As said previously, I raised a Foster dog named Breeze who has gone on for formal training and was recently assigned to her futue person!! I'm so proud of my girl. It is a very rewarding and fun thing to do. But it is also time consuming and heart braking.
Suki Wingy, please do not jump to conclusions you do not understand. Breeze, who was a black lab, was calm ALL the time. She did play and run, but it was always calmly. Why? Because of her breeding (some had to do with her personlity, but most PAWS dogs are calm and quite which leads us to beleave it is due in part to genitics, as stated by my PAWS trainer, Cindy.) Also, animal shelter rarly get in puppies. Older dogs have baggage, whiile shelter dogs are an exlent choice for people who want a compainion, please understand Service dogs are around people 24/7, which means NO aggression or bad behaviors. They go to work, go to the mall, go to grocery store, soccer games etc. etc. They have to be calm, quite, yet able to work long hours. They have to be well trained and they have to have a love for their job.
To help you better understand I have some Quotes from the Paws With a Cause Website:
Last year, we tested a total of 1,235 dogs in shelters. Only 80 of these dogs passed our temperament testing and went on for further evaluation (medical, etc).
Three years ago we were able to rescue 260 dogs to begin our training. Last year only 80 usable shelter dogs were found. This is a 70% decrease in just three years. We have spoken to other organizations across the country that use shelter dogs and all attest to the growing lack of appropriate dogs from shelter sources. 1 out of 8 rescues successfully complete our training We have been rescuing dogs to train as Assistance Dogs for nearly 25 years and our statistics have continuously shown that only
. We have taken in over 5,000 dogs for training and only 625 have been successful in our program. We test over 1,000 dogs annually and only an average of 6% can pass the preliminary temperament test.
We have had a small breeding program for years. 3 out of 4 puppies that we bred have successfully completed training over the past five years. We have had a small breeding program for years. This is quite a difference from the 12.5% success rate of shelter dogs. "
You can read more here: http://www.pawswithacause.org/history.asp
Ashley
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