Speaker 1:
Welcome to TPGI's Real People, Real Stories podcast, where you'll find interesting and diverse stories from folks working to make the world a more inclusive place.

Mark Miller:
Hey, welcome to the Real People, Real Stories podcast brought to you by TPGI. I am your host, Mark Miller, thanking you for helping us keep it accessible. Do us a favor. If you're enjoying the Real People, Real Stories podcast, share it. Tell someone about it. Hey, even link to it from your accessible website. So thank you all for joining and for listening. We have a great guest today who has a great guest with her, so I want to introduce everybody to Cara and Missy. Did I get that right?

Cara:
Yes.

Mark Miller:
Yes.

Cara:
Yes you did.

Mark Miller:
So Cara is the one that's smiling and talking to us and Missy is the one that is sitting in Cara's lap, sniffing around. And also I want to welcome once again to the podcast Marissa, who is our producer. Welcome Marissa. How are you?

Marissa:
I am great. Thank you.

Mark Miller:
You're great. Perfect. Excellent. So the reason why we're talking to you today, Cara, is because you work for an interesting organization, and Missy used to work for that organization if I have the story right here. We'll call her a former employee. And that organization is Paws With a Cause. So can you tell us a little bit about what you guys do and what you do for the company?

Cara:
Absolutely. Thank you so much for having us. I am the public relations coordinator for Paws With a Cause and we custom train assistance dogs all over the country for people with disabilities, and Missy is actually still a current employee.

Mark Miller:
Oh, she is?

Cara:
She is a very unique employee because she is a mama dog, so her job is to bring more fabulous assistance dogs into the world.

Mark Miller:
Well, that sounds like a job with a great purpose. So when you guys are... You're talking about assistance dogs, I immediately go to thinking of a dog like a seeing eye dog, something that a person who's blind would use to help them navigate. And in fact, we have a sort of an old member of the podcast who was famous figure on the podcast, Darren. Darren's since passed away, but Darren's owner or whatever was on the podcast with me, Jeremy. So if you go way back, you can hear some of the podcasts where we're talking about some of my experiences with Darren. But Darren would make sure that Jeremy could safely and accurately navigate the world.

Mark Miller:
When I was walking him, he wanted to make sure I safely navigated the world too, which we didn't always agree, because I have sight. So it was really interesting for Darren and I to try to figure out who was the boss and who was supposed to be walking where. But you guys, that's not your focus, right? You're creating dogs to help people with disabilities, but it's different types of disabilities. So can you tell us a little bit about the kind of work, I guess, that one of Misty's children would end up doing for the... Is that the way to say that? I don't know.

Cara:
Yeah, of course.

Mark Miller:
They would end up doing for the organization.

Cara:
Yes. At Paws we train four different types of dogs. So we train service dogs, which is what people typically think. Dogs that open doors, retrieve dropped objects. That's typically for people that have physical disabilities. We train dogs for deaf and hard of hearing clients, seizure response dogs, and then the service dogs for children with autism. Missy is a papillon, which is the only small breed that we use, and those dogs can only be used as hearing dogs simply for the fact that a nine pound dog can't really pull a wheelchair or open a door. But we actually started our organization by training hearing dogs, so we've grown over the last 40 years to all of these different dogs that we train. As we saw the need growing, we grew with it.

Mark Miller:
Great. So talk to me a little bit about... I think it's a little... When you think about that traditional sort of a dog that a person who's blind would have, it's really easy to imagine how that dog is helping accommodate for that person. But I think in terms of some of these other disabilities and especially hearing that you mentioned Missy was sort of bred for, or used for, in my mind it doesn't immediately jump out the types of things that she might do. So can you tell us a little bit about how a person who's deaf might use the dog or how the dog might help that person?

Cara:
Hearing dogs are used to alert their clients to sound. So a lot of times people who are deaf or hard of hearing can never fully relax because they're always worried they're missing that key sound in their environment. Just a few things that our hearing dogs can alert to is someone saying your name, a baby crying, your phone ringing, someone knocking on your door. And a really important one that a lot of people don't think of is an ambulance coming down the street. Not only is your Paws dog allowing you to get over safely, but then letting the person in the ambulance and the person driving the ambulance get to where they need to go safely as well.

