually have have a retired guide dog living with me now. Oh, you've

Blake Hunsley 30:41
talked about, yeah, we should talk to you. Mentioned we haven't addressed therapy dogs, and I feel really guilty with you here. We haven't talked about them yet. So, so, yeah, what would you.. how would you qualify the difference between service dogs and therapy dogs? How would you explain that? So,

Dan O'Brien 30:58
therapy dogs are pet dogs, okay? They're people's pet dogs who have been trained specifically or tested more, so they have to be well-trained dogs. They have to be behaving, and then we test them through St. John Ambulance. They go through a little test to make sure that they're that they're compatible, that they're not afraid of other dogs, that they're able to be in groups of people, and they're friendly, generally, but they have no public access, so they can't. So, a therapy dog, for instance, can't go into a grocery store or go on the taxi cab with you, or any of these kind of things. They have to, they only have the same rights as a pet dog, for instance, yeah, have to be invited for access, yeah.

Blake Hunsley 31:43
Sorry, Evan, you can't take Neo out to dinner at a nice restaurant any time soon.

Dan O'Brien 31:47
but so that's really the, that's the main difference, um, but they have to be good dogs, they have to be like I said, and they get tested, I think we test them every three years, okay, not mistaken, yeah, and

Blake Hunsley 32:00
we did get a bit of a face at the term earlier, emotional support dogs, so I've gotta follow up on that.

Dan O'Brien 32:05
I do a whole whole spiel on emotional support animals, and what I, what we say is that they're not a thing, that's not, there's no such thing, every pet, every dog is an emotional support primary purpose. but you can't go and say this dog is my emotional support dog. The dog can be trained for mental health issues. It can be a mental health support service dog, but that's a different thing. That's not an emotional support animal. We're actually trying to stop you from using the term emotional support animal, because it's, it's, it's a misnomer. It doesn't exist.

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 32:44
Well, that's part of the whole educational thing, and that's why, coupled with, coupled with, you know, they, you know, somebody purchases a service dog vest from our friends at Amazon, and then uses the term emotional support dog? I think that makes a lot of people hesitant. Okay, in this whole world of, you know, everybody screaming discrimination to say, well, do you have a card for that dog?

Dan O'Brien 33:15
Yeah,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 33:17
right. So, I think that's part of the part you can go

Dan O'Brien 33:20
online and get a card for that dog. You can go online and get a card for a service dog. You can pay $16 and get it, get a lovely looking card that says you have a legitimate service dog.

Evan Dobbie 33:30
And that's the importance of the regulatory framework, is both

Speaker 1 33:34
for the partners and their, you know, their the individuals and their service dog partner, but also for the public, is it provides that that the sort of guarantee that, like, they also have rights as well in this situation. Well, for every

Blake Hunsley 33:49
person going to an airline, for example, and taking their dog and saying, "Oh, it's an emotional support dog, needs to be in the cabin with me, can't travel underneath, you're just diluting all of the training that you're trying to do. It's absolutely done.

Dan O'Brien 34:01
We get a lot of people trying to get through the validation program, to you know, they'll, they'll apply to, to, to get their dog certified as a service dog, and not get through, not get through the whole thing because they're always embarrassing,

Blake Hunsley 34:17
That's go to be embarrassing,

Blake Hunsley 34:18
they take their terribly trained dog in for 40 different assessments.

Dan O'Brien 34:21
They usually don't get to me. I've had one or two that has gotten through to me, and I've had to fail them. Yeah, but most of them don't even get through the Department of Justice paperwork, because it's quite extensive. Yeah, and a lot of these people are thinking, well, I can pay the $185 which is what it costs, and get my dog certified, so I can take it on the airplane with me. It's not that simple. It's not going to happen, not here anyways. Thank

Blake Hunsley 34:44
goodness, it's not that simple yet. We saw a video this week of someone taking an emotional support peacock on an airplane, and gone a little too far.

Dan O'Brien 34:52
Now, all of this is what all of this - what we're talking about is Canadian, and specifically Nova Scotia. Here,

Dan O'Brien 34:58
you get into the United States. Then you're in a whole other world where any, any dog can do anything down there, and you know, any, you call any dog an emotional support dog and take it on an airplane with you, and you know, then it's up to the airlines to have to deal with all this mess,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 35:15
right,

Dan O'Brien 35:16
which is what we're

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 35:17
seeing cross border, because we don't know that those people standing in front of us aren't coming from another country, it's like, yeah, the expectation,

Dan O'Brien 35:25
yeah, yeah, but they know people know not to come, they won't get into Canada with these dogs, so

Blake Hunsley 35:31
that's got to be an interesting experience, you get your dog through everything on the American side because it's an emotional support animal, I keep using air quotes here, and not get let into the country because no, and you

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 35:40
think of, like, other, you know, like the European countries, okay? Like some European countries, where you know dogs are allowed everywhere, everywhere, everywhere, right? And they're certainly not emotional support dogs, they're just dogs, yeah, which

Blake Hunsley 35:57
again has its own dangers, because if your dog's not super well behaved, like I've seen dogs run up and try to be friendly with a working guide dog, and it's,

Dan O'Brien 36:05
it's horrible. And even here, where they're now a lot of places are allowing dogs to come into their, onto their outdoor balconies, or even indoors, they're saying, if you have dogs inside, and so people are taking all kinds of dogs in, and so someone comes in with a guide dog, and what some dog comes running out from under a table out of nowhere. Yeah,

Blake Hunsley 36:25
again, very crowded environment, and I think people think sometimes that a guide dog is some sort of a miracle dog or something like, oh, well, it's working, so it'll be fine. It's still a dog. Instincts are still people have

