Canine Assistants, Inc.

This December is a very special time here at the farm. We are proud to be celebrating our 30th Anniversary, a huge milestone! Can you believe it’s been 30 years since Jennifer Arnold conceived and created Canine Assistants? It seems like yesterday we celebrated our first Recipient Camp Graduation, and placed the first Community Service Dog with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. Given everything we have accomplished in 30 years, there is still so much work to be done!

Here are some of those achievements since 1991:

 Placing over 2,000 service dogs with children and adults in 49 states and 5 countries.  

Collaborating with Florida International University (FIU), to determine that dogs who can anticipate the onset of epileptic seizures are responding to the smell of specific volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Once those VOCs were identified, they were reproduced in a laboratory setting, giving the dogs at Canine Assistants the ability to learn the odor as part of their educational protocol.

Since 2009, we have placed more than 100 Community Service Dogs in major medical institutions including Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, the Cleveland Clinic, Mt. Sinai Children's Hospital, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, and Tufts Children’s Hospital.

Our Founder, Jennifer Arnold, developed a socio-cognitive educational protocol known as the Bond-Based Approach® as a replacement for traditional dog training.  The dogs raised at Canine Assistants learn vocabulary words including nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs.  They also learn to reason by exclusion, answer binary questions, and imitate actions.   This method of educating and interacting leads to dogs who are willing capable, confident, and therefore safer in public settings. 

In 2021, the Bond-Based Institute at Canine Assistants (the Institute) was formed to research Best Practice Standards in the education and management of assistance dogs.  The Institute is currently researching puppy raising protocol, the use of dogs in scent detection including COVID-19, the use of heart rate variability monitors to determine the best ways to alleviate stress in working dogs.  Additionally, the Institute has developed a tablet-based communication system which allows dogs to talk by touching icons.  The system is in beta testing as a way for scent detection dogs to notify their human partners and emergency personnel of dangerous changes in blood sugar, cortisol levels, or oncoming seizures.  

Canine Assistants is a founding member of the Bond-Based Alliance (the Alliance), a collaborative of organizations and individuals united in the belief that use of fear and/or force with assistance dogs is inappropriate, counterproductive, and potentially dangerous.   The Alliance is dedicated to advancing the education, management, and certification standards of assistance dogs and the people with whom they work. 

Our staff veterinarian, Dr. Kent Bruner, collaborated with researchers at North Carolina State University to study a surgical procedure to prevent the development of hip dysplasia called Juvenile Pubic Symphysiodesis (JPS).  The surgery is done in puppies whose radiographs indicating enough laxity in the joint to make the development of dysplasia a real possibility.  Thanks to JPS, we haven’t had to fail a puppy for poor hips in over 15 years. The initial paper from this study was published in the American Journal of Veterinary Research. 

As you can see, we have been very busy changing the world – even a pandemic could not slow us down! Our statistics may seem impressive, but it’s not the numbers we care about – it’s the people!  It takes an incredible amount of love and patience to raise, educate and place service dogs. We really have that down perfectly here at Canine Assistants, but as a nonprofit, we need necessary funding to feed, teach and take care of the dogs - some even after graduation.

Your GA Gives on Giving Tuesday gift goes directly to the programs Canine Assistants provides – and most importantly, it will help us get through the next 30 years! While our dogs cannot say thank you, we can! Thank you for helping our recipients and the dogs who give them unconditional love, assistance, and companionship.

See below how your GA Gives on Giving Tuesday gift helps Canine Assistants!