Bluff Park family helps raise future service dogs

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Fourteen-year-old Zoe Schaeffer was looking for ways to give back when she found out that Roverchase, the dog daycare and training facility her family uses, was getting ready to train a litter of service dogs.

“We were looking for service opportunities for Zoe in the community, and [Roverchase owner Abigail Witthauer] said, ‘We’re going to have a batch of puppies,’ and that was all [Zoe] needed to hear,” Kelly Schaeffer, Zoe’s mom, said.

Now, the Schaeffers’ Bluff Park home is host to a pair of golden retriever puppies, Cahaba and Cabbage, as well as their own pets.

“Our house, it’s pandemonium 24/7,” Kelly Schaeffer said.

The puppies, which turned six months old in January, are at the start of the process to become service companions for people with medical issues like seizures, diabetes, hearing loss, post-traumatic stress disorder or mobility issues.

This is Roverchase’s first class of puppies raised by selected community members, Witthauer said, but it’s far from her first experience in training service dogs. She started showing dogs as a child and raised two service dogs while in college, living “in the dorms, like a crazy person.”

“Raising a dog in the dorms was a really great experience. It’s the perfect environment to raise a service dog. It’s just so social and your schedule is great to raise a puppy,” said Witthauer, who added that she has always been “singularly focused” on working with dogs.

She has a golden retriever of her own, McCallen, as a service dog for a seizure disorder. Witthauer moved to Birmingham in 2008 and immediately started the business that would become Roverchase, which moved to its permanent location in Pelham five years ago.

For several years, Witthauer and Roverchase trainers have raised and developed about six to eight service dogs a year, mostly from other breeders’ litters. Breeding her own litters of service dogs, so she can direct their development from birth, has been a multi-year goal for Witthauer, and this year’s group of puppies is the achievement of that goal.

The puppies were born in her living room and lived with Witthauer for eight weeks before going to the various families, like the Schaeffers, who are committed to raising them.

Witthauer said positive reinforcement as the puppies grow and learn new experiences is a critical part of developing them into service companions. Due to that early training, Zoe Schaeffer said the service dogs came into their home already much better behaved than the average housepet.

“Our goal is that they just have really excellent experiences with everything that they do,” Witthauer said.

The Schaeffers and the other puppy raisers commit to caring for the dogs for at least 16 months and bringing them to class at least three times a week. While in class, the puppies learn everything from identifying smells to opening doors or turning on lights.

Outside of class, the Schaeffers work with Cahaba and Cabbage on basic obedience and taking them out in public, so they get used to the distractions of places like grocery stores and movie theatres.

“A good puppy raiser just has a really lovely, active lifestyle and household,” Witthauer said.

While learning the skills needed to be a service dog can be a fun game for the puppies, she said the challenging part is teaching them to stay focused on their handlers even if there are other dogs or people trying to get their attention.

“It’s the thing we worry about the most,” she said.

Around the age of six to eight months, Witthauer said the puppies’ talents begin to show and they can determine what type of service will best suit them. Dogs with excellent “nosework” are more likely to be trained to alert their owners to a seizure or blood sugar issue and retrieve help, while a dog with exceptional focus and closeness to their handler might be better suited as a PTSD support dog, Witthauer said.

About 85 percent of the puppies successfully complete the training and will be matched with a person who is in need of their skills at around 16 to 18 months. Witthauer said Roverchase usually receives around 30 applications per year, though they have been coming in “fast and furious” since she started publicizing the program more heavily in September.

Witthauer said applicants are screened based on how closely their needs match the dog’s training, with Alabama applicants receiving first priority. Once the recipients are selected, Witthauer said their ideal process is to introduce the dog and new handler and train them over a period of four months, though in some situations they condense that into a more intensive two-week process.

“We really have the luxury of doing a slow placement process,” Witthauer said.

The puppy raisers get to meet and befriend the recipients of their dogs, which can be an “incredibly bittersweet, heartbreaking thing” after sharing a home with the dog for nearly two years.

“They get to know the impact that that puppy has on that person’s life,” Witthauer said.

“You won’t experience anything like gifting a dog to a person that will utterly and completely change their life.”

Kelly Schaeffer said friends often ask if it will be hard to watch Cahaba and Cabbage go to new homes, and she acknowledged it’s easy to get attached to them.

“We love them but we don’t need them. Somebody needs these dogs, but we don’t,” she said.

Zoe Schaeffer said she has enjoyed watching their puppies grow, especially as they learn to behave in public. She is also working on a canopy for Roverchase’s outdoor enclosure as part of her Girl Scout Silver Award project.

Witthauer said her goal is to eventually place 30 service dogs with handlers each year and to grow their nonprofit arm, the Roverchase Foundation, to the extent that “we don’t turn anyone away for financial need.” It takes $10,000-$15,000 to raise and train a single service dog.

This has been a decade-long passion project, Witthauer said, and to “see it all of a sudden blossom this year has been an exhausting and emotional journey.” The help of puppy raisers like the Schaeffers has been integral to achieving this goal, and Kelly Schaeffer said she hopes more people will consider the same commitment to help the program grow.

“There’s just such a need to do this. And it’s a little daunting at first, but you have a community with you,” Kelly Schaeffer said.

Learn more about Roverchase’s service dog training program at roverchase.com.