Cara:
We actually started because our very first clients were deaf and they wanted to adopt a child, but they were worried that it wouldn't be able to adequately care for the child if they couldn't hear when the child was crying. When they came to our previous CEO and our founder, Mike, who was at the time just delivering papers, but they had a really good friendship and knew that Mike trained obedience in dogs and pitched this idea to him, and he was like, "I'll see what I can do, but no promises." And it wasn't until one day he went over for their house for a training session, there were a bunch of people in the room and he was like, "What's going on here? I'm not here for a party, I'm here to train your dog." And they were like, "No, Michael, you don't get is all of these people are deaf and they want you to train hearing dogs for them as well." And that's when Ears for the Deaf was born. And from there we've grown to Paws With a Cause.

Mark Miller:
What a great story.

Marissa:
Hey Cara, I had a question. Are the dogs used for people with hearing disabilities, do they wake up in the middle of the night? If there's a sound in the middle of the night, they're trained to do that?

Cara:
Oh, absolutely. Our dogs were all alert 24/7. So most of our dogs, when they're being trained, we crate train them to sleep at night. But actually once the dogs are in the hearing program or the papillons, it can be unsafe for them to be in their crate at night, because if an alarm goes off the dog has to be able to get to the client to let them know that. So absolutely. As soon as they hear something, they are on it and telling their client.

Marissa:
Oh, wow. That's impressive. My dog would sleep through anything unless there's food involved.

Cara:
Oh yeah. Some of our clients say like, "Mater is happy to wake me up in the morning, but it's definitely a little paw. 'Come on mom.'" And goes to the coffee pot like "Okay, mom. We're up. We're ready to go."

Mark Miller:
That's how I wake up my 15 year old. I'm like, "Get out of bed. I'm tired. I just woke up myself. Get out of bed. I don't want to have to come drag you." That's funny. I don't think you always realize when you are hearing like we are, how you use your hearing. It's just part of your every day. But you think about it, you get in that difficult traffic situation in the car, and the first thing you're doing is turning down the radio so you can use your ears. And I know as a runner, I've never been able to listen to music when I run, because I've realized my reliance on being able to hear my environment. So it makes total sense that a dog who can hear an alert for you would just add a ton of...

Mark Miller:
I think the point you made, Cara, that really stands out to me is just that peace of mind. It's not even necessarily about those individual events as much as being able to know that if something does happen, you're going to hear about it. And I never stopped to think about that, as I've had a lot of friends who are deaf and there's a lot of things I've thought about and grown to understand through deaf culture, but I never really got a sense of the uneasiness that might exist just knowing that something could be happening around you that you're not alerted to. So you mentioned that there's a few other types of dogs that you have, or dogs that service different types of disabilities. Let's go into the cognitive disability. I think you've said that people with autism, is that what you...

Cara:
Children with autism.

Mark Miller:
Children with autism. So how would a dog help a child who has autism?

Cara:
Our dogs for children with autism help many different ways, as most of our dogs do, but teaching responsibility, letting the child learn to care or connect with someone that's not themselves. One of our client's parents tells a story that, "I walked into the kitchen and my son was on the counter. And I was like, 'Jimmy, what are you doing on the counter?' And he's like, 'Oh, well I wanted to get a ball for Fluffy.'" And she broke down in tears. And to most people we'd be like, "Oh my gosh, why was your son on the counter?" But to her, she was like, "He was doing something other than himself. He wanted to care for and give these needs to the dog." So I love that story.

Cara:
And then they can also be taught a command for when the child starts to run. That's a behavior that some children with autism do. We call it bolting. The dog will stop, and then in turn, the child stops running. They're also a bridge in communication. Some children with autism have a hard time communicating verbally and they will build the rocks on saying the dog's name or fetch, little things like that, that build up. And it's just a listening ear and comfort to know that that dog is going to be with you, and that dog's not judging you and you can pour love into it and the dog is going to love you right back.

Mark Miller:
I'm just thinking about training that dog and obvious things like the bolting behavior and stopping that, you can really see where that is. But a lot of this is about the connection between the dog and the person, especially in that case. So is there an event, or are you not just training the dog, but also working with the dog and the child to cultivate this kind of relationship a little bit? You know what I'm saying? It seems like there'd be work on both sides to me.

Cara:
Yeah. Paws is really unique in the fact that when we place one of our custom trained assistance dogs with our clients, the training doesn't stop there. So once the dog is placed, we actually have field representatives in the area of our clients that go in and work with the client and the dog for about six to eight months. We like to say that we've trained the dog, but now we have to train the client. This dog knows everything it needs to do, but you may not know how to work with the dog or get it to do that stuff. So it's about six to eight months before they come certified and we consider that when they're a really good working team.

