Interview with Molly Neher on Assistance Dogs
Interview conducted by: Stephanie Keesey-Phelan, Ph.D., BCBA, CSAT, CCUI, FFCT
At DBI we believe that no person, no family, and certainly no dog trainer or behaviorist is an island. If you read our blog regularly, you already know that we believe that if you are a behavior analyst by profession, you are not your dog’s behavior analyst. But you may not know that we often collaborate with other dog training professionals to increase our knowledge and skills, and when we are working with a client whose behavioral presentation falls beyond our scope or expertise. Collaboration with other qualified professionals is a huge part of our work. It allows us to provide the most ethical and effective treatment for the dogs we work with, and also helps us build a wonderful community committed to making lives better for dogs and their people.
To that end, we are expanding our blog to include interviews with some of the amazing professionals who we collaborate with and who work with dogs across a variety of settings and locations. Our goal in doing this is to introduce you, our readers, to people who work in a variety of areas in the dog world but who share a common mission of increasing your dog’s welfare.
This month we are so excited to introduce you to Molly Neher of Atlas Assistance Dogs. Ran and I first heard about Atlas at a ClickerExpo presentation. Atlas Assistance Dogs is an organization that helps guardians train their own service dog by pairing them with a trained facilitator to guide them through teaching disability-related tasks and public access skills. We were blown away by their commitment to accessibility and inclusion, and the enormous amount of support they provide clients at all stages in the process. We were so impressed that Ran and I both applied and went through the training program to become Team Facilitators. We just graduated the training at the end of February and are looking forward to meeting our first teams!
There is SO MUCH to know about service/assistance dogs and many common misconceptions. Molly was so generous in sharing her time and experiences, I know you’ll get as much out of reading the interview as I did conducting it! Read on below to learn more about what service dogs are and what they do, differences between “organization-trained” and “owner-trained” dogs, and how you can get involved.
Tell our readers a bit about yourself. How did you decide that you wanted to work with animals (and dogs in particular)?
I work for Atlas. I'm our director of operations and programs and I got involved about five or six years ago now. I got into the world of service dogs in general by needing my own service dog. When I was still in college, I kind of overnight developed a seizure disorder that flipped my world around. It was very sudden and out of the blue. I didn't know anything about service dogs or anything about dogs whatsoever, I had never had a dog. I was in the hospital for about 10 days and a friend of mine who knew about service dogs was coming to visit me every day. She saw a service dog in the hallway of the hospital and said to me: “Molly, you need a service dog. You need a seizure dog.” And that's kind of how it started. I looked into it, and I ended up getting Reid [Molly’s assistance dog]. Throughout the next few years of being a service dog handler myself, I saw a lot of problems and issues with accessibility, with people not understanding how to interact with service dog handlers, and I had my own barriers going places. I met a lot of other people who wanted or needed service dogs and just ran into issues. I got involved with a lot of disability organizations on campus and found that community. When it was time for me to figure out what I wanted to do with my life, I knew that I wanted to do something with nonprofits and I wanted to do something related to disability. I didn't specifically want to do dog training or specifically service dog stuff but I was in contact with my dog trainer who was like, “hey Molly, this organization is just starting and she got me in contact with Jen, the founder of Atlas, who I had already met once or twice. And Jen lured me in. That's how I became involved with Atlas. There's always some person who pulls you along and before you know it, you’re doing what you're doing.
What does it look like to be the Operations Director for Atlas Assistance Dogs?
I wear a lot of different hats, but I'm the main point of contact for all of our clients, our facilitators, and our trainers. I’m there to offer support to any of our clients in their training process if any problems come up or if they need any support or want to talk to someone, I'm that person.
I coordinate a lot of the stuff that goes on in the background, but we're basically completely volunteer run. Besides myself Atlas has a part time admin, so all of our programs have been developed by awesome volunteers. Lastly, I also have my hands in some of our fundraising and marketing outreach so I'm a little over the place.
It's really amazing to see such a diverse group of people, because it's not just dog trainers, we also have some service dog handlers, some medical providers, and really just everyone who's just passionate about helping people and doing it really ethically. Because a lot of us have seen other organizations and other programs do things really unethically and treat both dogs and people really unfairly. We wanted to do things differently. It's really the ethics that bring people to Atlas and keep them with us. It's been really cool to see so many people brought together and so passionate, the community aspect is really awesome.
