Home Help Mate
A Home Help Mate is a dog who performs tasks to mitigate a person's disability, but does not require public access- they perform all of their tasking in the home.
This is a great option for certain people depending upon their disability, as well as their budget.
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Tesla the yellow lab doing puppy handling, a technique that helps produce calm behavior and assists with relationship building.
Some examples of a home help mate would be a dog working for someone who has fear associated with being home alone, or showering alone, etc. This person doesn't need a full psychiatric Service Dog (SD) to go with them everywhere, they only need a dog to perform tasking at home. Some examples of tasking that could mitigate this fear would be compression therapy, turning on lights for the handler before they enter the room, "checking" the room by walking into closets, bathrooms, to ensure safety before entering. This is just a sampling of potential tasks for a specific situation, because you and I will brainstorm specific tasking together, tasking is specific to each dog and handler team based on their needs.
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Home Help mates ideally will start training as puppies, but any age dog can potentially be trained to be a home help mate. We still recommend that you purchase a puppy specifically for this job, as depending upon the temperament of the specific animal, they may not be capable of doing all of the desired tasks, but this is not a requirement.
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We also like to start private lesson puppy jump start as soon as you bring the pup or young dog home. The sooner we start free shaping for these tasks, the higher probability that your dog will not only be able to perform them, but will LOVE performing them with and for you! And the more your dog LOVES his job, the better he will perform those tasks for you when you need them the most!
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At the completion of training Home Help Mates receive a certificate of training, certifying them as an Assistance Animal, protected under the Fair Housing Act (FHA). This is a major step above an Emotional Support Animal(ESA). Having a dog ESA registered can allow you to bypass a pet deposit, but according to the FHA, lessors are NOT required to allow you to have an ESA, whereas a Home Help Mate has the same protection under the EHA as a Service Dog, because it is actually performing tasks to mitigate a disability. Apartments and other rental agencies are required by law to allow Home Help Mates, but not ESA's according to the Fair Housing Act.
