Trained to serve: Service dogs’ roles are expanding to help more people

In short order, Teddy — a bright-eyed and bushy-tailed 3-year-old yellow Lab — punched a wall button with his nose, yanked a rope to open a kitchen cabinet door and tugged a walker across the floor.

After each feat, trainer Emma Hetrick rewarded Teddy with a well-earned piece of kibble. With just a few months to go before graduation, Teddy is close to starting his “career” as a mobility service dog, Hetrick said.

It’s what he was born to do.

Across Minnesota, more than a dozen organizations are breeding, raising and training a growing legion of service dogs to help people with a widening range of disabilities — from autism spectrum disorder to diabetes — live their best, most independent lives.

The importance of the work has become so recognized that a new law that took effect Aug. 1 protects people who train service dogs from paying more in rent. The move is expected to increase the number of volunteer trainers and, eventually, the number of available dogs.

Can Do Canines in New Hope is the largest service dog operation in the state.

Teddy is one of 50 dogs the organization gives free-of-charge each year. Since its founding in 1989, the nonprofit has placed nearly 1,000 dogs who have been trained to open doors, summon elevators, pick up remotes, fetch telephones and sense seizures when their people cannot.

Over its 37 years, Johnson said, Can Do Canines has expanded from an organization that trained dogs to work with people who were hard of hearing or deaf to one that assists people with multiple disabilities. They now train mobility assist dogs, autism assist dogs, seizure assist dogs, diabetes assist dogs, hearing assist dogs and facility dogs, who are placed at hospitals or with community service organizations.

Johnson, a former Hennepin County commissioner and state legislator, is now leading a capital campaign that seeks to expand Can Do Canines’ facilities and capabilities. With more room, volunteers and trainers, he said, the organization hoped to place 70 dogs a year with the people who need them.

The biggest area of need is for people with mobility disabilities, Johnson said. Can Do’s dogs work with people who use wheelchairs, walkers, crutches and canes. Dogs help protect people with balance issues and at risk of falling, such as those with Parkinson’s, multiple sclerosis or cerebral palsy.

They can push elevator buttons or the handicapped buttons on doors. They can even take laundry out of the washer and drier, Johnson said.

Seizure-assistance dogs can sense when its person is about to have a seizure and summon help or provide comfort. Diabetes-assist dogs can smell when their person may need food or medication. For children with autism, the dog can act as a guard against a child wandering away or a source of calm and comfort.

Allie Brown lives in Minneapolis and is a middle school teacher at St. Thomas More in St. Paul. Starting in the seventh grade, Brown said, she began to suffer frequent and painful dislocations to her knees. Later diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos syndrome, Brown was referred by a doctor to Can Do Canines.

Since 2021, Brown’s dog Finley has not only helped her get things that are difficult for her to pick up and carry, but Brown said she’s reduced the number of times Brown is injured from once a month to two or three times a year.

If Brown falls, Finley helps her get up. At work, the 6-year-old pooch lies in a little bed beneath Brown’s desk. Finley has even become a way for her students to discuss disability, Brown said.

“She makes them comfortable to even talk about their own disabilities,” Brown said. “She’s a very good girl.”

Most of Can Do Canines’ dogs — primarily golden and Labrador retrievers — are bred by the organization and born in its whelping center. A small number of pups are donated by breeders. Shelter or rescue dogs are included as well.

The organization works with about 750 volunteers, including prison inmates and college students at the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin-River Falls. In all, Can Do Canines works with inmates at nine prisons, Johnson said. Eventually, they hope to work with 12.

At the age of 2, the dogs return to the Can Do Canines facility for final training. There, they are matched with prospective clients. Johnson estimates that it costs $45,000 to raise one of their service dogs. Clients pay nothing, except for a $50 application fee.

He said the organization has a $4 million annual budget, raised mostly through individual donations. At any time, Can Do Canines staff of 55 is working with about 250 dogs.

And, he said, Can Do can do with even more — trainers, volunteers, funding and dogs.

“It’s in our mission that we transform people’s lives by creating mutually beneficial partnerships with specially trained dogs,” he said. “And we hear it every day, how these dogs are not just helping people. They’re changing their lives.”