Table of Contents:

• Used Ink Cartridges = $$$
• Assistance Dogs for Wounded Warriors
• How My Service Dog JJ Demonstrates Excellence
• Summer Surprise – Service Dog Toys!
• July Training Tip

Used Ink Cartridges = $$$
By Sheri Soltes, Founder & President

Did you know Texas Hearing & Service Dogs receives a $3.00 credit at Staples for every used ink cartridge we bring in?

With a little help from you, we could turn this green policy into a real savings on our office supplies.  All those dull but essential items that keep us humming.

We would like to invite you to Go Green with Texas Hearing & Service Dogs:  Toss your used ink cartridges into a bag and drop them off at or mail to any of the following locations:

Austin:
THSD Administrative Office
4803 Rutherglen
Austin, TX 78749-3744

Dripping Springs:
THSD Training Center (please call first 512-858-1495)
4925 Bell Springs Rd.
Dripping Springs, TX 78760

You can also bring them to any THSD event where we have a booth, like the Houston Dog Show later this month, so check out of calendar to see where we’ll be.

If anyone turns in 100 or more in one batch, we will give you a 20th Anniversary Toy Service Dog!

Assistance Dogs for Wounded Warriors

By Sheri Soltes, President

THSD Service Dog team Mary Hohman and Colt join THSD President Sheri Soltes and Director of Training Ray Volluz at Partners Across Texas in Dallas

We continue our efforts to reach combat veterans injured during deployment in Iraq or Afghanistan to let them know about our program.

Most recently, we attended Partners Across Texas – a conference for agencies offering services to military personnel and their families - in Dallas and the TRIAD quarterly conference in Temple. TRIAD stands for Texas Resources for Iraq-Afghanistan Deployment. 

I am happy to report that after 18 months of struggling to meet the actual folks who might use our services, I will be visiting Brook Army Medical Center this month! Thanks to not giving up, I’ve finally connected with wonderful people who are going to host my visit.

As the Army wives told us at the TRIAD conference, “We know it’s hard for you to reach us to provide your services. But don’t give up!  Our husbands and spouses are fighting for you, so please don’t stop fighting for them.”

How My Service Dog JJ Demonstrates Excellence

By Chris Hyatt, Graduate

Editor’s note:  Chris has submitted a 500 word version of this essay to the American Kennel Club for its Award of Canine Excellence in the Service Dog category.  We think he’s already won!

My name is Chris Hyatt.  I am a forty-two year old quadriplegic from Austin, Texas.  I was injured in a diving accident in 1981 at the age of fourteen.  I have lived the last twenty-eight years confined to a wheelchair.  I have tried to not let my injury define me as a person, nor let it detract me from living an active life.  In 1990, I became a fourth generation Hyatt to graduate from the University of Texas.  After receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in English/Economics, I worked directly or indirectly for the Texas Senate for the next eleven years.  In 2001, I took disability retirement due to complications related to my quadriplegia. I am an accomplished scuba diver, the originalPresident and a founding member of Eels on Wheels, an Austin-based adaptive scuba club that promotes diving to the physically challenged.  I grew up in New Orleans and return every year for the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.  I never miss the Austin City Limits Music Festival.  I truly love live music and the outdoors and try to play outside as often as possible.

JJ is my 4 year old Labrador Retriever Service Dog.  JJ was adopted by Texas Hearing and Service Dogs (THSD) when he was just about one year old.  He was one of the few dogs rescued from the San Antonio dog shelter.  That particular shelter has one of the very highest euthanasia rates in the United States.  Further, black dogs are statistically the least likely color of animal adopted by people from shelters. 

JJ was literally one sick puppy when the THSD training staff rescued him.  He was severely emaciated and had tested positive for heartworms.  The THSD trainers took a great risk by adopting a dog that had everything going against him -- except that JJ had a spark of intelligence, a sweet temperament and a loving disposition that ingratiated him to anyone who met him.  How anyone let JJ end up in such a place is a tragedy I cannot fully comprehend.  But, miracles do happen and JJ became my Service Dog on January 22, 2008 -- a day I will never forget.

Read the rest of this article on our website...

Summer Surprise – Service Dog Toys!

By Sheri Soltes, Founder & President

Got the kids home for summer or visiting you for an extended period of time?

Are they B.O.R.E.D. yet?

How about a cool summer project?  Zooey, a bright young lady in Austin, created a neat school project all about Service Dogs.  Her research included explaining what Assistance Dogs are, how they help people and their impact on society.

Our suggestion to summer parents, grandparents and other mentors to children:  Let your child pick out a cool Toy Hearing or Service Dog from our catalogue.  Then help him or her build that dog a house worthy of your child’s creativity and gentle heart.  You can copy pictures of our dogs off our website or email me for a selection. (sheri@servicedogs.org)

If your child is interested, he or she can research the dogs on our website and present their findings to the family.  Then it’s time for ice cream!  (I already got mine for thinking this up!)

July Training Tip

By Elizabeth Morgan, Trainer

Nutrition?  I thought this article was supposed to be about training!

Trainer Elizabeth Morgan training Service Dog Hudson at the Austin airport.