Mark Miller:
Great. And then you talk about some other different types of disabilities too. Can you go into a little bit of the unique aspects of those as well?

Cara:
Yeah. I think our organization is really unique because every single one of our dogs is custom trained. So even if Mark and Marcy, who are both getting service dogs, what your dogs would train to do is completely different because you need different things. We even look into how high the light switches are up on the wall. Are they really high, so you need a taller dog to be able to get them? Or are they a little bit lower, so it doesn't matter how tall the dog is. Do you live a really active lifestyle, so you need a dog that has a lot of get up and go, or do you like to stay home and read and you can have a dog like Missy, who just sleeps by your lap all day? We really look at things like that, and that's for all four of the types of dogs.

Cara:
We have seizure response dogs. We train to, we're really clear, respond to seizures, not predict. So that is a common misconception in the assistance dog industry, and that is not something that we train as Paws, as well as for service dogs, we can treat a number of different tasks and we are always looking to different kinds of tests that our clients may need. So some of our clients need a dog that walks on the right side, where we typically train dogs to walk on the left, even just little things like that, that I think a lot of people not in the industry don't really think about.

Mark Miller:
With the seizure dogs, when they detected somebody having a seizure, what is the behavior? What do they do in that instance?

Cara:
Our dogs can be trained to go get a water bottle, go get medication. Some of our clients have a device in their heart, and then a magnet that when they begin to have a seizure, the dog can get the magnet and place it on your chest, and it actually makes the seizure shorter, which is just mind blowing to me. They can also be taught to pull an alarm on the client that will then make a loud noise if they're out in public, or in the home to draw attention. Like, "My human needs help. Come help her." As well as having an alert box in the house that the dog can go and press and it will either make a sound or call an emergency contact. Some of our dogs are taught a brace command where they will stand in front of their client, so usually after having a seizure, you're really weak, and digs will help you get back up to your feet from a kneeling position. Like I said, there's so many, but that's just some of the key [crosstalk 00:14:10].

Mark Miller:
I shouldn't be surprised, given what you said before, that the answer was like, "It really depends on what the person needs." There's all these different things that could happen. And I think that that's... It really is kind of an outstanding aspect of what you guys do. The fact that... Again, I think in our minds, if you just thought of this with no context and previous knowledge, you're like, "Oh, they train a bunch of dogs that do a bunch of things and matched up with the person and that's what they get." But it's not that way at all. It's really about working with an individual and their needs and matching the two. So given that, do you find that you try to match up a person with a dog and they just... After you with them for a bit, they're just not a good fit and you look for a different personality in a dog that might fit with that person better? Or does it always work out?

Cara:
We do a lot of research beforehand to make sure that we are finding the best fit possible, but of course, sometimes you... Just like a relationship, you think it's going to be a great fit, and then maybe not. You have to have a break up.

Mark Miller:
Well that never happens. Never happens.

Cara:
Never, no. Sometimes that happens. Typically we can see it pretty quickly when they're with the dog. That's why we do have that six to eight months before we certify them, because we want to make sure that they are a perfect match before we certify. In that case, the dog will come back to Paws, they'll typically continue their training process and then go on to a different client that would be a perfect fit, and we will find a different dog for that other client.

Mark Miller:
And also, when you're thinking about this, really, you're creating a relationship. This is a member of the family that sticks with that family, I would assume for a lifetime. Is there any point in that process where the dog really can't continue its functions anymore, and for lack of a better term retires out of being useful in that way. I'm sure it stays as a companion and a friend and stuff.

Cara:
Yeah, that's a perfect term to use. We use the term retire. Just like humans, our dogs do need to retire as they get older. We think that our dogs typically have a working lifespan of between 8 and 12 years. It really just depends on the dog. We do support our clients for the lifetime of the dog. So we are going and recertifying every two years and then just checking up on our clients at least annually. But we have a great relationship with most of our clients. They'll typically work [inaudible 00:16:42] like that.

Mark Miller:
When that dog retires, does it really retire?

Cara:
It can stay in the home with the human, their client. What we mean by retirement is just the dog is no longer working. Whether they're not happy working anymore, or they physically can't do the... It's getting hard for them to open doors. And we always want our dogs to be happy and healthy in their working placements.

