Service Dog Eligibility-
Our dogs are trained primarily for individuals with mobility and psychiatric impairments.
All applicants must agree and meet the eligibility requirements below:
- The applicant must be the person handling the assistance dog
- You must be at least 14 years of age
- You must have a positive attitude, open mind, and willing to learn
- You must be able to provide for the dog’s physical and emotional well being, including financially covering all things needed
- You must be able to describe how an assistance dog would help increase your independence and daily life
- You must have a disability that impacts your life, your independence and, ability to engage in activities of daily living.
- You must have support and referral from a licensed doctor for obtaining an assistance dog
- You must have a stable home environment including support of household members
- You must be responsible
- How much does assistance dog training cost?
In general, assistance dog placement costs is around $10,000-20,000 across the nation. Often times, this price is dependent upon the number of tasks the dog needs to perform to help the handler, and the choice to owner train, board and train, or to get a fully trained assistance dog from a program. It takes an incredible amount of time, energy, people, resources, sacrifice and costs us around $20,000 per service dog. Currently, the costs to the applicant range from $5,000-10,000 per service dogs because some amazing individuals who donate and volunteer for us help reduce the fees.
We feel strongly that the best way to set you up for success is to carefully determine whether you realistically could benefit from one of our service dogs. Most individuals desire to have a dog accompany themselves everywhere but do not realize what all goes into the day-to-day of life when using a service dog to mitigate a disability. We do not sell our trained program dogs; we offer training and retain ownership for the lifetime of our service dogs.
If you are invited as an approved recipient of one of our program service dogs, you will be asked to cover the cost of your Team Training or “Bootcamp”, and all expenses associated with that. Our application process has several steps and waiting time to receive your service dog could be a couple years. Please begin with us by sending in an inquiry about an application for an assistance dog from our program. We will match you to an already-trained service dog and teach you how to work together as a team to live life independently.