12 Days of Breeders – 5 – Cynthia Kelly of Regis Regal German Shepherds

The 12 Days of Breeders is a series of interviews conducted with members of the Dog Breeder Society who are doing innovative, creative, and inspiring things in their dog breeding business.  In each of these interviews we cover challenges each breeder has encountered, and how they’ve overcome those challenges to find success in their breeding program.  Join me for all twelve of these interviews for inspiration, and countless actionable tips you can use to overcome (or avoid) challenges in your own dog breeding program!  You can check out all of the interviews in this series here.

Cynthia Kelly & Regis Regal German Shepherds

Today, we dive into the highly specialized world of German Shepherd service dogs with Cynthia Kelly of Regis Regal German Shepherds. Cynthia shares the unique, rigorous process she has developed for raising, training, and placing her dogs, many of whom work with children with autism. She takes intentional breeding and socialization to the next level, enabling her to provide service dogs who have amazing ways of helping people, from providing a sense of safety and security, to preventing elopement of children, to providing life-saving intervention for people with epilepsy and diabetes. Learn about her foundational standards for long-term genetic clearance (focusing on at least eight to ten generations of clear bloodlines) and her unique philosophy on what it takes to create and train a successful service dog. Cynthia proves that with the right lineage and the highest level of foundational work, the potential for these magnificent dogs to serve humans is truly limitless.

Learn more about Cynthia & Regis Regal German Shepherds

Transcript

Julie Swan | 0:00

Welcome to the Honest Dog Breeder Podcast with me, your host Julie Swan, where each week we dive in to discuss all things dog breeding so you can build a breeding business you love, producing dogs that fulfill their owner’s dreams. I believe you can have an honest dog breeding program that also pays the bills. So throw those pods in your ears while you’re cleaning kennels, I’d love to join you.

Welcome back to 12 Days of Breeders. Today we have Cynthia Kelly of Regis Regal German Shepherds in Spring Grove, Illinois. Cynthia, thank you so much for coming on today and sharing.

You have an incredible breeding program and I can’t wait to share this with everybody. So thanks for coming on.

Cynthia Kelly | 0:43

It’s my pleasure. I’m excited.

Julie Swan | 0:46

This past weekend you had an incredible thing happen with one of your dogs. Can you share kind of the lead-in and what happened?

Cynthia Kelly | 0:54

We specialize in providing children ages one and up, specifically with autism, verbal and non-verbal with service dogs. We’re on the cutting edge of many different areas that the parents continually share with me their fears, their hopes, their dreams for what they want for their children. And fortunately, with our bloodline, we’re able to provide each and every one of those things.

But specifically this weekend, I had been educating a female of mine for a young boy, not even three years old yet. He was born literally having a seizure from the moment he was born. And with that, he also has acquired epilepsy.

And this is happening maybe three to four times a week. And they never know when it’s happening. There’s no forewarning that they can recognize at this point.

And so they contacted me about eight months ago and wanted to know with my program what I could provide to ensure that, especially when the baby starts walking, that he’s in a safe place, that they can be alerted prior to the onset, to make sure that he’s not going to land on cement, that he’s not going to be eating and choke. And I knew it was going to be quite the process. But I also know through 33 years of my breeding program, that my dogs are more than capable of doing this.

And so about nine months ago when I started this, first and foremost, I knew it was going to be a female, because they have this intense intuitive ability to discern between different character traits of each person. They also are hypervigilant when it comes to their specific person. And so what I found to be the best way to educate, is each time this child has had a seizure, the parents have immediately taken the child’s shirt off, wrapped it in a ball, put it in a plastic bag, thrown it in the freezer, and then overnighted it to me.

Because with epilepsy, which is different than diabetes, for example, epilepsy, prior to and after a seizure, that specific person emits a scent that is 100% specific to them. And so I had been educating this female all along the way using this child’s clothing, which has the scent that the child emits from his body. So I started by hiding it in places in my home, in couches, in drawers, and then we’d go outside and I’d do the same thing.

So the female, whose name is Nala, was finally ready for our first visit. It’s one of two that we make. And we show up in Florida and there are about eight people standing at the door.

