About Service Dogs

Service dogs can open doors for people in more ways than one. Specially trained to assist their partners to live more independently, service dogs provide thousands of people with an invaluable companion. 

Most people think of guide dogs for the blind when they think of service dogs, but there are many other types of service dogs. There are service dogs to assist people with a wide range of disabilities, including physical and psychological disabilities and autism, service dogs for military veterans, balance dogs to assist people whose disability interferes with their ability to walk, hearing dogs, and facility dogs that work with a school or other facility.

The dogs can be trained to open and close doors, retrieve many different types of objects, find the phone, pull a manual wheelchair and do balance work to assist with walking. Hearing dogs respond to different sounds, including knocking, the doorbell, the oven timer, alarm clocks, the telephone and their partner's name.

By assisting their partners with everyday tasks, service dogs provide their partners with confidence that they can live on their own. Instead of relying on other people to help them, people are able to do things for themselves with the support of their service dog.

Service dogs are assistants and loving companions, and they can change the lives of their partners.

Susquehanna Service Dogs

Susquehanna Service Dogs breeds, raises, trains and places service dogs for people with a wide range of disabilities. We are dedicated to making sure that we are meeting the needs of each person who receives a service dogs from us.

Most of the dogs we train are Labrador retrievers. When the puppies are eight weeks old, they join volunteer puppy raiser families, who care for and train the dogs until they are 18 months old. After the dogs come to the kennel for advanced training at 18 months, we match them with their partners. Once the dogs have been matched with their partners, we specially train each dog based on the needs of their partner.

We train the dogs as service dogs, balance dogs, hearing dogs, facility dogs, service dogs for military veterans, or companion dogs. These dogs can assist people with a wide range of disabilities, including physical and psychological disabilities and autism.

Fully accredited by Assistance Dogs International, we have placed over 170 dogs with their partners in Pennsylvania and the surrounding states since 1993. Since then, we have seen the lives of many people change as their service dogs assist them to live more independently.

Visit us on our blog or our website to learn more about what we do.