Paul Mundell, Executive Director of the American Service Dog Access Coalition, joins Cheddar Reveals to discuss why emotional support, therapy, and service dogs are important.

Cheddar Reveals

Importance of Service Dogs

Welcome back to Cheddar reveals, brought to you by curiosity stream Studies have shown that dogs provide health benefits and can increase fitness, lower stress and improve happiness. Service dogs encompass all of these abilities combined with training to perform specific tasks for individuals with disabilities joining us now, paul Mandel, executive director of american Service dog access program, paul, thanks so much for joining us. Why our service dogs so important and who is a good candidate for one. Um you know, service dogs are are are so important because as we've learned over over now the past several generations, they can help people with a with a really wide range of disabilities. I mean a couple of generations ago, um service dogs were essentially guide dogs. Everybody is familiar with dogs, leading people who are blind or have vision impairments. But what we've discovered is service dogs can do a whole wide range of things. You've talked about medical detection dogs, they can they can work with people who have diabetes to indicate higher low blood sugar. They can work with people in wheelchairs. And when you think about it, dogs, they're the first animal species to be domesticated. They really evolved together with humans. They're used to working with us, they're used to living in our society, they integrate very well. They're obviously incredibly trainable, uh and they're they're great companions and so they fit seamlessly into society and then on top of that we can train them to do these very valuable tasks to help people who have disabilities to sort of lessen some of the effects of those disabilities in terms of who might be a good candidate, obviously anyone with a a disability that the dog can assist with is a potential candidate. But more than that to state the obvious, you, you've got to be a person who loves dogs and a person for whom a dog can can fit into your lifestyle live with you because a service dog, unlike, unlike many, many pet dogs, service dogs with a person Essentialments 24 hours a day. And so you're with your dog 24 hours a day, which in most service dog users finding incredibly pleasant as do their, as to their dogs. But but if that's if that's not you, then then obviously a service dog wouldn't be for you. A really good note, An important one, I think for people out there watching which breeds are really the most effective at being a service dog. Well actually there there, depending on the, on the type of service work. It that varies somewhat. The most traditional breeds are obviously german shepherds, labrador retrievers and golden retrievers are very popular. Labs are probably the predominant service dog breed in the world and that's, that's simply because the sporting breeds and the, and the herding breeds shepherd is a hurting dog. Originally, the labs and goldens are sporting dogs, they evolved to work very closely together with us to take direction. They're easily motivated learning to work, They enjoy learning. Um, in the case of labs, anyone who's had one knows that they're incredibly food motivated which which helps in training. Um but when you get things like medical alert dogs um you know there perhaps a smaller dog might be you know smaller breed or smaller dog might be might be more beneficial simply because you can you can, you know, they're less obtrusive in in public places if you're on public transit or in a restaurant. Um you know, a medical alert dog can can still do its alerting function and doesn't require a larger size. Whereas you know, a dog that's working with somebody in a wheelchair and retrieving things to their lab or turning a light switch on and off obviously needs to be a certain size which conveniently labs and gold are great, perfectly sized for that Paul. Just about 30 seconds left with you tell us about your work with the American Kennel Club to launch the service dog pass. Um well we are, I'm speaking on behalf of the NASDAQ, the american Service Dog Access coalition. Um we're incredibly grateful that the A. K. C. Sees the the sort of urgency of this problem. Um A lot of his service dogs adopt wider and wider roles. A lot of dogs are now working with people who have disabilities but those disabilities are invisible and as a result because of the prevalence of of sort of fraudulent or misrepresented service dogs for people who have absolutely invisible disabilities are oftentimes um harassed or or intrusively questioned. Um you know, when they're when they're wanting to go into a public place because people are unfortunately skeptical with their service dogs. And what NASDAQ is working to do is to promote access for people with service dogs by providing sort of a guaranteed credential when people fly on airlines, for example, that this, in fact the service dog. And so the service dog user can bypass that sort of um intrusive at times questioning that. Is this really a service dog paul Mandel, executive director of american Service Dog Access Program. Thank you so much for joining us.