Now, this child is almost three and they’ve never heard a word come out of his mouth, but what they’ve been prepping him for with pictures and videos was that his forever dog, Nala, was coming. And it was going to be just his, and it was going to be his best friend and his companion. And they keep using the word Nala, Nala, Nala, but they’ve never heard a sound out of him.

Soon enough, we show up at the house and there are eight people standing at the door and the baby is sitting on one of the caretaker’s laps. And as we walk through the door, the very first thing everybody hears is this boy yell out the word, Nala, Nala, and everybody just stopped. The mom was in tears.

The dad was in tears. Because they had been prepping this child with no response until the dog finally showed up. So it was truly, truly a miraculous moment when we arrived there. Yeah, the first words ever, ever.

And that’s what we find with the connection with my dogs, and we don’t need to figure out how it works. We just know that it does.

Julie Swan | 5:17

Yeah, exactly. Oh, exactly. All right. So the dog immediately got in there and how did it go?

Cynthia Kelly | 5:25

Immediately, and bypassed all the seven other people, didn’t look at them, didn’t smell them, didn’t bump up against them, went directly to this baby, sat next to him, and Nala is licking his feet and licking his hands and licking his arms and literally nuzzling right up to his face to where the baby is grabbing onto her cheeks and pulling Nala’s face in. And the mom is looking at me like, it’s too close, that’s too close. I’m like, “leave them alone.

They’re connecting is what they’re doing.” And she’s not really familiar with dogs, and the big dogs that she’s experienced in her lifetime, she’s never really felt comfortable with. So what I know is that these families are putting their children’s lives in my hands, and I can’t afford to fail in any respect, whether it’s my dogs alerting to the onset of a seizure, or knowing that these children could cut the legs off of one of my dogs and they would never ever turn their face towards one of their owners or the family members in anything but love and adoration.

So as we’re sitting there now, we all get up and we move into the kitchen area, and still Nala is all over this little boy. And I’m thinking to myself, Nala knows something’s coming. It’s my first 15 minutes there, I didn’t want to open up and be the bearer of bad news.

So I’m thinking, well, maybe she’s just excited to meet them, but I knew better, I knew better. One of Nala’s alerts is she will stand in front of you and she will spin. She will spin to the left, she will stop, she will then spin to the right and she will just hold herself right there.

Sure enough, that’s what she did. And I felt as though it was my responsibility. We were just there for a short visit, the baby was getting ready to be put down for a nap after that, until we had a full day the next day.

But as I was walking out, I said to them, I’m here to tell you, just please keep an eye on the baby because I believe Nala is telling us something that none of us are aware of. We left, I get a phone call literally 15-20 minutes later from the parents telling me that the child had just had a seizure. So it was astounding.

It usually takes a little bit longer for my dogs to really connect, and know what their job is and things like that. And it certainly, certainly, takes several different episodes, or several different seizures, for my dogs to alert any earlier than a couple minutes before. And she just moved right in and knew what her job was.

So it was an incredible, incredible weekend.

Julie Swan | 8:05

And how old is Nala?

Cynthia Kelly | 8:06

Nala is now, she is only 12 months.

So she’s a baby, because my girls don’t fully mature until they’re two. My boys, not till three and a half. So that in and of itself was pretty special.

Julie Swan | 8:20

That’s just incredible. So now that I have goosebumps, and this is such an incredible story. This is pretty standard for you and your dog.

Cynthia Kelly | 8:29

It is, it is. But fortunately, every time I experience this, which is usually on a four day a week happening, I feel like I’m watching it for the first time. And the feelings that come from the parents, it’s overwhelming.

It’s overwhelming the gratitude, and their ability for the first time since this child was born to actually take a deep breath, and have it not catch halfway down their chest for fear that something else is going to just happen right away that they’re unaware of.

Julie Swan | 9:11

Yeah, exactly. Because otherwise there really is no way that people with epilepsy know that this stuff is coming, do they?

Cynthia Kelly | 9:18

They don’t. Some people will receive headaches. Sometimes often with very young children, they will start to cry, because their neurological system is changing prior to the onset of a seizure. So sometimes they’ll cry uncontrollably.

This little boy showed nothing like that. So these parents were absolutely in the dark prior to receiving Nala.

Julie Swan | 9:50

Well, first off, just tell us, how did you get into this? This doesn’t seem like somebody wakes up one day thinking, “Oh, I’m going to have epileptic service dogs.”

