↑ Champagne received a scar on her nose from her mother Malibu, who became violent because of irritated mammary glands during nursing. Malibu had killed another one of her puppies in this process.

While people with serious psychiatric disabilities and mental illnesses benefit from their service dogs, the service dogs don’t always benefit from their masters.

“We come to find some of them are 30 pounds overweight,” Dale says. That's the other problem with psychiatric disabilities. “They like to make themselves feel good, and by feeding the dog, it makes them feel good. So they keep feeding the dog and now the dog is about 30 or 40 pounds overweight.” Conversely, sometimes the owners are trained enough to fully appreciate the dog’s capabilities and, in the process of taking care of the dogs, break their training. When the owners can’t take the dog’s cues, “the dog will either eventually take over and become the guard dog while this person is falling apart in public, or it will fall apart itself.”

“People don’t realize that the job goes beyond the training and placing of the dog. That’s the easiest part of the job,” Lu says. “You have to follow up on those people after that; that’s the hard part.” Recently, ECAD identified a blind client as having an emotional disability incompatible with service animals. “She’s had a lot of dogs over the years because she isn’t able to realize when the dog is working for her. She’s telling the dog to do other things, and the dog is getting emotionally disturbed itself and overeacting. When they don’t want to lead anymore, they may start biting their fur and other quirks showing they can’t take it anymore.”

For the past 15 years, ECAD’s facility in Dobbs Ferry has been on the campus of Children's Village, a residential treatment center for at risk, displaced youth. Whether they are underperforming in school, having behavior issues or suffering from neglect, abuse or a family history of drug addiction, the Children’s Village is committed to housing and schooling them. For awhile, this included training dogs with ECAD during their school days. “Since the recession, we no longer have those,” Dale says, disheartened. “The last of those classes shut down last winter. I have an after school program here that still teaches kennel management. That's all I have going now. I used to have kids teach 100% of the commands and work with the dogs. That is no longer the case today, which is very sad because it was very beneficial for the kids.”

What had been 90 minute vocational classes, teaching the kids to train and groom the dogs, has been all but eliminated due to budget cuts in the school system. “We’d spend 20 minutes a day teaching, 20 minutes a day grooming, about 40 to 50 minutes a day on training, with the last 10 to 15 minutes of class dedicated to just hanging out relaxing with your dog. They’re petting the dogs, getting themselves calm, and going back to class,” Dale told me.

As Dale shows me a picture of his last graduating class, he grimly admits, “three of these children are now dead,” having been returned to a troubled situation at home, now lives lost to gang violence. “We were the last program they let get cut, about three years ago.” Lu added, “It was good for everybody. Over time, the children started to open up, they started to learn.”