NEW DOGS, NEW TRICKS

Isabel Wolff visits a

training school for a disabled man's best friend

`HOLD IT, Corrie. Hold. Hold it. That's it. Yes. Yes. H-o-l-d.' Corrie, a two-year-old Labrador, gently closed her jaws around the wooden dumb-bell which her trainer, Angela Pinder, was holding out to her, and wagged her blonde tail enthusiastically. Then she held it aloft for a couple of sec- onds. Angela Pinder's voice rose to an ecstatic, high-pitched squeal. 'Oh, good girl, Corrie. Good girl. Clever girl. Oh, what a clever girl!' Miss Pinder removed the dumb-bell from Corrie's mouth and replaced it with a small dog biscuit. Then the exercise was repeated several times.

This was the first week of Corrie's six- month training to be a Dog for the Dis- abled. Holding a dumb-bell in her mouth without dropping it may not seem a partic- ularly impressive achievement, but by the time she qualifies early next year she will be able to open and shut the front door, turn the lights on and off, take in the milk from the doorstep, retrieve fallen objects from the floor and answer the telephone. She will also be able to open and shut the fridge and take wet clothes out of the washing machine. In short, she will be a highly skilled dog.

For the past seven years, Dogs for the Disabled have been training dogs to be the arms, legs and hands of people with physi- cal disabilities, and this month their 50th dog rolls off the production line. Their base is in the depths of the Warwickshire countryside, close to Leamington Spa. Leamington is clearly a centre of canine excellence, since the Dogs for the Dis- abled's immediate neighbours are the Guide Dogs for the Blind and the War- wickshire Police Dog Training School.

The crunching of wheels on the gravel drive sets off a chorus of deep, joyful bark- ing. Corrie was herself a Guide Dog for the Blind, but didn't quite make the grade. `We don't like to think of her as a reject guide dog,' said Linda Hams, DFD's gen- eral manager. 'What we say is that she decided to have a career change.' I glanced around the training-room, a simulated liv- ing-room with retrievable portable tele- phones (they have a special handle on the handset), televisions, books, milk-crates, wheelchairs, crutches and several large bags of dog biscuits. The walls were adorned with formal studio portraits of some of the centre's more distinguished alumni, photographed in the Day-Glo yel- low jackets which all Dogs for the Dis- abled wear in public.

DFD's star alumnus is Shep, a border Collie, who now lives with his wheelchair- bound owner, Anne Greenwood, in Corn- wall. Most of the dogs have a repertoire of about 40 commands; Shep has more than a hundred. In addition to all of the fore- mentioned, he takes books back to the library (in a basket which he holds in his mouth), collects groceries from the mobile shop, helps hang out the washing and goes to the post office to collect his mistress's disability pension. He also helps to saddle up the pony of Miss Greenwood's specially adapted pony-trap. Shep was recently a regional finalist in Britain's Best Loved Dog Award in London and he has appeared on Blue Peter at least twice.

The next dog being put through its paces was Hogan, a- 13-month-old, long- haired Alsatian with paws the size of tea- plates. He bounced into the training-room, panting heavily, his long pink tongue wrapped behind one ear. He had been in his kennel for two hours and was ready for some action. Angela Pinder promptly crashed to the floor and lay there, apparently lifeless. Hogan stared at her blankly. 'Pull the cord, Hogan,' she prompted, in an urgent whisper. 'Pull the cord.' Hogan trotted over to a red emer- gency cord dangling from the ceiling and gave it a violent tug with his mouth. An ear-splitting alarm was instantly activated. `Oh good boy, Hogan,' Miss Pinder 'That'll be financiers burning deutschmarks.' intoned, as she rose to her feet. 'Good boy. Clever boy. What a clever boy!' More doggy treats were liberally dished out.

I glanced at a pile of Dogs Today maga- zines lying on a coffee table. The glossy covers announced articles on 'Sex and the Single Dog', 'Fido Facts' and `Rottie Work- Out — Keep Fit with Your Dog'.

`These dogs that you're training, they're professionals,' I said to Miss Pinder. 'Do they ever get time off?'

`Oh, yes,' she replied, throwing Hogan a squeaky toy. 'They do. I mean everybody needs that, don't they? Anyway, it's stipu- lated in their contracts.'

`And how do you match up the dogs with the owners?'

`We visit them, and we check out their homes, and we get medical references from their doctors. And then they have a trial period together.'

`And is there any follow-up, once the dogs are in the job?' I enquired.

`Oh, yes,' she replied. 'There's an after- care programme, and the dogs get an MOT twice a year to make sure that they're doing the commands properly.'

There are similar dog-training schemes overseas, in France and Holland, and the Americans have a particularly progressive programme. There, dogs have paramedical skills, and are trained to predict the onset of an epileptic fit. 'They're called Seizure Alert Dogs,' says Linda Hams. 'They know when someone's about to have a fit. It's terribly exciting. We'd like to train our dogs to do that, too.'

`People are always mistaking these dogs for Guide Dogs for the Blind,' said Debbie Parry, DFD's fund-raiser, who is also dis- abled. She has been on crutches for seven years, after a concrete slab fell on her, frac- turing her skull and twisting her spine. Dogs for the Disabled provided her with Elton, a four-year-old Labrador-retriever cross who was lying at her feet in her small office. 'I was in a shopping centre the other day, and a woman, noticing that I'm not blind, screamed at me and accused me of taking a Guide Dog under false pretences. I felt like telling her that she was the one who really needed a Guide Dog, because it says quite clearly what he is on his jacket.'

`What does he do for you?' I asked.

`He retrieves things. I can't bend my back at all. He picks up things that I drop and he brings in the milk, the newspapers and the post. If I get into any difficulties in my house he activates the emergency cord, and if I have any problems when I'm out- side I can get him to raise the alarm by barking.'

`He barks on command?'

`Yes. I'll show you.' She attracted Elton's attention. 'Speak, Elton. Speak.'

Elton shot to his paws and fired off a vol- ley of deep, rapid barks.

`Tell me,' I said, `do you have to be dis- abled to have a dog like that?'

`Yes,' she said with a sympathetic smile. I'm afraid you do.'