Diary of a Service Dog

Why we do what we do

Hi I’m Max!

I’m a service dog for my mom. It’s tons of fun to be a working dog, and for the most part I’m just like other dogs except I go everywhere with my mom to help her. I went to special training to learn to focus on helping my mom no matter where we go together.

I love people, and sometimes nice people talk to me, but when I’m working I have to stay focused on my mom. I pick up things she’s dropped, and help her balance when she’s walking. It took lots of practice and learning to become my mom’s mobility assistance service dog, but I love my job!

My mom gets lots and lots of questions about me when we’re working, so we thought it might help for people to hear about my day to day life. My mom asked me if I would explain some things I do to help her, and since I don’t talk, I decided to keep a diary. (See, I’m holding a pen . . . so I can write!)

One question we get is how do we help our handlers when they have to go shopping and how do we do it safely. I took this picture of my friends who are learning to help others…

Service dogs accompany and assist their handlers throughout daily life, which includes a lot of trips to the grocery store. In this picture you can see how my friends are being trained to help out in the parking lot of a local store. We are trained to walk next to our handler behind the cart, which protects us from other passing carts as we move about the lot and inside the store.