Assistance Dog Training

Our mission

To make a meaningful difference in the lives of individuals with disabilities by improving quality of life and promoting independence.

Our goal is to increase access to Assistance Dogs for individuals with disabilities through affordability, genuine support, transparency, and compliance with the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act 1992.

What is an Assistance Dog

An assistance dog is trained to assist their individual handler to access to all public places including, but not limited to: shopping centers, hospitals, public transport and restaurants.

According to the Disability Discrimination Act 1992 (Cth) (DDA) - Section 9.2c - an assistance dog as an animal that is trained to alleviate the disability of an individual including a physical, sensory, psychiatric, intellectual, or other disability.

Assistance dogs must meet standards of hygiene and behaviour appropriate for public access.

Business and organisations that serve the public must allow people with disabilities to bring their assistance animals into all areas of the facility where customers are normally allowed to go. This Commonwealth Law applies to all businesses open to the public.

What we do

We support the independent Owner trainer/handler team.

Rather than offering pre-trained dogs, we partner with you by providing the tools, education, and expert support needed to successfully train your dog with guidance from our qualified trainers.

Suitability

Before training starts we require you and your dog to meet certain suitability requirements. The handler must have a disability as defined by the Disability Discrimination Act (1992), a medical practitioner must agree that an Assistance Dog is suitable to help you and you/your carers have the ability to maintain appropraite care and health of your assistance dog.

Disability Discrimination Act defines a disability as:

total or partial loss of the person’s bodily or mental functions
total or partial loss of a part of the body
the presence in the body of organisms causing disease or illness
the malfunction, malformation or disfigurement of a part of the person’s body
a disorder or malfunction that results in the person learning differently from a person
without the disorder or malfunction
a disorder, illness or disease that affects a person’s thought processes, perception of
reality, emotions or judgment, or that results in disturbed behaviour;
and includes disability that:-presently exists or may exist in the future

If you meet the above requirements, we can move onto a suitability test for your dog.

The suitability test will cover the following areas:

Overall temperament
Energy Levels
Negative reactions
Quality of life
Focus
and more

Your Assistance Dog prospect must pass the suitability assessment before moving through to the training stages.