WILMINGTON – Service and therapy dogs provide a wealth of benefits for people with disabilities, but training takes considerable time and money. That cost can put a service dog out of reach for many of those in need. And that’s why, for the last 20 years, a Wilmington group has worked to provide service dogs at no cost to those in need.
Canines for Service, co-founded by CEO and President Rick Hairston, finds the right dogs and provides the right training to make a difference in the lives of military veterans, people with disabilities and children with learning difficulties.
Hairston, who now runs the organization with his wife, Program Director Pat Hairston, has overseen the training of hundreds of dogs rescued from local shelters. It’s a labor of love for the non-profit, but the costs can be staggering, according to Rick Hairston.
“This isn’t obedience training, it’s not sit and stay. This is intensive training,” Hairston said. “Some dogs have a real aptitude for it, and they might be ready in 18 months. But it can often take more like three years. Realistically, you’re talking $40,000 to train a dog to the level it needs to be at.”
Paying for the training
The non-profit is funded entirely by private donations and corporate grants; that’s been part of the full-time job of Pat Hairston for 15 years.
“I came onboard in 2002 to help take over the office and the grant applications. I had to overhaul the ‘Rick filing method,’ which was files piled on the desk,” Hairston said. “Between that and caring for the dogs, this is a 24/7, everyday, year-round job.”
Within two years, Pat Hairston had successfully applied for enough grant money to hire herself as the full-time program manager in 2004 (she eventually became the director of the entire program). A large part of her job was securing the funding to run Canines for Service.
“When I started, I was filing 50 or 60 grants a year, but I’ve figured out since what our niche is. Now It’s more like five to 25 a year,” she said. “I would say I’ve requested $3.5 million in grants and received between $1.5 and $2 million, which is pretty good for a non-profit, I think.”
Rescuing dogs and people
With that money, Canines for Service has provided nearly $13 million in training services. For many years, the organization worked in military prisons, starting in Jacksonville and moving to the Charlotte Naval Station Brig in South Carolina. The program rehabilitated soldiers and sailors as well as rescued shelter dogs, according to Rick Hairston.
“I mean, if that’s not a win-win, or better, a three-way win, I don’t know what is,” he said. “The men in these prisons, they weren’t just learning a trade. A lot of them have gone on to work with animals, but I also mean we were retraining them on how to interact, with dogs and people. The shelter dogs got a new lease on life too. And, at the end of the day, the dogs went on to live with veterans. These were vets with brain injuries and PTSD, with serious difficulties. A dogs changes their lives. Absolutely.”
In 2015, Canines for Service took the experience from Jacksonville and Charlotte and brought it to the civilian sector. The non-profit still trains dogs to assist veterans, but it also works with literacy programs and disabled people.
Growing for the future
About a year ago, Canines for Service moved from a 1,600 square-foot facility to a 5,000 square-foot space set off between Gordon Road and Market Street. The added space will allow the Hairstons to run a service dog training school.
The 18-month class includes classwork, but is mostly hands on and will, as Rick Hairston said, “allow our students to go out into the world and take that knowledge to another facility, or they can start their own. That’s the best way we know of to help. To share what we know works and give people the skill to pass on that knowledge.”
The focus on “succession,” as Pat Hairston calls it, is the latest focus for Canines for Service. Rick Hairston said his desire to “train the next generation of trainers” has a lot to do with problems in the current industry.
“The industry is fraught with poorly trained dogs. There are well meaning people who think they know how to go about doing this, but it’s still a problem,” Hairston said. “There are places that will say they train their dogs to respond to commands, and they mean literally, commands, more than one. So, two commands. Our dogs learn 90 commands.”
The dogs learn how to fetch food and beverages, answer the phone, pick up dropped keys and even do laundry. But, as Rick Hairston explains, there’s no way to teach a dog how to handle every contingency. The solution, at Canines for Service, is to teach the dogs component skills that future owners can – in essence – customize.
“There’s no way of knowing what particular challenges a dog will face, how the owner’s house is going to be laid out, for example,” Hairston said. “So, we don’t, for example, train a dog to go downstairs and get a bottle of water. To me or you, the difference between a bottom-drawer and a side-door refrigerator might not even register, but to a dog these are completely different tasks.”
Therapy dogs
Canines for Service also provides a less intense program for therapy dogs.
Not intended to train dogs for complex service tasks, the six-month course allows people and their dogs to be certified as a team to go out to hospitals, schools and other places therapy dogs are needed.
Canines for Service has trained over a thousand teams, with 350 groups serving communities around the southeast.
Another major part of the Hairston’s mission is their literacy outreach program. The program uses therapy dogs to help students with reading-related disabilities overcome anxiety and comprehension issues. Rick Hairston is used to hearing skepticism about the program, and explained how it works.
“Look, I know this is pie in the sky stuff. But it works,” he said. “One way we’ll do things is have a dog like our Silas, and we’ll have the student read to him. We’ll put a thin slice of jerky every so many pages and when the student gets there, they get to reward the dog. The first thing is, the dog doesn’t judge the student, the dog will never make fun of the student. So, it decreases anxiety. And there are other techniques. I’ll touch Silas on the rib, and he’ll put his paw out and stop the student from reading. We’ll say something like, ‘hey, Silas didn’t understand that last part, can you explain it to him in your own words?’”
Canines for Literacy operated at DC Virgo for about three years before deciding to move the program to elementary schools. Currently, the program operates in 10 schools, eight of them in New Hanover County.
Pat and Rick Hairston only work with shelter dogs, selecting the ones that have the physical health and behavioral temperament for the job. They only place a dog with someone suited to that dog, whether that means the dog works well with a wheelchair or is “handed” the right way.
“Yes, dogs are left and right handed, just like you or me,” Rick Hairston said.
As Rick Hairston said, “the bad news is the good news is the bad news. There are far more people who need help then dogs who are trained to help them. That means we’ll never run out of work. It’s also why we’re focusing on getting more trainers certified. But these dogs make an honest to God difference in people’s lives – that’s what motivates me. Money doesn’t motivate me, if I could do away with it entirely, I would. But give me a chance to help someone, that gets me out of bed.”
For more information about volunteering, enrolling in a training course or applying for a service dog, visit Canines for Service.