What special interests do you have within your field?
I really enjoy Seeing the bond between the person and the dog and the communication. Because it's not just the dog communicating with the person, but the person has to learn to communicate with their dog in response and that learning process is not easy. That was something I had to learn with my own dog and that really took me by surprise. When Reid started alerting me to my seizures, which was the goal of having him - we wanted him to alert to my seizures, I started getting really upset at him. I was mad because now he’s alerting me and I started thinking in some weird messed up way that he was causing my seizures. He would alert me and that meant I was going to have a seizure so I would start ignoring him and running in the other direction and shutting him out of the room because if he alerts me, I’m going to have a seizure but if he doesn’t alert me somehow I’m magically not going to have one. This is completely untrue but it’s how I felt at the time. So I really had to learn to listen to him and that’s something I see with other people as well. It’s really interesting to see the way teams have to learn to communicate with each other and the bond that forms. We see this with people and pet dogs but I think there’s something really unique that happens with service dog handlers and their service dogs. There’s really a different type of communication. They develop their own language and form their own bond. A lot of the time a task that a service dog is doing for a person can be really triggering in and of itself and it’s not uncommon for the person to have resentment toward their dog or the thing they’re supposed to be doing.
So the communication aspect is really, really cool. And especially when you see the relationship grow and change. Another example is a client who has a dog who is working to become a psychiatric service dog. One of the tasks being trained is to recognize when the person’s anxiety is escalating to a panic attack and for the dog to then perform some grounding tasks. I ended up on a call with her because she was really struggling and telling me that when she took her dog to the grocery store her dog was starting to demand her attention (e.g., alerting to her anxiety). She said she was really anxious but then she didn’t know what to do and felt her dog wasn’t acting like a service dog when he was engaging in these behaviors. I told her well, “Worst case scenario your dog is demanding attention. Best case scenario he’s trying to help you. So let’s tune into that and try to pay attention to what he’s focusing on, which is you. Can you turn your focus back on him and use that moment to cue some skills you’ve been working on or walk out of the store together and find a space to sit down and interact?” For her that was a big moment, she said she hadn’t considered that before. So I just love seeing the moments where people realize that they have to communicate with their dog too.
What is an assistance /service dog (as compared to an emotional support dog or a guide dog)?
Legally speaking, a service dog is a dog that's trained to mitigate someone's disability. They have to, under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), engage in at least one trained task that directly mitigates that person's disability and they have to be well-behaved in public. That's kind of the baseline for what a service dog is, that’s it. There's no specific certification requirements, no official paperwork, nothing like that. The dog has to be well-behaved in public and they have to be working for their person who has a disability. The simplicity is a good thing and a bad thing. It makes having a service dog accessible for people but also makes it really unclear. It leaves the door open for a lot of abuse of the system and a lot of confusion, especially when it comes to psychiatric service dogs and emotional support dogs (ESAs). So it can get messy.
There’s so much debate about whether or not there should be certification. I wish there was some type of testing standard that was still accessible. This would be helpful for people who train their own service dog, to have testing standards without it being a huge burden to get. That’s the problem with certification - it makes it very hard for anyone to train their own service dog because it would be a challenge to access those types of certifications.
Regarding other types of service dogs, service dog is an umbrella term and it is also used interchangeably with assistance dog (in the United States). An emotional support dog (ESA) is different. They do not have to be trained at all, just their presence is beneficial and provides comfort. They do legally have to be prescribed by a mental health provider but they don’t have the same public access rights. A service dog can go pretty much anywhere in public that their person can go, with a few exceptions. An ESA is only protected in housing, they can’t go into restaurants or other types of public buildings. This is a really big area of confusion and there are so many online scams for ESAs. I can’t tell you the amount of ads I see for you to register your ESA and take him everywhere. This makes it confusing for people who have ESAs and then they think they can take the dog everywhere if they just get a note from their doctor and pay hundreds of dollars and the websites for these scams look super legit. With an ESA there's not even any need for basic obedience training which I really wish there was. Especially if they're going to be allowed in any housing where there's typically no pet housing, then I wish there was some type of baseline training required
What are some common misconceptions that people have about assistance dogs?
