Canine Assistants Volunteer Handbook

The Official Handbook of Canine Assistants Volunteers.  Volunteers are urged to review their handbook carefully

The organization was founded December 31, 1991 by Jennifer Arnold.  Below Jennifer’s explains why she started Canine Assistants:

I was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis as a teenager, and spent two and a half years using a wheelchair.  It was an incredibly difficult time. I believe that I may well have set a record for saying “please,” “thank you,” and most of all, “I’m so sorry to bother you!” I felt isolated and very much alone.  I knew I needed help, but I didn’t know what kind or how to get it.

My father, a physician in Atlanta, heard about an organization in California that trained service dogs to help people in wheelchairs. The California program had a very long waiting list and worked mainly with those on the West Coast, so my dad decided to start such a program in Georgia. Three weeks after the first planning meeting for Canine Assistants, my father was hit and killed by a drunk driver while he was walking on the sidewalk around a park. It took my mother and me ten years of hard work to open start program but we finally did it on December 31, 1991.