Dan O'Brien 36:39
this very strange idea about guide dogs, where they think the guide dog is actually taking the person where they want to go. Yeah, the guide dog doesn't know where he's going, where he's told to go. Yeah, he's not, he's not going anywhere, he's not magically deciding I'm going to take you here or there. Yeah, he knows where you, he goes where you tell him to go. Yeah, as a blind person, so it's not there's no magic here. The

Blake Hunsley 37:03
bit of the flip side of the perception we had earlier, where someone with cerebral palsy is less likely to be mistaken for drunk if they have their service dogs with them. On the flip side, I've seen a couple of our clients with guide dogs completely stuck, not able to cross the street, stuck in traffic, because people look at them and go, oh, well, they've got their dogs, so they're fine. It's like, no, everyone is driving like a maniac, and our sidewalks are nightmarish in this town. Like, stop and ask if they need help. Don't assume that dog is there to rescue everybody. Yeah,

Dan O'Brien 37:31
there's been the other thing that happens with blind people with their guide dogs. They'll be standing at a bus stop, waiting to get on the bus stop with their guide dog. The bus will just drive by, and the reason the bus driver gives and says, oh, I saw they had a dog, I didn't think they were getting on the bus.

Blake Hunsley 37:46
Yeah,

Dan O'Brien 37:46
well, those dogs are loud on the bus, and the bus drivers know this, so there's no, you know, it's, but it does happen. It just happened yesterday to one of my friends, friend of mine. Yeah, we

Blake Hunsley 37:57
hear all the time, especially about Uber, since Uber in taxi.

Dan O'Brien 38:02
now, taxis and Uber are allowed to say no to a dog if they have a doctor's note on board the taxi, so, but they have to have a dog, allergies or

Blake Hunsley 38:13
something. I haven't even thought of, if you have a

Dan O'Brien 38:15
major, if you're allergies are bad enough, or even sometimes it's a cultural thing, there's people have fear, cultural fear of dogs. Yes, and if they're driving a cab, you know, if it's someone from a country that has, and they have a fear of dogs, that's that's so dramatic, they can't be around a dog.

Blake Hunsley 38:31
Yeah,

Dan O'Brien 38:32
they have to get a doctor's note that says they can't have a dog. And then the taxi company has to let the person know, so when you're calling for a cab, it's just, you don't have to do this, but we tell it, you know, service dogs or guide dogs, let them know you have a dog,

Blake Hunsley 38:45
yeah,

Dan O'Brien 38:46
so there's no surprises,

Blake Hunsley 38:47
just for your own frustration, yeah, but they can't say no, they

Dan O'Brien 38:50
have to always say there's always going to be someone available,

Blake Hunsley 38:53
yeah,

Dan O'Brien 38:53
who doesn't have a doctor's note, and if they don't have a doctor's note, they can't refuse you, what an

Blake Hunsley 39:00
interesting little, almost kind of combat of accommodations. Yes, you need your guide dog. I am tremendously allergic. We cannot help each other,

Dan O'Brien 39:10
but yeah, when we talk about allergies, for instance, you know, someone will walk in to a restaurant with a dog, a service dog, or a guide dog, and they'll send someone in the restaurant will complain and say, "Oh, I can't be here with a dog because I have allergies. That's too bad. Yeah, you have to move to a different table, or you have to, you know, you know, the same at workplaces. Some will want to be in a workplace, you know, they'll say, "I have a service dog now, and I'm coming in, you know, my dog is coming to work with me, and some other employers say, well, I'm allergic to dogs, you can't have the employer has to make accommodations for the people for both parties, so they have to move the person who has the allergies somewhere else. Yeah, you know, so they have to make these accommodations, which again

Blake Hunsley 39:56
I know from experience is lacking in training in a lot of. That place, well,

Dan O'Brien 40:02
we all know how bad accommodation making any kind of disability is. The

Blake Hunsley 40:08
interpretation of the term reasonable accommodation, yeah, that I have seen. Yeah,

Dan O'Brien 40:11
it's

Blake Hunsley 40:12
yeah, some people are pretty unreasonable. That's

Dan O'Brien 40:16
part of what our advocacy work is, is doing when we do our workplace presentations, we talk about, you know, how are you going to advocate for, for you know, how are you going to make accommodations for people.

Blake Hunsley 40:27
Well, I'm glad you're hitting the training on so many different levels. I'm glad we've had today to hopefully get some knowledge out there as well about this. We are almost to our time. If anyone has any final questions before we go,

Shelley Alward-MacLeod 40:39
this is very exciting.

Blake Hunsley 40:40
I can talk dogs all day. Particularly exciting, perfect. All right. Well, thank you very much, Dan, for joining us today. Evan, thank you for joining us today, Evan you didn't talk so much in this episode, I feel bad. We made you

Evan Dobbie 40:56
I was very much just the accessory here, Dan's the star the star.

Blake Hunsley 40:59
no, Dan, that was. I, we always learn a lot on this podcast. That was r eally great, thank you so much. If people have questions, they can write to us here. I'll give the address in a moment, but also come back and join us for season three, if you can. Let us know h ow legal frameworks and cultural acceptance of dogs are going, and oh, great. Hopefully, we'll hear all kinds of positive news about how everyone's doing so much better. There's not been a single emotional support zebra or Peacock In sight For some time, I'll

Dan O'Brien 41:29
leave you my email address, due to please do, and send me

Blake Hunsley 41:31
all of the emotional support outlandish animal stories as they come . All right. Thank you, folks, for listening to Within Our Reach. Season two of our podcast is made possible thanks to the support of the Province of Nova Scotia and the Support for Culture program. If you have feedback on an episode, an idea for future episode topics, or if you're interested in appearing as a guest, or if you have questions for Dan, or if you just want to send us pictures of your dogs, write to us at withino ur reach@reachability.org Thanks very much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai