Students ready impaired canines for adoption

Psychology students at ISU are helping impaired dogs find homes by training them every week at the Canine Behavior Lab.

The lab, taught by Valeri Farmer-Dougan, consists of the students spending time with the four or five dogs and teaching them tricks and basic skills, such as down, stay or how to walk on a leash.

While each dog has a different story, they are all impaired in a way that requires special training, Farmer-Dougan said. Most of the dogs are deaf, blind or sometimes both.

“The dogs we have now are Australian Shepherds and were all born with too much white in their fur,” she explained. “This causes very low vision or blindness and deafness because of the lack of pigment.”

 

Ashley Koenig / Photographer: Working with dogs with disabilites as part of the upper level psychology class on operant behavior, Ellen Wing, junior psychology major teaches Moe how to high-five.

 Some of the dogs are Farmer-Dougan’s own that she rescued from Australian Shepherd Rescue Midwest, where she also works. Others come from the Wishbone Canine Rescue.

The Canine Behavior Lab was originally a Rat Lab, where the employees and volunteers would observe and train rats instead of dogs.

The rats became too expensive, Farmer-Dougan said. It also worked out in her favor to switch to a dog lab so she could spend more time with her own pets.

Garrett Hartzell, senior psychology major, said each dog is different when it comes to training, because they all have individual priorities.

“With each dog, we do canine-alities, which is an assessment of the dog, and it basically shows us what motivates them in training, whether it is food or a ball,” Hartzell said.

Most of the dogs are somewhere between the ages of one and three years old, with the occasional puppy sent from Wishbone.

After being trained for some time, Farmer-Dougan and her students hope all of the dogs find a safe home.

Not many people will adopt a deaf or blind dog because they are more difficult to train, she explained. However, the dogs are actually just as trainable, except they have to use hand signs or touch to communicate with them.

Hartzell said they continue to work with each dog until it gets adopted. The Wishbone dogs usually get turned over pretty quickly, he said. However, the students are able to spend more time with Farmer-Dougan’s dogs because they stay all semester.

“This lab does not seem like work to me because even though their stubbornness can be challenging, it’s really fun,” Hartzell explained. “When you see a dog go off to a family, and you know that you helped them, it’s a great, rewarding feeling.”     
   

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