I think some big ones that I'll often get questions about are: do service dogs ever just get to be dogs? Do they get time off? People often think the dogs are unhappy and that it’s unethical to have a service dog because they don’t have any freedom. However, service dogs absolutely get to be dogs, they have time off. At Atlas it is extremely important to us that they are happy and enjoying their job. If they aren’t happy in the role then they shouldn’t be a service dog. It’s not a job that’s suited for all dogs.
Some other misconceptions are that service dogs are robots, that they never make mistakes and that they have to be perfect all the time. If it’s a service dog and the dog isn’t acting 100% perfect then it’s a fake service dog. This is a really big problem. Especially with social media and people constantly filming other people and putting it on social media it makes it hard. For newer service dog handlers or people who are still in training with their dogs they are so afraid to go out in public even more. They’re terrified of being called out, of being videoed and blasted on social media. They think their dog needs to be perfect and can never make a mistake. I’m seeing more and more of that, almost every single potential client that I talk to, this is their number one fear: being called a fake team.
Other misconceptions are that only certain breeds like labs or golden retrievers can be service dogs, but small dogs can be service dogs. A final misconception is that people can’t train their own service dogs.
What barriers come up for people who want to or would benefit from having an assistance dog?
One barrier is a lack of proper information and resources, and just confusion because misinformation is all over the place. For some it’s rare that you fall into the perfect box of “okay I meet all the perfect criteria to get a dog from this organization.” Most people don’t fit that perfect box so it’s kind of a mix of considering well, would it work better to get a trained dog or should I look at working with a private trainer, or do I get a puppy myself? And there’s no real clear path because there are different options and people get really confused and don’t know where to start. I’ve talked to people on the phone who tell me that they’ve called five different places and no one’s answered the phone or that people just won’t give them answers, that people are rude to them. So I think a lack of proper information and resources are big barriers.
Then there’s the cost of a service dog and training and personal barriers where people who are thinking about getting a service dog can think “Oh, but I don’t really deserve one. I don’t need one. I’m not disabled enough. I’m not sick enough. There’s someone out there who would need one more.” We see that a lot, especially for people with psychiatric conditions, often with veterans who feel like there is someone more deserving than them. There’s a shame component, and I end up doing a lot of convincing people that they do deserve a service dog. Sometimes I’ll get to the point where people have applied to Atlas and I’m doing an intake call with them and even at that point I’m still having a conversation where I’m almost convincing them that, no, you do deserve this.
I think a lot of that comes with the big organizations that train and place service dogs. For them you do need to meet a lot of specific criteria and have a specific diagnosis and I understand that. Because these organizations have a limited amount of dogs and resources. But I think of one of our founders, Mike, who got his first service dog due to his diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA). He qualified early on because his RA was bad enough. However, at the point where he is today because of surgeries and medications he might not qualify for a dog with a bigger organization. So we discussed with Mike, how can we help now teach your dog instead of just the tasks you no longer need help with, what are the things you love doing in life and how can your dog help you accomplish those things? For Mike it was hiking. He loves to hike every single day. So we looked at what tasks can your dog perform to help you hike and now that’s what they do together every day. So we aren’t just looking at your baseline day and helping you function to your baseline. We look at, what are your life goals and what you love to do, and how can we make it so you can do those things.
What is the difference between an assistance dog trained by its owner as opposed to one provided by an agency? Are there any significant differences?
We are seeing owner-trained assistance dogs more and more in the past 10 years. There are pros and cons to both owner trained versus program trained dogs. A benefit to owner trainers is that they become trainers themselves. They develop a lot of skills that help them throughout the dog’s life and then with the next dog if they decide to have a next dog. These skills help them because people’s disabilities change, they might need new things over time. So then they have the skills to problem solve and navigate different challenges. Whereas with program dogs, what we can see happen is sometimes they get a beautifully trained dog and depending on the organization, some do it well and some don’t, but within a year or two if the person hasn’t received the proper support and hasn’t gone to training themselves, the dog’s skills regress and then the person doesn’t know what to do because they don’t have the skills to train the dog or maybe they can’t for their own disability or they don’t have the support of the organization. So again, some organizations are there for the client and they will keep coming abc and provide additional training but we definitely see some program dogs within a few years who have really regressed and backtracked.
With owner training, there are probably more challenges at the start in terms of a higher rate of the dog not making it as a service dog. YOu’re taking a lot more risks because, especially if you’re starting with a puppy even if you get a puppy from the best service dog breeder in the world there’s never a guarantee. So we could potentially take a risk on a dog that 6 months or a year down the road you realize isn’t going to make it as a service dog and then you’ve invested a lot of time, emotion, and money.
