About Tails of Hope

About

Tails of Hope is a service dog organization on Highway 85 in Gay, working with private clients and, in its own words, "Veterans of War". The program is deliberately flexible: clients can choose a plan to fit their budget, bring their own dog after an evaluation by its trainers, or select from dogs the organization has already evaluated and started.

Training

The published work is service dog training plus continued coaching and assistance throughout what the site calls the service dog journey. Matching is treated as a step in its own right – the site states that "The client must match the dog. Not every dog is right for every situation or type of service", and that there is no single best breed for the role.

Standards

The organization publishes the standard it holds teams to: basic obedience at the level of the AKC CGC test, public access standards equivalent to the AKC Urban CGC, and a minimum of fifteen to thirty minutes of daily behavior and task-reinforcement work from the handler. It states that anyone under eighteen must be accompanied by an adult at training sessions, and that service dogs generally receive six months to a year of obedience, public access and task training.

Applying

There is a service dog application on the site, and approval is the gate to starting.