by Julie Wenger Watson
Photos courtesy of Dog Training Elite Oklahoma
Most people know that animals make incredible companions. However, not everyone realizes just how helpful they can be. From herding and guarding to providing emotional and physical support, animals are hard at work every day, making life easier for their human counterparts. Dogs can perform an impressive array of useful tasks, but our canine friends are not the only animals capable of service. Let’s take a closer look at some of the surprising ways animals of several shapes and sizes can work.
Medical-alert Animals
Medical-alert dogs have the impressive ability to sense that a particular medical crisis is imminent in the dog’s handler (such as low blood sugar or an impending seizure) before the handler is even aware of it. These service dogs use different methods of communication — barking, nudging, or pawing, for example — to notify their handlers that something is amiss before it happens, allowing time for the person to take emergency medication, get help, or move to a safe place.
A dog’s ability to sense oncoming medical crises is a matter of innate skill and training.
“Generally, Labradors or golden retrievers make the best diabetic-alert dogs. This is internal scent-based training, and these two breeds are typically the most consistent in being able to pick up the scent,” says David Foster, owner of Dog Training Elite Oklahoma in Tulsa.
“We trained a number of different breeds with success, but I typically recommend a Lab or golden. Brachycephalic breeds [dogs such as pugs or shih tzus whose skull bones are shortened in length] are not good choices because the shorter snout typically prevents them from detecting internal scents.”
Foster says he looks for particular characteristics in potential service animals.
“Dogs with high drive who love to please and love praise could become good medical-alert dogs,” he explains. “We always start all our service dogs with general obedience training. During the obedience training, we have a good idea whether they will make good medical-alert dogs. Internal and external scent training is very involved and takes the right dog for it to be successful.”
Training for medical-alert dogs starts early, according to Foster, whose business also offers training for autism support, mobility support, and psychiatric support.
“We ideally like to start scent-imprinting in dogs as puppies. This is a several-week process,” he says. “When the dog is about four months old, we start obedience training, which is about five to six weeks. Once the dog completes obedience training, we start public-access practice and task work, depending on what we are training for. The training for diabetic or seizure alert lasts about a year in total.”
Dog Training Elite Oklahoma also has a facility in Oklahoma City.
For more information, visit https://dogtrainingelite.com/tulsa.
Cats at Work
Although dogs are the most familiar working animals, providing assistance isn’t limited to canines. Tree House Humane Society has found a unique way to help feral cats in Chicago, Illinois, while curbing the growth of its rodent population. This nonprofit group removes feral cats from life-threatening situations. The vaccinated and sterilized cats that are suitable for adoption are relocated to homes. Those that have no chance of thriving in a home or shelter environment become part of the organization’s Cats at Work program.
With the help of the Tree House Community Cats team, more than 800 working cats have been successfully placed in private city and suburban backyards, barns, condos, factories, and breweries where their natural hunting skills (and their physical presence) are used to reduce rat infestations and the associated health and sanitation problems. Human caretakers in each of those new communities (homeowners, business owners, etc.) agree to humanely manage the felines for the rest of their lives, providing adequate outdoor shelter, food, and water.
“Our ComCats Team is an incredibly hardworking group that spends every day in the field canvassing, trapping, neutering, and returning cats alongside our registered community caretakers, as well as doing neighborhood outreach to educate the public about feral cats and the importance of having their pets spayed or neutered,” says Tree House shelter services coordinator Coady Carlson.
Find out more at https://treehouseanimals.org.
Other Animal Helpers
The nonprofit organization Flames to Hope in Noble (www.flamestohope.org) uses miniature horses for equine therapy. Horse therapy can help treat individuals with a range of emotional and physical challenges such as low-functioning autism, cerebral palsy, drug addiction, and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
In addition to providing therapy and emotional-support roles, miniature horses have been used as trained service animals, or guide horses, for blind people. Although not common, trained miniature horses can be used in place of dogs in situations in which handlers are allergic to or phobic of dogs or need strong support for a physical disability.
Until 2020, Helping Hands: Monkey Helpers (now called Envisioning Access, www.envisioningaccess.org) in Boston, Massachusetts, trained Capuchin monkeys to perform tasks in the homes of individuals with physical challenges, such as spinal-cord injuries, multiple sclerosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Although the organization now focuses on artificial intelligence and robotics, since its founding in 1979, this nonprofit has paired 300 monkeys with clients. The animals’ dexterous hands and fine motor skills allowed them to do things such as turn the pages of a book, turn on and off lights, use remote controls, and do other chores for their matched humans.
Whether a furry friend is a companion or a helper, animals are capable of amazing acts of service and skill, making this world a better place for the humans they help.
