Service dog organizations are very complex businesses. While there is a misconception among some people that a service dog shouldn’t be costly when they can just take a dog to a few obedience lessons for a few hundred dollars, they miss the point that we are not simply teaching these dogs obedience. Extensive training and care go into creating a service dog.
At Guardian Angels Medical Service Dogs, we are creating life-changing service dogs, which is a process that requires a lot of care, education, and attention to be successful. Before delving into the actual cost of a service dog, it is critical to understand all of the elements that go into producing one.
The Complexity of Service Dog Organizations
Our organization has multiple departments, from dog training to dog care specialists to our veterinary team, who are responsible for taking care of the dogs in a number of ways, from cleaning up after them to feeding, watering, grooming, health care, etc. There is a wide range of duties that need to be performed to keep the dogs in top-notch condition.
Our trainers conduct all of the different levels and stages of training to teach the dogs everything from obedience to specialized tasks that assist a person living with a disability with a variety of tasks, from balancing to picking up dropped items to alerting the recipient of a medical emergency or waking them up from a night terror. In addition, they must be socialized, desensitized and receive a lot of practice in public venues.
Our veterinarian team and animal hospital are on our campus to ensure the dogs are healthy 100% of the time. The veterinarian staff is also there to handle any sickness or other issues that may arise with our paired teams across the country.
Additionally, we have our Recipient Relations Department, which works with all of our recipients and applicants for a dog, helping to qualify them. We have teams of people within this department, including an inquiry team, who are the first ones to receive a request from an individual, and they start the conversation about the process of getting paired with a service dog. Once the applicant moves up the scale and is qualified, they work with our recipient relations staff to continue the process.
They may also work with our Experienced Team Panel to answer everyday questions that may arise.
Office personnel and our Finance Department also play a significant role in our operations. They work to keep up with bookkeeping, computer skills, documentation, letters, thank you notes, etc. A lot of administrative duties go into the documentation of training and pairing of a service dog.
Guardian Angels Medical Service Dogs also has a Development Team to bring in the funds needed to care for, train, and pair the service dogs. We do not sell products like a for-profit business. We donate all of the dogs we pair, so our Development Department works to find the funds that keep our organization moving forward.
When you break things down by each department, it begins to put things into perspective on the costs that go into training a service dog.
Training a Service Dog
To train a service dog to navigate the public world successfully, there are a lot of skills they need to learn to become properly socialized and desensitized to deal with all the different situations, noises, smells, etc., that they will encounter in public.
Each service dog is trained based on the needs of their recipient. These skills go far beyond the standards of emotional support, sit, heel, and come. These dogs are trained to detect changes in the recipient’s blood chemistry so they can alert them to an oncoming seizure, high or low blood sugar, or a PTSD episode. The service dog can also be trained to open and close doors, turn on and off lights, and bring food and water from the refrigerator. Additionally, they can be trained to assist someone with their balance or help them get up from a lying or sitting position.
These dogs are trained with highly advanced skills that take time to teach. It also takes time to teach the trainers how to teach these skills properly to the dogs.
So, in addition to the departments needed and the extensive training the dogs receive, this is all part of the cost that goes into preparing the dog to be a service dog.
Pairing the Service Dog
Everything we do is ultimately for the recipient and the service dog. When we are ready to pair a dog, we cover the travel costs for the recipient to come to our campus from anywhere in the country. This includes airfare, hotel, rental car, etc. We cover this cost to ensure the recipient gets the service dog they need to regain their independence. Without covering these costs through our organization, many recipients would not be able to afford to get their own service dog, even if the dog is being donated. We don’t want a circumstance like a lack of available income to stop recipients from being paired with their service dog.
The recipient is brought in for two weeks of training, and then they go home with their service dogs. After that, we have a consistent follow-up with them, starting the first few weeks when they first get home with the service dog and then quarterly after that for the life of the team. We also have traveling trainers who, if there’s a problem with the service dog that can’t be resolved over the phone or by Zoom call, can then fly out to that location. The trainer stays there to work with the team, see what’s going on, and work through that issue with them.
We also have a medical savings program for recipients to help them cope with any veterinary costs, which have also skyrocketed.
Total Cost of Producing a Service Dog
In the past, it would cost around $37,000 to produce one service dog. Now, with inflation, that cost has quickly gone up by more than 10%. For example, dog foods are more expensive, with prices increasing astronomically in 2023.
In a six-month span, first, we had a 15% increase in dog food, then we had a 30% increase in dog food. So that is a considerable expense.
After COVID, there have been many “Help Wanted” signs everywhere due to many people not wanting to return to work. With the government raising the minimum wage in a lot of places and business owners having to raise wages and offer more benefits to draw people back into the workplace, that was another cost increase due to both COVID and inflation.
At Guardian Angels Medical Service Dogs, we provide excellent wages for a nonprofit organization, and we offer our employees more benefits than most regular businesses because we want to take care of our people. While it creates a great environment for our employees, it does raise our costs significantly.
A lot of funding is needed to achieve our mission. Each piece we’ve discussed in the article goes into each service dog we produce and pair with a recipient.
We search for every avenue to raise funds to produce quality service dogs to pair with recipients and help them lead a fulfilling life.
To learn more about how you can support our mission, visit our Donate page today!
Mrs. Borden’s expertise and accomplishments are acknowledged by numerous national awards from various industries and agencies including the 2018 Corporate Pet Industry Woman of the Year and multiple awards for her organization’s work in mental health and suicide prevention.
She is frequently requested as a Keynote Speaker, and as an Industry Consultant to teach service dog laws to judicial systems, attorneys, and businesses, and to assist in service dog bills in multiple states that were passed into law. In 2020, she started an Institute for Higher Learning and the Borden Veterinary Hospital. Additionally, she has written and teaches college-accredited/VA-approved apprenticeship courses on dog training and service dog training.
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