What do you think of canine companions for independence? A service dog is something I may do to help me be more self-sufficient. Do they do bracing/balance dogs? My biggest issue is that a lot of places don't do that.
Honestly, I don’t have a TON of first hand experience with the organization, but they’ve been very important to my family. My mother was a puppy raiser for them- our first dog, Sager, was successfully placed as a wheelchair dog. Jenny failed out due to health issues in her first round of training (she had corrective surgery and is fine now, but CCI couldn’t risk any other issues coming up).
One of the wonderful things about CCI is that their service dogs are free of charge to their applicants once approved. The down-side is that they only take a certain amount of applications per year. Their selection for approval appears to trend towards the most severely need-based.
I know my mom was very fond of the organization as a whole, though maybe not some of the people she worked with. Friends of ours have a grief therapy dog from there that works in their funeral home. The training and socialization of the puppies is very rigorous. Banana knows around 50-80 commands, though what she remembers is suspect, since I am not mom, nor strict with her :P
I’ve glanced around the site, and they do four types of dogs: service dogs, skilled companion dogs, facility dogs (like Aragon, the funeral home dog I mentioned), and hearing dogs. Both service and companion dogs’ descriptions mention several very physical disabilities, but don’t mention bracing in particular-though the labs and goldens they breed would lend themselves to that. So basically, I guess maybe see if you could get in touch with someone via the website? I’m sorry I couldn’t be of more help :c I hope you can find a good fit, and even more so that it would be CCI.
