Service Dogs in Our Community

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High School Assistant Dog Programs

This program offers special education and general education students a unique, hands-on opportunity to learn leadership skills, critical social values, and humane concepts through the training of assistance dogs for individuals with disabilities.

Assistance dogs must have a soft, gentle demeanor to be effective helpmates to the disabled. The most effective and efficient means to train and motivate these dogs is through positive reinforcement – loving them, reading them, watching their learning styles, understanding and utilizing the best approaches to reach and teach them. These methods are humane and sensitive to the needs of others. As students learn and teach these techniques and see how successful they are, they begin to incorporate them into other areas of their lives.

The students spend time in wheelchairs to train the dogs and to be able to experience the difficulties of using a wheelchair. They usually develop greater understanding and empathy for the challenges people with disabilities face.
Students will learn about career pathways in assistance dog training, animal assisted therapies and related fields, e.g. counseling, animal training.

Flora and Luke Animal Assisted Activities

To help improve the day-to-day environment for residents in long term-managed care, inspire and motivate patients with physical challenges and provide the unconditional love that the dogs bring.

Animal Assisted Activities are the inclusion of carefully screened and trained animals into a patient’s daily activities with the general goal of improving quality of life. Nurturing, rapport, entertainment, socialization, mental stimulation and physical contact are some of the benefits provided by the human-animal interactions.
Our dogs visit the patients at Kohala Hospital and other medical centers on a weekly basis.

Puppy Raising Program

The puppy-raising program provides a unique opportunity for volunteers to help create a meaningful change in someone’s life.

Puppies are socialized and pre-trained by ADH trainers from eight weeks of age. The training coincides with the dog’s age in weeks and is taught progressively. This is also a time when pups need to expand their horizons, to go on outings and to be exposed to a variety of sights, sounds, situations and stimuli so they can develop into happy and healthy adult dogs. Puppies are placed in volunteers’ homes at 3 or 4 months of age for approximately a year for a prolonged socialization period returning to ADH to complete their training and be matched with a person with a disability.

Puppy raisers, with guidelines and assistance from ADH, provide and reinforce house training, teach basic obedience skills and play an active role in molding responsive and confident dogs. They ensure that puppies continue to be socialized and well behaved. In training classes held at ADH, basic canine obedience is taught and practiced. In addition quality time spent with the puppy raiser prepares the puppy for its lifelong role as a companion to a person with a disability. If you have room in your home and your heart…raising a foster puppy can be the most rewarding experience you and your family will ever know.

We sincerely appreciate your support. Feel free to contact us with any questions or comments.