If you’re on campus a lot, you’ve undoubtedly noticed the puppies. Labradors, golden retrievers, standard and miniature poodles with green vests on, letting the world know that they’re on the job. You may even have seen them in the pages of this very paper.

These aren’t your typical puppies. They’re puppies in training, working towards a goal as a Service Dog.

The organization responsible for the dogs you often see being trained on campus is the Lions Foundation of Canada, a charitable organization which has provided over 1200 individuals, or “handlers”, with dog guides since its inception in 1983.

Although based out of Oakville, the Lions Foundation works internationally, and has helped people from coast to coast. Every part of the initial process is provided by the Lions Foundation free of charge, from the assessment, through support, follow-up meetings, providing transport to their training facilities, as well as the service dog itself. The only cost to the handler is covering regular pet expenses, such as food and veterinary bills, once they have returned back home with their animal.

In addition to the training centre and offices in Oakville, the organization has a facility in Breslau, about 20km west of Guelph, which breeds around 200 puppies a year– all of them Labradors, golden retrievers, and poodles– which then are fostered out to supportive families.

“They’re between seven and eight weeks when they’re placed with a foster family and then they come back to our school for training when they’re between 10 and 14 months,” said Julie Jelinek, director of development at the Lions Foundation of Canada.

It is the dogs in that period that are the ones you often see being trained on campus. While the dogs will learn a variety of commands, skills and behaviours before they become service dogs, that’s not what they are learning at that age. For this period of time, it’s all about socialization.

“They need to be socialized to as many different things as possible,” continued Jelinek. “That’s why going to university is a great thing for them, including going to restaurants, movie theatres, taking the bus, the train, the subway, just being very familiar with people. They also need to learn, of course, to be housetrained, and basic household manners.”

Ian Ashworth, the program director at the Lions Foundation, echoed this sentiment.

“What we’re looking for primarily is a really well socialized dog. That’s the main purpose for the foster puppy program, to expose the dog to every environment and situation that they might encounter later on as a working dog guide,” Ashworth said. “That’s far more important than a dog who knows how to sit and is very obedient and has a high level of training, but actually isn’t confident in those sort of situations.”

Ashworth points out that this is often a misconception people have about the puppy program. While the dogs will eventually have a high level of training and be able to respond to a number of commands, the foster parents who are taking care of them at this point in their lives aren’t the ones responsible for that at all. That misconception is not unique to people who aren’t involved in the program, either.

“[Sometimes] foster families say ‘oh, our puppy’s not very well behaved, and it does pull a bit, it doesn’t sit as quickly as I want it to’ and things like that but for us as long as it’s well socialized then we can do the majority of the training then. If you’ve got that good basic temperament, it’s well exposed to everything, then we can do the technical training.”

Although not all the puppies go from the puppy training program into regular training, the success rate at that point is an astonishing 95 per cent. Most dogs disqualified at this point are not done for behaviour reasons though.

“They often are disqualified for health related issues such as knees or elbows or eyes,” Jelinek points out. “They’re not screened for that until they come back from being a foster dog and at that point it’s determined if they’re going to be disqualified or not.”

Graduating from the specialized training program which follows the puppy program is lower, approximately 70 per cent, but that is still enough to provide around 150 trained guide dogs to people last year.

Part of their high success rate is due to the specific breeds that the Foundation uses. The decision only to use those breeds of dog is certainly not arbitrary, as Ashworth explains.

“[Those breeds] have proved themselves time and time again. It’s having the right type of dog to do the jobs that we want, and the Labs and the golden retrievers– and we cross [them]– have always been the very best dogs for that, worldwide,” he said.

The poodles, while also excellent learners, also serve specific purposes. Both are hypoallergenic and are suited to people who might have reactions to the other breeds, but the miniature poodles are also especially adept in one role.

“The mini poodles that we use are actually good for our hearing dog program,” Ashworth continued. “Dogs for our hearing dog program have to be a little bit more perky, they have to be a little more switched on, more energetic, because they respond to the sounds. The poodles are […] very keen workers, and that makes a great hearing dog.”

The smaller dogs’ energy makes them ideal for this, and also because, in some cases, the dog’s response to a sound could become an issue with a larger dog, such as an 80 lb Labrador.

“Say the doorbell goes, what happens is the dog jumps up the person and that tells them that there’s a sound,” explained Ashworth. “The dog will then take them to the front door, or the telephone.”

The Hearing Ear Dog program is just one of the five programs that the Lion Foundation trains dogs in though. The other four are the Canine Vision program, which trains dogs to assist people with vision impairment; the Special Skills Dog program, which trains dogs to perform physical tasks to assist people with mobility issues; the Seizure Response Dog program, which teaches dogs to respond to seizures, primarily in people diagnosed with epilepsy; and the Autism Assisters Dog program, which provides dogs to children roughly between the ages of four and 12 who are diagnosed within the autism spectrum.

The Autism Assisters Dog program is the Lions Foundation’s newest program. The dogs in this program are trained differently from other programs, and in many ways are meant to provide companionship to the child, as well as performing service duties.

Some of the concerns that can arise with autistic youths that these dogs are trained to help with include irregular sleep patterns, anxiety issues, and a recklessness or lack of a sense of danger, which can manifest in autistic childrexn bolting or dangerously entering traffic.

“We train [these] dogs, first, to walk nicely by the child, and we actually tether the dog to the child around a belt, so the child wears a belt that’s attached to the dog’s harness, so if the child does go to run, the dog will just stay, and it just plants itself, and the child can’t go anywhere,” explained Ashworth about how the dogs can address safety concerns which can arise with children with ASD. “It really, really helps that behaviour over time. Because it’s very passive, the dog doesn’t do anything, it doesn’t try and grab the child or anything else, it just sits there.”

The other concerns that a companion dog can help with are done partly through companionship. Anxiety attacks can be greatly reduced simply by the child having the dog there, and the program has demonstrated then, when the dog is trained to sleep in the bed with the child, it has improved otherwise erratic sleeping patterns.

As part of the training program, the parents of the child come to stay at the training facility in Oakville for one week in order to learn how to work with the dog. Other programs require the handler to stay and train at the Lions Foundation for anywhere from two weeks for the Hearing Ear Dog program, to three to four weeks for the Canine Vision, Special Skills and Seizure Response Dog programs. The handler works with the training staff and the dog, learning commands and behaviours, and the dog works with the handler, becoming familiar with them and the specific tasks they’ll need to do.

While all of this is provided free of charge to the handler, the Lions Foundation receives no government funding and, as a charitable organization, is supported entirely through donations, including fundraising streams like legacies, sponsorships, and work done by Lions Clubs throughout Canada. They also raise money through the Purina Walk for Dog Guides, an annual fundraising event which takes place in cities and communities across the nation.

More information is available through their website, at dogguides.com.

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