Fidos For Freedom offers a helping paw to people with disabilities

Thursday, Dec. 21, 2006

Click here to enlarge this photo Raphael Talisman⁄The Gazette Mary Mannhardt of Gainesville, Va., praises her therapy dog, Brody, a 3-year-old Smooth Collie, after she went around an obstacle to stay by Mary's side as she is being trained to be an assistance dog. The Laurel nonprofit Fidos for Freedom trains dogs to aid those who are disabled or hearing-impaired. Saturday was a training session for the clients and their dogs in Laurel.

‘‘Every morning he helps me get dressed, he goes to my closet and gets my stuff. He goes to the kitchen and he brings me my breakfast, he has a hard time flipping the eggs but other than that it’s okay,” he joked about his black Labrador retriever. ‘‘[Actually] my wife puts my breakfast in a lunch bag and he goes to the kitchen and brings it to me.” Swetnam went to Fidos for Freedom to get a service dog in 1991 because he had problems walking and getting around. The Laurel-based non-profit has supplied assistance dogs to people with disabilities for 19 years.

The volunteer organization trains service, hearing and therapy dogs to help improve the quality of life for people with disabilities or who are in healthcare facilities, said Swetnam, who is now the executive director at Fidos.

The dogs are normally donated from breeders across the nation and some are rescued from pounds, he said.

Fidos uses mostly Labrador and Golden Retrievers, but other purebred and mixed breeds are used as well.

‘‘Therapy dogs are trained in obedience and are trained to know how to move around the different tubes and wires that are in a hospital room,” Swetnam said.

These dogs are used in healthcare facilities, as well as schools and libraries, to provide emotional benefits, he said.

Hearing and service dogs are used as adaptive devices that assist in daily life, Swetnam said.

Hearing dogs are trained to alert their owners to different sounds like someone calling their name, a crying baby or their keys falling, Swetnam said.

Clients who are in need of a service or hearing dog pay a $25 application fee, are interviewed and, if selected, participate in 60 hours of training with a group of dogs, Swetnam said. After that, the client is matched with a dog and works with their dog at Fidos’ facility for another 60 hours of training.

‘‘Then there’s a 30-day bonding period where the client is the only person to interact with the dog,” he said. During this time, the client is attached to the dog by a leash the whole time he or she is awake and all of the bonding is done inside the house. ‘‘If it’s done right, that dog will bond to them for life.”

Last, the client works with the dog for one full year living his or her normal life. ‘‘If everything goes well, Fidos transfers ownership to the client,” Swetnam said. ‘‘Up until that time the dog is financially taken care of by Fidos. So essentially the client pays a $250 [total] administration fee for the dog. Then the client becomes responsible for the dogs expenses.”

Geoff Riefe, of Annapolis, has had his mixed-breed dog Theo for a little more than a year. He said that while Theo is still learning, he has been a huge help with Reife’s mobility issues caused from a Parkinson’s-like disease.

‘‘I’m a real klutz, so he picks up things when I drop them and brings them to me,” he said. ‘‘[Now that I have Geoff] I feel confident going into places with him there.”

Fidos also has programs that cater to children including a junior volunteer program and a program designed to help children become better readers.

‘‘We also have a DEAR program [Dogs Educating and Assisting Readers] for elementary school kids,” Swetnam said.

The DEAR program started in 2001 to help improve the reading skills of elementary school pupils by allowing the pupils to read to trained therapy dogs.

Bond Mill Elementary School has participated in the DEAR program for the past four years, said Brooke Estes, the reading specialist at Bond Mill. Eight third- through sixth-graders in the program choose to forfeit one recess a week to spend time reading to a therapy dog. To participate in DEAR, the pupils are recommended by their teachers for a variety of reasons.

‘‘The teachers recommend students that maybe need a little boost in reading, maybe are at risk at reading and they need to have just that little extra dose of reading,” she said.

Bond Mill Principal Justin Fitzgerald said the pupils are assigned a dog to read to each week.

‘‘In every case that we have had a student in the program it’s been nothing but positive results. We have students begging to be part of Fidos for Freedom. And of course if we could have 40 there, we would take 40 dogs,” he said.

E-mail Maya T. Prabhu at mprabhu@gazette.net.