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Touch Of Healing Dogs is a training club dedicated to helping it's members train Service Dogs and Therapy Dogs. We are in the process of building a breeding program focused on producing puppies that will be future service dog prospects. Our Therapy Dog group participates in the 'Tales To Tails' program and currently volunteers at many libraries as literacy mentors. The Service Dogs in our club help disabled people regain lost independence, and also help educate the community about service dog related issues.

We offer many group classes for training service and therapy dogs, as well as, private lessons, and service dog task training. We do monthly CGC evaluations, and many group training activities, including our exclusive 'Service Dog Team Scavenger Hunts'. Touch Of Healing Dogs has an online support and training group free for members to use, and moderated by a trainer. If you have a question, or made a break through with your training you can post it and share with the entire group. You can schedule group meetings and find a training partner.

We are in the process of training some great potential breeding dogs. Our standards are high, because we wouldn't expect a puppy to do something the parents weren't able to master. Certifications are important to us, and until each dog has every certification required they will not enter out breeding program. It is our intention that our puppies all be enrolled into a Service Dog training program, or placed with puppy raisers. We are not raising puppies to sell, we are breeding the service dogs of tomorrow. We have purchased champion sired pups from very well known and responsible breeders.

Our Therapy Dog group volunteers at many nursing homes and public libraries. We participate in the 'Tales To Tails' program as literacy mentors for children who want to improve their reading skills. Our dogs volunteer at many libraries where the children tell them stories. The dogs always bring treats to thank the children for reading to them. On certain occasions Touch Of Healing Dogs is able to find sponsors to help purchase larger items, or bigger incentives such as Build-A-Bears that the children can enter a raffle to win. Usually the children are given a raffle ticket for every book that they read, so they have a big incentive to read more books. Any child who has a parent sign a photo release form may have their picture taken with a therapy dog and have it displayed on the website, or in a photo montage. The children take pride in sharing the pictures of the dogs that they read to. The therapy dogs are non-judgemental and don't mind if the kids get the words mixed up every now and then. They come for the attention and the stories.

In addition to helping a disabled person our service dogs also volunteer for many service dog education classes and demonstrations. If you know a school or health care facility that would like a service dog demonstration or service dog education please contact us. We have many service dogs that love to show off their skills and teach people what proper service dog etiquette is. Many people have questions about service dogs, but they don't know how to get the answers with out fear of being rude. Our service dog etiquette class teaches children and adults not only what is proper behavior around a service dog, but why you shouldn't do certain things. Many times when we are out with our service dogs we hear parents tell children that we are blind, because we are using a guide dog. Service dogs do many important jobs, and not every disability is visible. If you are a parent, I highly recommend you talk to your child's teacher about having a Service dog visit their classroom.