Local service dog trainer, long-time experienced Shetland sheepdog breeder, and overall dog lover, Lynn Crossman, has expanded her work to other regions outside of Saskatchewan as she has been participating in the Service Dog Summit.
The Service Dog Summit, an online virtual event held by Ontario-based platform, Dog’s Crucible, until Oct. 6, globally bridging together experts, handlers, dog trainers, and advocates to discuss and learn about service dog welfare, training, and legislation.
Service dogs are highly-trained animals that perform specific, life-improving tasks that assist individuals with physical, sensory, psychiatric, or cognitive abilities.
“I have a lot of experience with shelties, and I’ve been selling a lot of shelties to help people with their disabilities, like kids with autism, people with PTSD, and in 2014, 2015, I had a veteran approach me, actually, when I had my puppies out at Peavey Mart,” explained Crossman. “He really wanted a puppy to help him with his ptsd, and he loved the puppy that was there. But the program he was working with said they wouldn’t work with purebred dog breeders. They only wanted to use shelter dogs. And he didn’t want that.”
Following this, Crossman began to learn how to train service dogs to assist those with PTSD, autism, and other disabilities.
“So I’ve trained quite a few dogs through the years for different disabilities. But what really struck close to home was my sister got injured at work two years ago, and she was developing some things that she would need a service dog,” she recalled. “So working with her, training her for the last two years, and then something came up that she wanted to fly to my niece’s wedding and the dog needs to be certified. Well, Saskatchewan doesn’t have certification.”
Crossman then learned she had to go through Alberta in order to gain certification in May, stating that, “if they’re Alberta certified, then they can fly. And that’s what we needed.”
Subsequent to this event, she has been nominated to present at a Service Dog Summit run by Ontario-based online mentorship, consultation, and educational platform, ‘The Dog’s Crucible’. Until Oct. 6, the summit (hosted online) gathers handlers, trainers, and advocates to participate in educational presentations ranging from raising service dogs, to at-home service dog models.
“[Dogs] are medical equipment with a heartbeat. That dog being there and being a help and being able to let somebody know that, ‘Hey, you need some help here or you need to stop and lay down,’ stuff like that, that really helps,” said Crossman.
As for her start, Crossman shared that she always had a love for dogs.
“I worked under an obedience handler in Ontario and under a herding instructor in Ontario. And then I’ve picked up different people along the way.I’ve taken courses from Dr. Ian Dunbar, I’ve taken a video training through the States, which is training breeders how to make their dogs a better all around dog,” she explained.
Along the way, she noted some challenges—particularly with accessibility in businesses—stating that, “sometimes some stores you’ll go in and people say, ‘Oh, they’re not allowed.’”
“We ran into a challenge last night in [a grocery store] . I took my sister out there. We had to get a couple things, and she went into the bathroom with her service dog because it’s a medical alert,” she said. “This lady started getting upset at her and telling her, muttering to herself and to her friend that they shouldn’t have a dog in the bathroom and that they need to leave their dog at home. Well, a medical alert dog cannot stay home. It needs to be with her.”
Furthermore, she added that she always has to carry NARCAN—an emergency nasal spray medicine used to rapidly reverse life-threatening opioid overdoses.
“If the dog smells a baggie that has had fentanyl in it, just the trace amounts that are on the baggie or whatever can put the dog to sleep temporarily. That is a big thing too, is we basically have to take a first aid kit and a Narcan thing with us everywhere we go, just in case that the dog sniffs some of that,” Crossman said.
She hopes that people understand how service dogs are a “medical device.”
“So people will say, oh, well, I wish I could take my pet everywhere, or they got their vest on so that they can take them everywhere. No, that’s not it. It’s there to help somebody if you can see that dog helping that person through their thing, through their issue,” she said.
Crossman also spoke about the topic of “fake service dogs”, where individuals falsely pass off untrained pets as legitimate service animals.
“It makes me sad because I’ve seen the help that dogs can be for people. One of the first dogs that I was around was a service dog, I didn’t train her, but I worked with her. A friend of mine was deaf and it was a hearing dog and it was a big help to her,” she said. “If she can’t take that dog somewhere because somebody’s taken a fake service dog, then it can make the people with the disability have to stay home all the time. So it sets up barriers if they can’t take the dog to help them.”
In regards to the summit, Crossman said it’s a “good thing.”
“I put a lot of hard work into it. It’s nice to be appreciated for some of the work that I’ve done and chosen to share with people some of my story of how I’ve worked with different service dogs,” she said. “I just really appreciate the opportunity and I think it’s neat that it can go around the world out of Canada and share with people all over, because I have somebody that I’m trying to help teach some things about service dogs for Pakistan. So we’re trying to figure out how to record some stuff to do for them. But it’s neat to be able to do this first of all and then keep working on that in the future.”
The Service Dog Summit, held by the Dog’s Crucible, is an online virtual event set to take place until Oct. 6, to bring together experts, handlers, dog trainers, and advocates to discuss and learn about service dog welfare, training methods, and legislation.
“[I hope] businesses would welcome service dogs and doctors would appreciate what service dogs can do to help their patients,” said Crossman.