Actually, your dog’s behavior is linked to his diet; the old saying is true:  “You are what you eat.”  Diet can affect the dog’s activity level; some foods can make dogs hyper, some make them sluggish.   If your dog loves his food, you can use it as a healthier alternative to training treats.  Diet affects dogs’ overall health, and just like us, when they don’t feel good they don’t want to go to work!

But in addition to training benefits, a good diet has many other health benefits for dogs.   A good diet will strengthen a dog’s immune system, making him less susceptible to minor illnesses, and helping him heal faster when he does get sick.  Many chronic conditions – such as ear infections, bad breath, digestive problems (including gas!), heavy shedding, and allergies, among others – usually vastly improve when a dog is put on a high quality food. 

So what makes a good food?  Unfortunately, dog foods cannot be divided between “good” and “bad”; there are so many different diets out there that it is impossible to say for sure what a “bad” food or a “good” food is.   It is much easier, though, to determine what a “worse” food is and what a “better” food is.  There are several things I look for when I pick up a bag of food:

Life stages foods  Life stages foods are foods that are divided by variety based on the age of the dog.  Puppy formula is for growing puppies, adult formula is for full-grown dogs and senior formula is for older dogs.   Puppy formulas usually have special vitamins and nutrients that help a growing puppy; they also typically have more protein and fat.  Senior formulas often have nutrients for the dog’s joint health, as well as lower calories since seniors often have slower metabolisms.

When is my dog a puppy, adult or senior?  Which formula you need is determined by the breed of dog you have and his individual needs.  Small breed puppies reach their adult size around 8 or 9 months old, while large breed puppies don’t reach their adult size until 1 ½ to 2 years old.   Small breed adult dogs live longer than large breeds, so they could stay on adult formula much longer. 

At the same time, you have to think about your individual dog’s needs.  Many large breed dog breeders do not recommend feeding puppy food at all because evidence is beginning to show that it makes the puppies grow faster, which puts too much strain on their joints.  Regarding senior dogs, if yours is a healthy weight and you give your own supplements, it may not be necessary to switch him to the senior food at all.

Ingredients list  The list of ingredients is the main determining factor that will tell you whether you have a better food or a worse food.   The ingredients are listed in order of weight quantity in the bag; so the heaviest ingredient (and presumably the biggest ingredient) is listed first.  Since dogs are carnivores, you want a food that has a meat source listed first.

“Meal” makes a meal!  Many foods list a meat first, but you have to read it carefully.  If it just says the type of meat, such as “chicken,” that means that they measured the meat as it comes, with the water still in it.  The water makes the meat heavier, so they can list it first in order of weight.   In processing, though, they must dehydrate the meat.  Once they remove that water, the meat weights much less; and therefore should be listed much lower on the ingredients list.   What you really want to see is “meal”, such as “chicken meal.”  Meal is dehydrated meat.  So if “chicken meal” is listed first, there is much more meat in the food than there is if “chicken” is listed first.

Grains are also needed, but in much smaller quantity than meats.  Generally dogs that have food allergies are actually allergic to the grain, so many companies are now making “grain free” foods which are a wonderful choice for those dogs.  Corn is the most common grain among the lower quality foods because corn is relatively cheap.  Dogs don’t digest corn, though, so corn is nothing more than filler with no nutritional value.  Brown rice is a much better alternative.  When you switch to a higher quality food, you can actually feed less quantity at each meal, because the food has more nutritional value, often saving you money. 

Special needs foods  Many brands make a lot of “special” foods, such as:

high protein foods  - protein gives dogs more energy, so it is good for working dogs; not necessarily good for pet dogs!

light diets - usually have less protein and more fillers.  It is generally healthier to continue feeding the regular food, just in lower quantities

food for joint health - have added glucosamine and condroitin.  Tthe amounts that are added are not generally enough to make a difference.  It is better to feed glucosamine supplements.

Generally, feeding a high quality food will eliminate the need for these special diets.  You can talk with your vet to determine what, if any, health concerns your dog has, and then choose a food accordingly.

You can feed your dog supplements diet to add variety and health benefits. 

Say yes to yogurt!  The probiotics in plain yogurt help strengthen your dog’s immune system - especially when he’s on antibiotics for a health problem, prevent yeast infections, aid in digestion and help clear up and prevent chronic ear infections. 

The incredible edible egg!  Raw or cooked eggs (including the shells, if the dog will eat them!) are an excellent source of protein and calcium. 

Who made the salad?  Raw fruits and vegetables, such as carrots, broccoli, tomatoes, cucumber, apples, bananas, etc. also add vitamins and other health benefits.  You should NOT feed onions, grapes, raisins, or chocolate.  (And yes, to some of us, chocolate is a vegetable.)

What about treats?  Anything your dog likes to eat can be considered a treat.  Here at THSD we use kibble (the dog’s dry food) as treats very often. It is healthier and lower calorie than most of the other treats we could feed. 

When we buy treats at pet stores or receive treats as donations, we always cut them to about pea-size.  For dogs, quantity is more important than size, so they are happier if we give them 5 or 6 treats in a row, than one large treat. 

We also use high value treats such as hot dogs, cheese, sandwich meat and other meats for when the dogs are doing especially difficult behaviors.  It is very convenient to cut up treats and freeze them if you don’t use them very often.  Then when your dog does a good behavior, run to the freezer and pull out some of your frozen treats.  It is convenient for you and very exciting for the dog!  Plus, in summer, it’s cooooool!