With a puppy, that puppy foundation work is also not something that everyone can or wants to do. I didn’t want to take on a puppy and so I got Reid when he was 8 months old and that was right for me. There are some service dog trainers who will have started dogs in the pipeline and that is part of their business model - they raise dogs to a certain point and then sell them. Some organizations and some breeders do that. Some people will get an older dog from a shelter too, so it just depends. With Reid I bought him from an organization, he had been trained in a prison program, it was a service dog organization that I got him from so I did a weird roundabout model. I continued working with a private trainer. So you can see there’s no clear cut avenue for owner-training a service dog.
One thing that I think comes up a lot, is that owner trainers can sometimes not be taken as seriously as those that have dogs that have been trained by programs. They can run into more public access issues and are questioned on their credibility. Especially when they have a vest that looks like it has been bought from amazon (which is totally legal to do), or when their dog is not a “typical” service dog breed.
Interestingly enough, I’ve even seen some bias coming from the professional service dog training community around owner trainers. I’ve heard of some orgs and trainers with beliefs that disabled people are not capable of training their own service dog…
This is one of the reasons why it was really important for Atlas from the start to be working towards Assistance Dogs International accreditation. We want to be able to provide the same legitimacy, standards and access rights to owner trainers!
What is Assistance Dogs International and what is their accreditation program?
So, ADI is basically an international coalition of service dog organizations. It is the closest thing there is to a “standard” and authority within the service dog industry, along with the International Guide Dog Federation. The process to become accredited with ADI is not an easy one. You first have to become candidates, which we became in November of 2022. There was a thorough application and review process for that.
There is then a minimum of 2 years before we can apply for full accreditation. During this wait period, we have to ensure that we meet ALL their standards. These include standards on welfare and health of dogs, clients, training practices, organization policies and administration and more. They will then do a full audit of our processes as well as meeting some of our teams in person, talking to volunteers, staff, trainers etc.
In some countries, only dogs that have been trained by ADI orgs are recognized as “legitimate”. This is another reason why it is very important for us to get ADI accreditation. International travel is a big barrier for owner trainers. I actually ran into this personally. I’m from France originally and could not travel home for years because Reid would not be protected as a service dog over there. I went back to France for the first time this past year but decided to not bring Reid. It was a very tough decision but trying to navigate the system was way too complicated and stressful. Having ADI accreditation would have made it a lot easier.
ADI is also important for veterans. A lot of military bases and VA hospitals will only accept dogs that have been trained by ADI orgs. So once again, a veteran who has owner trained their dog can run into a lot of barriers. There is also a lot of funding available for veterans whose dogs have been trained by ADI orgs. (You can read more about ADI accreditation here!)
What challenges come up for folks who want to train their own assistance dog?
How they train their dog can be a challenge. If they want to work with a private trainer, trainers can be really expensive, so the cost can be a barrier. It can be hard to find a qualified service dog trainer. There are a lot of scams out there and people who call themselves service dog trainers who have no idea what they’re doing. The dog training industry is not regulated, and I’ve heard some really horrific stories due to unqualified and unethical trainers.
A lot of people decide to do the whole process without working with a trainer and there’s a lot of online resources and facebook groups that people join with really great resources but it’s still figuring it out on their own and navigating that process is tough, there’s a lot of confusion about the legal stuff. What are my rights? What can I do? What can I not do? People have a lot of assumptions. I see a lot of things on Facebook groups that make me cringe. A big question that comes up in these groups a lot is: at what point do you say that your dog is a service dog versus a service dog in training? A lot of times people make that decision for themselves. Legally a dog is a service dog when it has been trained to engage in one task that mitigates the handler’s disability and is well-behaved in public. So technically, a dog could be trained to that standard at 10 months old but I wouldn’t call a 10 month old dog a service dog. On the other hand, some people decide to keep an “in-training” vest on the dog until the dog is much more solid and mature, for their own confidence reasons because a lot of people feel better to be “in training” because it gives more leeway if the dog isn’t behaving perfectly.
How does Atlas Assistance Dogs help owners train their own assistance dogs?