Mark Miller:
Got you. So behavior changes and you go, "This dog's gotten to an age where it's really not performing these functions anymore. We're going to call this retirement." It's not the thing that precedes that. And then what happens? Do they end up with two dogs? One that is working in one that's watching, going, "Yeah, I did that once."

Cara:
Pretty much, yeah. It's always up to our clients. Most of our clients do apply for what we call a successor dog, and we will place another dog with them. One of our clients actually just received his fourth Paws dog last week, and they are already so sweet. They're such a great working team already. But yeah, in those instances, a lot of times old Paws dog will step down and the new Paws dog will come in and take over the role as the assistance dog. That's the only time that we allow a client to have another dog in the home is if it's after a previous Paws dog has retired. And that's because we want that bond to be so strong. Where we found before that if there's other dogs in the home, it can be kind of hard to get that really strong bond with their client.

Marissa:
So I have a question. How do you communicate to the retired dog that he or she is retired?

Cara:
Throw them a party, make them a nice little peanut butter cake, maybe. We have fabulous, fabulous dog trainers and field representatives that... I'm sure it's confusing for the dog at first. Like, "Why is this guy doing my job?" But they seem to do it just fine. I'm not sure.

Mark Miller:
Do you think that the old original dog ever takes the new successor dog for a long walk and explains to them like, "When I was your age..."

Cara:
I sure hope so. I hope [crosstalk 00:18:51].

Mark Miller:
Let me show you the ropes, kid. If not, there's an animated movie waiting to be made.

Marissa:
I had a related question. I know that when service dogs are working you're not supposed to pet them or play with them or anything, but how does someone let a service dog know that they are not working? Like, "Okay, you finished your day. Now you can kick off your shoes and do whatever you want." How does the owner tell the dog?

Cara:
That's a great question. I think it's in a couple of different ways. So for our dogs, they're always in what we call a cape or a vest, and when our dogs are in cape, they know like, "Okay, it's working time. I'm in my uniform, ready to go." But also a lot of times the dogs in a home don't wear a cape. So we use the command free. That means like you're good to go. You can get out of your sit. You can play. But in the home, the dogs are kind of all, always working, kind of like on that back burner. You're just hanging out on the couch and you drop the remote. Well, your dog is going to be told retrieve, and then they're going to go and get it.

Cara:
But I think education around, especially in public, we always say ask the handler. Don't assume that you can go up to the dog, pet the dog, even making noises at it or making eye contact, which may seem silly, but those dogs are doing really important work. So always making sure that you talk to the handler, even if there's not a cape, before you interact with that dog.

Mark Miller:
That's how Darren... Darren had a harness, and he would sit there and be super, super good, and then the harness would come off and he'd be like... Either, "I'm going to go take a nap..." He'd actually come over to people that he'd been sitting there being good, and the harness would come off and he'd come over to you and sniff you and come say hi.

Cara:
People. if they haven't seen it, they don't believe it when we say that. But they know.

Mark Miller:
They know, yeah. It's a visible transformation in what that dog's thinking. That was a good question. That was a good question.

Cara:
I'd also just like to add, we get questions a lot. "Oh, those poor dogs. They never get to have fun." Our dogs are bred to work and they love working. I always like to point out on demonstrations or presentations when we're asking our dogs to do a command, their tails are wagging, their little paws are going up and down. They're having a great time in their jobs and they love what they do, just like we hope that... I love my job too. So I think that's important to let the public know that they're still a dog. Ultimately they're still a dog and they have fun and they were bred to do this.

Mark Miller:
That's a great point, and I can even see that in my own dog where I put my dog through the paces sometimes. She's getting older now, so it's a little different, but... And my wife would be like, "Leave her alone. What are you doing? What are you doing?" And then she would look at the dog and she'd be like, "Oh, the dog looks depressed." And I'm like, "Well, because we haven't done anything with that lately." So I find that like going for that walk or even doing the silly things where I feed it and make it sit and put the treat on its nose and make it kind of hold there and release, just that mental engagement the dog's looking for in that... I know I'm humanizing the animal a little bit here, but in my observation, it tends to brighten the dog up a little bit and make it happier because it's doing something.

