Thanks To An Ongoing Study, Service Dogs Are Becoming More and More Affordable

Sophie Jacques is a Professor from the Department of Psychology and Neurosciences at the Dalhousie University. She works tirelessly for her research on service dogs.

Recently, she discovered that some pups could recognize more words than others. It can be used to predict other abilities that could help when selecting which dogs to train to be service dogs. Training dogs can be quite expensive, and Sophie’s goal is to find a way to train them more efficiently.

Back in 2015, professor Jacque published a study in which she developed a list of words sorted into various categories. Such categories are standard for a dog’s life, like commands, toys, locations, food, and playtime. They gave the list to 165 different dog families, some of which were quite ordinary, and some were professional caretakers.

All the families were given instructions to use the list and note how their pups responded to each of the words.

The conclusion was that, on average, service dogs responded to 120 words on the list and family dogs to around 80. Additionally, the study also found that some breeds like Chihuahuas and Border Collies were more responsive than others.

Professor Jacques’s goal was to deliver valuable research into the process of selecting the right breed and the right approach, making it cost less.