We work with people who want to train their own dog as a service dog. We start working with them once the dog is at least 14 months old and has passed their Canine Good Citizen test, has shown they have a foundation of obedience skills, and has the right temperament for service work. We really focus on helping with the disability tasks, the public access training, and helping the person understand how to be a service dog handler and navigate some of the questions we’ve been talking about: about the laws and the day-to-day interactions. We help build their confidence and prepare them for navigating a lot of the tricky things that come with being a service dog handler.
We pair each client with our wonderful Team Facilitators who are volunteers. This helps keep our costs low for our clients - because we work with volunteers. Our clients are in our program for a minimum of 6 months but typically more like 9 months. They meet with the Facilitator during that time period twice a month to work on all of those skills. We have standard skills that we want all of our clients to know, but then we individualize it the best we can for them. We look at day-to-day what their goals are and how we can help them train their dog. It’s really about teaching the person.
Then once those tasks are trained they’ll take their public access test (PAT). The PAT is our final step in training and after passing we provide an Atlas Certification. We make it clear to all of our clients that certification is not a legal requirement. However, a lot of people want certification. They want validation that they’ve gone through a program and that they have been tested to a standard. After they’ve passed they can consider their dog a service dog. I will say it’s not uncommon for people to start the program with the dog who could already kind of be considered a service dog. We’ve had clients start with us with a dog who, under the ADA is a qualified service dog and knows a task or two already and is fairly well-behaved in public. In these cases, maybe the dog wouldn’t pass our PAT or they have a few things to refine. In other cases, the dog was rock solid but the person needed help with their confidence and so most of the training had to do with helping the person navigate their environment and learn to answer questions about their dog.
After certification we do an annual recertification test to make sure to check up on the dog each year. We ensure they can still pass the test and are safe in public and know their tasks. We have had it happen sometimes where a dog has not passed their recertification. Typically it’s not drastic, often the person and dog haven’t had to really practice a particular skill in the past year. Many of our teams did not pass recertifications after COVID typically because they hadn’t been out in public in so long and the environment was so exciting and overstimulating.
We’re also there for the clients as needed. They can reach out to us any time if they run into access barriers or need training support. We have Zoom meetups twice a month that clients can join. In Seattle we’re able to do those meetups in person because that is where most of our clients and facilitators are. Though hopefully if we have more areas with more people we can start doing in-person meetups in other areas of the country.
How can someone become involved with Atlas Assistance Dogs?
Lots of ways! We are completely volunteer run so if you want to volunteer in some way, shape, or form, you can reach out to us and depending on your background we can find a way for you to help out whether it’s with technology, fundraising, outreach, etc. If you’re a dog trainer and want to get more involved we have a full online academy for professional trainers to become Atlas Certified trainers. It’s a big part of our mission to expand the pool of qualified and ethical service dog trainers that are available for people. And then we have our amazing Team Facilitators. If you want to work directly with our clients you can go through our training and be paired up with a team. We have just finished up our cohort and don’t know when the next one will be - probably this summer or autumn, so that’s another way to be involved.
What is your favorite part of your job?
My favorite part is just working with the people. It's funny when people ask me why I got into the field, I didn’t really want to work with dogs. I wanted to work with people. I was never a dog person before. It’s kind of a recent endeavor. A lot of dog trainers wanted to work with animals from a young age, but I was more of a people person before being a dog person. So for me, it’s really the people: working with our clients and getting to support them.
What do you like least about your job?
As much as I appreciate working from home, and I love that flexibility, being in front of a screen all day can be challenging. I miss that in-person connection and interaction.
Part of being the main support person for our clients, means having to relay the news when they have not passed their public access test. Those are always really difficult for me to do, especially since I know just how much work they have put into their training and I have typically gotten to know them fairly well throughout the process. Typically, it is just that they have to solidify one or two skills, and they may need just one to three months of additional training. But it can be very disappointing for them and I hate having to be the bearer of bad news.
What advice would you give to someone who was interested in pursuing your career?
Being aware that it can be pretty emotionally draining at times and that it's really fulfilling but that there are definitely days where you've heard some hard stories and people will just kind of dump their life story on you and you have to be prepared for that and have ways to rejuvenate yourself a bit.
You can find Atlas Assistance dogs at their website, or on their facebook or instagram pages.
If you’re in southern California, you can also meet some of the Atlas team at the Abilities Expo held from March 15-17, 2024. Abilities Expo is a free conference, you can learn more at the link above.