Mark Miller:
It's more when we're like in the winter months, we're not walking it as much, it's lying around, it's not doing anything. That's when it kind of gets this behavior. This is it guys. So I can see where they're probably very happy animals given such a purpose throughout their lives. So that's great. So is there anything else? I think one of the really cool visuals in this story is thinking about this group of deaf people that the founder sort of stumbled on that said, "Me too, me too. We want one of these too." So how did that go? They walked in and there was a group of people that said we wanted these dogs and the owner just started, or the founder just started training dogs?

Cara:
Yeah, absolutely. He just started training dogs. At first it would be personal dogs or dogs from the rescue. We were only seeing about a 1 in 12 success rate from using rescue dogs, so that's when we started our own breeding program. And through that, we've seen about a one in two to one in three success rate. Success rate meaning going on to a working careers. We are all about adopt don't shop if you are looking for a pet dog or looking into a nice breeder. But with working jobs, it's really important that you're not only knowing the temperament, but a health history of the dog as well.

Cara:
With our breeding program, we look at least five lines back, so we really know what kind of dog we're going to get out of each litter, even things down to like... Golden retrievers' coats are typically pretty fluffy and they can mat often. Our breeding coordinator has been able to breed it so the coats of our goldens don't mat so much, and that's because a lot of people with physical disabilities may not have the dexterity to be able to brush out those mats. Little things like that, that make a huge difference in the industry and to who we're serving.

Mark Miller:
It's amazing to me to think about that day, and then to hear you talk about the sophistication of the program. I mean, I suppose that's how all these things start, but it's really amazing because you know that there was a lot of trial and error and mistakes and things learned along the way that led to such a refined program that clearly works. I'm assuming that you guys have just an amazing set of clients that love what you provide for them.

Cara:
41 years later and we've placed over 30,00 assistance dogs in with our clients, and we're always trying to find a working career for our dogs, so if our dogs don't go on to help someone with a disability, they are usually going on to different working placement, like going with policemen or fireman or arson detections. And most recently we've started training facility dogs as well. So those are dogs in hospitals or in school settings. These dogs help people, so we want to continue to help as many people as we can.

Marissa:
That's amazing.

Mark Miller:
So before we wrap up, Cara, I want to hear a little bit about your story? How did you end up working for a Paws With a Cause?

Cara:
That is really fun. It was my last semester of college and I was signed up to take a ballroom dancing class, and I was in my communication ethics class and in walked my professor and she had a guide dog named Chad, and she was talking about, "With Chad, I get to ride the bus and I get to come and work." And I was like, "Wow."

Mark Miller:
What was her disability?

Cara:
She was blind. So Chad was her guide dog and that. So I was like, "Wow, the way she talks about getting to work and getting to ride the bus," it was really a moment to step back and just think about all of these things that I take for granted every day. And I knew I wanted to work in nonprofit. That had already been my pathway in advertising and PR, but I was like, "I wonder if there's any guide dog organizations around here." I had already fulfilled my internship credit the semester before, and I looked at Paws With a Cause and I was like, "Oh my goodness, it's so close." And they had an internship open.

Cara:
So unfortunately I did not take ballroom dancing. I ended up dropping the class to take Paws With a Cause as an internship. And then when I graduated, they actually created a new position to bring me on full-time. So I have been there for almost four years now, which is crazy.

Marissa:
Oh, congratulations.

Cara:
But I'm very humble that everyday I get to come to work knowing I'm making just a small difference and I'm helping people, and I love dogs, so it's the dream job.

Marissa:
That's wonderful.

Mark Miller:
So glad that you found a job that you love like that. That's wonderful. Well, we need to wrap up. Is there anything that you'd like to add before we close out here?

Cara:
We do estimate that our dogs take about $35,000 to breed, raise, train, and place a single assistance dog, and this comes almost entirely from individual donors. So if anyone feels compelled, you can give at pawswithacause.org, but also just giving us a like on Facebook or spreading the word is huge for a nonprofit, so I urge you to talk about our amazing organization and check out some cute puppy photos on social media.

Mark Miller:
That can't be hard to get people to do. Cute puppy photos is a default social media activity, so that's fantastic. Well thank you so much, Cara. I appreciate you being here with us and thanks to Misty. Misty disappeared in your lap, I think below the camera.

Marissa:
Aww, there she is.

Mark Miller:
Bye Misty.

Cara:
Goodbye.

Speaker 1:
This podcast has been brought to you by TPGI, the experts in digital accessibility. Stay tuned for more Real People, Real Stories podcasts coming soon.