What Is a Psychiatric Service Dog?
A psychiatric service dog (PSD) is one that is trained to help their handler with mental health problems. Often mental health problems system from trauma. A psychiatric service dog can offer different tasks such as deep pressure therapy for calming a person, blocking crowd control which helps create a buffer of space between the handler and other people.
Psychiatric service dogs are different from emotional support animals, which provide comfort with their presence but are not specially trained to help a handler cope with mental health symptoms.
Before we will accept you for this program you will need a doctors letter from a General practitioner, (GPs or family doctor), psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist with a official diagnosis and stating that you need a service dog.
In this program your dog will live with you. We provide group training and private training with the goal to train your dog to be a service dog so they can excel in public access & learn jobs to help you with your disability.
What sets us apart from other Psychiatric Service Dog Training Schools?
We are Canada’s first service dog training school that incorporates somatic experiencing to allow the client to use their dog as a resource and a anchor. To allow the nervous system to relax, the client to feel a sense of peace and safety.
We are here to help you. You can ask us anything.
Harvard Public Health Magazine referred to our times as “The Age of Trauma”. In our day and age, being trauma-informed is essential to providing safe and effective help. We are a trauma informed business.
If you have a dog that you would like to train as a service dog we do temperament testing first to make sure that your dog would be safe to be a service dog. We will help you find a dog if you do not already have one.
Living a meaningful life regardless of psychiatric disabilities should be an attainable goal for everyone. Service dogs can help create a meaningful life.
We recommend these articles for more information on psychiatric service dogs.
We also offer training for Therapy Dogs. Please go to our Dog Training Beyond page for more information.
To have a emotional support animal you will need a ESA letter from an General practitioner, family doctor, psychiatrist or a clinical psychologist with an official diagnosis. Your dog will also need to be social and well mannered. Our obedience training programs will help provide this.
D'Arcy's Dog Training & Pet Services 