Welcome!

This group is for anyone interested in socializing and training their puppy or dog to the “Minimum Training Standards for Public Access”, which is the minimum in training your service dogs should have to accompany you anywhere you wish to go. Those wanting to train a therapy dog can meet others here.

We are here to serve the community by assisting people with psychiatric disabilities. A person with a psychiatric disability partnered with a service dog creates a Psychiatric Service Dog Team. Seeing Eye Dogs for the Mind recognizes that you may train your dog many different service tasks that mitigate certain disabling illnesses classified as mental impairments under The Americans with Disabilities Act. Our MeetUp group does not provide formal training for service animals. However we are a group of people with psychiatric disabilities that are self-training our own service animals. This group is open to everyone with or without disability and all dogs small, medium, and large breeds.

“A new generation of animal trained to help people whose suffering is not physical, but emotional. They are, effectively, Seeing Eye dogs for the mind… Taught to recognize changes in a person’s breathing, perspiration or scent that can indicate an imminent panic attack… Other dogs are trained to wake masters from debilitating nightmares and to help patients differentiate between hallucinations and reality by barking if a real person is nearby.” –Wall Street journal July 11, 2009.

Putting a Service Vest on a dog does not make it a service dog. According to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), a service animal must be individually trained to do work or perform tasks of benefit to a disabled individual in order to be legally elevated from pet status to service animal status.