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There are all sorts of therapy dogs, and working with your pet to help others can be one of the most rewarding ways to share the canine virtues of love and acceptance with those sorely in need of them.

A recent article in the Boston Herald described how Kaylee, the Collie, brings therapy and support to elderly homeless people being assisted by Hearth, a Boston-area non-profit group.

Thanks to her owner, Noreen Sheehand Glynn, the six-year-old Kaylee has been volunteering at the project for about a year. According to the Herald:

"When people bring what they love to a home, it makes it home," said Hearth spokeswoman Jackie Herskowitz. "This woman brought her love of animals.

"The concept of having a pet at Hearth also makes it feel like home," she added, because for Hearth residents, all elderly and formerly homeless, the transition from the streets can be difficult.

Know any therapy dogs yourself? Let us hear their stories.

A 2006 study stunned the scientific community when 5 ordinary pet dogs trained for just three weeks were able to accurately detect lung cancer 99 percent of the time. The dogs, who also achieved an 88 percent degree of accuracy (comparable to mammography) detecting breast cancer, were the focus of a study devised by the Pine Street Foundation, a private cancer research foundation based in San Anselmo, Ca.

The extraordinary ability of dogs, who have been shown to be able to distinguish certain chemicals diluted to a rate of one to a trillion, first came to light as a result of a case study in which a dog constantly sniffed a lesion on his owner. This lesion was found to be a malignant melanoma. That led to studies which showed dogs could detect bladder cancer in dried urine samples.

In this study, three Labradors and two Portuguese Water Dogs, (on loan from Guide Dogs for the Blind), successfully sussed out 55 cases of lung cancer and 31 cases of breast cancer using breath samples, differentiating them from the scents of 83 healthy control subjects. The dogs were clicker trained in the manner used to train bomb detection canines. They were cued to to sit when detecting a malignancy.

None of the test subjects had begun chemotherapy and smokers were included in both groups. Breath samples were collected in the same rooms on the same days. The only assistant who knew which breath samples came from cancer patients was out of the room whenever the dogs were working.

In 2007, Pine Street Foundation began chemical analysis on collected breath samples to try to figure out what the dogs are cueing on. Plans are underway to launch a study which should show whether the dogs will be useful in diagnosing early stage ovarian cancer.

An outfit called “The Psychiatric Service Dog Society” has information about a special kind of service dog for those living with mental illness and disabilities - Psychiatric Service Dog (PSD)

And of course they have a website: http://www.psychdog.org

As “psychdog” explains, the “gold standard” for differentiating a service dog from just another happy companion pooch is often assistive task training. And they give this example of how someone suffering from a disabling mental condition - in this case Major Depression - might create a plan for how a service dog could be trained to assist them:

1. Make a list of your five most debilitating symptoms. Mental illness is by its nature episodic, so don’t worry if your worst symptoms are not manifest on a daily basis. Here is an example for a person living with Major Depression.
Symptoms: -
Persistent sadness
Hopelessness
Hypersomnia (i.e., excessive sleeping)
Lack of motivation or apathy
No appetite

2. Generate a list of tasks that may be trained to mitigate your constellation of symptoms. You can do this by consulting the PSDS task list or by asking your online service dog friends for ideas. Don’t worry about how to train your dog to perform these tasks, yet. You will work this out with the trainer you ultimately select.

Symptoms - Trainable Tasks:
Persistent sadness - ‘Hug’ command
Hopelessness - ‘Cuddle’ and ‘Kiss’ commands
Hypersomnia (i.e., excessive sleeping) - Wake-up at specific time each day
Lack of motivation or apathy - ‘Settle’ for Tactile Stimulation sessions
Short-term memory loss - Remind to take medication at specific times

3. When deeply depressed, it is easy to forget the repertoire of tasks one has trained his/her PSD to perform. For this reason, consider taping a copy of your ’symptoms & tasks’ list to your refrigerator. This will provide a helpful reminder when you need it most.

4. Share the task list with your professional dog trainer. She will teach you how to train your dog to reliably execute each task on command. As you become more comfortable with dog training in general, you will likely think of additional tasks your service dog may be trained to perform. Herein lays the beauty of training one’s own PSD. Even after the handler-trainer relationship has ended, a handler is empowered to continue refining his/her dog’s ability to assist.