Usually I'm the voice of our team. After all I'm a lot younger and prettier than Joanne and people pay more attention to young, pretty girls. Sometimes, though, I feel I ought to let Joanne speak in her own voice. It's good for her self-esteem.
The following blog entry was edited from one of her Facebook messages.
Take it away Joanne:
I don't raise, sell, or train service dogs for other people. I suffer from bipolar disorder and I trained Maeve from the age of 6 months (with guidance from a professional service dog trainer, Jillian Gartner of APAW) as a psychiatric service dog for myself. What I do for other people is to educate them about the rights of those with disabilities -- especially psychiatric disabilities -- to emotional support animals and service dogs and to facilitate the process where I can -- such as collecting information about puppies who have been judged to be likely candidates for training and getting that info to people who are ready to train a service dog for themselves.
I spent a lot of time finding out about psychiatric service dogs (what they did, pros and cons, how you choose them, how you train them, what the legal definition of service dog is, etc.). It took me a year to get to the point where I felt I could make the decision to get one.
Then I had the problem in that I was in a no-dogs apartment complex. After a year of research I knew that a service dog couldn't be prohibited, but I was planning to self-train, so the dog wouldn't initially meet the definition of service dog under the ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act). I delayed getting the service dog until I stumbled upon a reference to the Fair Housing Act which gives the disabled the right to Emotional Support Animals (pets) in no-pets housing.
During that delay I became dangerously suicidal and a dog might have made the difference between life and death. Luckily I survived and followed the steps to get an emotional support animal (which is what the puppy would be under the Fair Housing Act until trained for public access and to assist me). Maeve entered my life as an emotional support animal living in my no-dogs apartment -- but not until I suffered through out-and-out lies about the law ("the only dogs we have to allow are CERTIFIED service dogs"), intimidation tactics, and demands for illegal pet fee and deposit from the property manager. With the support of the Connecticut Fair Housing Center I was able to successfully request an accommodation from my landlord to have a dog in my no-dogs apartment without paying any deposits or fees for it.
At the same time I found information on my rights to emotional support animals, I found Advocacy Unlimited, Inc. -- a Connecticut non-profit organization that provided advocacy services and training for people with psychiatric disabilities. They were offering a three-month advocacy training course. I was so angered by my own ignorance of my rights and by the hoops through which I had been forced, illegally, to jump that I felt compelled to prepare myself to advocate for others.
Maeve accompanied me to every class. She charmed every student and the teacher. She'd lay silently under the conference table through the many hours of morning and afternoon sessions. She began identifying the other people at the table who needed help -- a woman who had mobility and pain problems due to arthritis in her knees suddenly found the poodle cuddling against her legs to keep them warm. Others got quiet hand kisses when they needed emotional support. Some were cheered up by her enthusiastic greetings as she entered the room or her delivery of energetic high-fives.
Maeve and I had lunch on campus in the dining room of Torrington, CT's Prime Time Clubhouse, a club-house model non-profit for the mentally ill). No one there had any experience with a service dog and she charmed and educated staff and members alike. The Advocacy Unlimited teacher saw what was going on in the classroom and the dining room and decided that Maeve was as good an advocate as any human. Maeve was added to the class roster and she and I graduated together in Torrington Town Hall this past September. We are both Advocacy Unlimited Mental Health Advocates. Not coincidentally, at least two members of PrimeTime House began training their own service dogs after meeting us.
We've begun doing speaking engagements as volunteers to spread the word. We've spoken at clubhouses, and at a regional mental health consumer advisory board meeting. We took time off between Thanksgiving and New Years and we're beginning to book dates for 2011 now.
We also educate people wherever we go: music venues, grocery stores, hiking trails, etc. Maeve is terrific at outreach; people are just brimming with questions about her. We've even had people stop their cars on the street to ask questions.
In order to reach more people we maintain a website and a Facebook page and publish Service Poodle's Dog Blog through Blogspot and on Facebook.
I am in the process of ordering an upfitted van in which Maeve, my emotional support cat Sibol, and I will travel and live so we can spread the word throughout the country.
Feel free to ask me any questions you may have and to forward this message to anyone who may be interested.
Thanks for your interest!
Joanne, Maeve's Service Human
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