Young Men in Care Learn Patience, Discipline and Love from Dogs

For fifteen-year-old Corey, who has been in residential care at The Children's Village in Dobbs Ferry, NY, for about a year and a half, the best part of training service dogs for the handicapped is "seeing them do thing that a normal dog wouldn't do, like retrieve an item, open the door, and turn on light switches."  Corey belongs to a group of fifteen boys who work several hours a day in the Children's Village Assistance Dog Training Program.  And, while the dogs are learning far more than to simply sit and stay, the boys are learning even more than that.  "For the kids who come here for residential treatment, more than half of whom are in the foster care system, one of our main goals is to teach them a work ethic, a sense of responsibility, and a sense of helping others," says Linda Stutz, Vice President for Institutional Advancement at Children's Village.  But there's one more, all-important quality the boys develop from their work with the dogs.  "They learn about unconditional love," says Stutz.

Young men at Children's Village along with  Candida Fitts, Director of Volunteers at Children's Village(third from right), and volunteer Barbara Jenkel (right),  with some of the dogs trained by the young residents to help the disabled.

The dogs, bred and raised on the grounds of The Children's Village, require hours and hours of consistent, patient training and positive discipline.  And the boys do it all.  "It's not just that we're sort of pretending that these kids are the trainers.  They're really the trainers," says Stutz.  At about age eighteen months, the trained Labradors and Golden Retrievers become the eyes, ears, arms, and legs for people who are handicapped, some of them veterans of the war in Iraq.  Each dog leaves the Village with knowledge of eighty commands.  They know how to brace someone who needs help getting up, help people go to the store, retrieve specific foods from the refrigerator, and-get this-do laundry.  Once a dog is assigned to a specific owner, the boys train them to do tasks specific to that person's handicap.  Recently, a dog was trained to help a female veteran of the Iraqi war who lost both her arms when trying to de-fuse a bomb.  The dog now does pretty much everything that arms can do, and this woman has re-gained her independence, and her freedom.
As for the boys, many of whom have had multiple placements before arriving at The Children's Village, they open up and grow in ways that constantly astound the staff.  "I remember, a number of years ago, a very big young man who was having trouble adjusting to our program," recalls Stutz.  "Some of the kids on campus found him scary, big, and intimidating.  He did really well with the dog program.  At the graduation, a very moving ceremony where the boys give the dogs' leads over to the handicapped owners, the person getting his dog was having trouble walking down the aisle.  The boy walked down, picked him up in his arms, and carried him." 

The dogs teach the boys about life, help them to acquire a sense of responsibility, and understanding of how patient you have to be to really teach something.  After all, dogs are dogs, and they can be frustrating.  The staff also supplements the training program in a therapeutic setting, drawing feelings out of boys who may have, otherwise, been silent.  Through the training program and an additional pet therapy training programs, kids who have trouble communicating are able to talk about their problems.  One boy, identifying with the puppy he was working with, noticed that this pup was separated from his mother.  Did the puppy's mother miss him?  "It becomes a way for boys to talk about their own problems, and it really works well," says Stutz.
 Though it's always hard for the boys to give up the dogs they've worked with, there are always new puppies to be trained, as six or seven litters a year are being bred on campus.  And, without exception, these puppies are always happy when their boys come down to groom them, train them, or just give them hugs.  "My favorite thing is training them and being happy to see them helping people," says fifteen-year-old Quintin, a resident at the center for a year and a half.  "They smile at me a lot."  Asked what he's learned from the dogs, Quintin says, "I learned patience, consistency, and determination - a lot of determination." 
Jeremy Kohomban, Children's Village President & CEO (back row left) and Lu Picard, East Coast Assistance Dog Inc. President and founder (back row center), along with volunteers, one of the young residents who train the dogs and two of the disabled with their newly trained assistance dogs.

The Assistance Dog Training Program was started at The Children's Village, in partnership with East Coast Assistance Dogs (ECAD) in 1999 as a way to reach some of the most vulnerable teenage residents.  In 1997, ECAD pioneered the use of students with emotional and learning difficulties as trainers. There are currently 9 dogs being trained, as well as many puppies and breeders that the young men interact with. The day school program comprises 15 young men; the afterschool program another 40, and about 50 participate each week in the Best Friends Program, which is just playing with the dogs.

 In addition to its Children's Village program, ECAD partners with other New York area residential treatment centers at Green Chimneys, mercyFirst and The Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services.