Cynthia Kelly | 10:01

Right? We had gone to purchase a German Shepherd. I’d had German Shepherds throughout my childhood.

My father always wanted the biggest, the baddest, the smartest, the everything. And I’ve always been a dog person. I’ve always been an animal person.

And I absolutely fell in love with how detail oriented they were, how you can set them on a task and they will complete it. As I got older, I didn’t have time to raise them. We had gone out, my husband and I had gone out the day after Thanksgiving, and I had been researching secretly behind his back, top breeders in the country.

And this particular breeder had a female that was about five or six-months old. And I had never not done a puppy ever in my life, but I needed something then, I just needed it. So we went out, we met at some shopping mall where the dog was transferred over to me.

Fast forward a couple of years. And in 2000, my husband asked me what I wanted to do for Mother’s Day. And I told him I wanted to sleep.

So he took me by the hand, he tucked me in bed, and I woke up two days later. From there, colds started to turn into pneumonias. Pneumonia started to put me in the hospital.

I lost 80% vision in my right eye, 40% in my left. I ended up spending three weeks at Mayo Clinic. They could find nothing.

I ended up going to Sloan Kettering for about three to four weeks. And they did every mammogram and PET scan known to man. And you don’t do a PET scan when you’re 40, because if you bumped your hip at 11, it lights up and you think you have bone cancer, but not one single thing light up.

And I went home knowing that I had three toddlers at home, and I was dying, and nobody could figure out what the problem was. And from the time I got home from Sloan Kettering, my female, her name was Xena, she would lay across my chest with a guttural sound that I had never heard before. And thank goodness have never heard afterwards.

And this continued for the next nine to 10 days. I called my general practitioner, I said, “we’re going in.” He said, “we’re going in for what?”

I said, “we’re going in for a bilateral radical mastectomy.” He said, “but why? Everything came out negative.”

I said, “I’m not going to tell you, but what I am going to do is I’m going to write you a letter, but you’ve got to promise me that you will not open up this letter until after the surgery.” And he’s known me my whole life. And he starts screaming at me, “don’t do this, don’t, don’t do this to me,” yada, yada.

And sure enough, he finally agreed. And I went in, and they found a tumor of 1.6 in the left breast and 1.8 in the right. And it’s a very rare type of cancer called paraneoplastic syndrome.

It clones itself to appear as normal tissue. And it shuts down your immune system, starting with your eyes, because they’re the most vulnerable. And then once your immune system is gone, the cancer becomes active, and you’ve got three to six months to live.

So he opened up the letter after surgery and he called me, said, “you’re absolutely correct. I would have put you in a rubber room if I had read this letter prior to you going for surgery,” because the letter stated very clearly that I’m going in because my dog told me to. And so from there, we knew we had something incredibly, incredibly special.

And from there, out of the same line breeding, we ended up purchasing a male. And that was where we began.

Julie Swan | 13:39

Wow. And so you were able to use her as your foundation. Wow.

That is incredible. And you’re completely fine now?

That was that, just done.

Cynthia Kelly | 13:52

It was, it was astounding. It really was. But I also knew that the gift I had received from her could not be kept to myself.

That if she had this ability, the gifts that could be given by her offspring, if done properly, would be endless. Endless. And they are.

They are.

Julie Swan | 14:17

Yeah, exactly. Okay. So you got in and you started, did you know anything about breeding when you got into this?

Or you were just like, I know I’ve got to do this.

Cynthia Kelly | 14:25

I didn’t. But my father’s message to me has always rung loud and clear. And he said to me, “Cindy, I don’t care what you do in your life.

Just make sure that if you’re flipping burgers, you’re the best burger flipper there is.” And so I started to research and I started to learn. And I acquired a very strong relationship with the SV in Germany.

And that was where the German Shepherds were created. It’s called Schäferhund. They called the SV for short.

Julie Swan | 14:58

Is it a location or a bloodline? What is that?

Cynthia Kelly | 15:00

It’s a club, basically.

It is the only organization in the world regarding canines that have never once lowered their standards as to what they require in order to define a German Shepherd as a dog of sound mind and sound body. So all of our hip elbow certifications, height weight standards, breeding practices are done directly through them. I also learned from the top breeders in the world, who began when it was West Germany, how they breed to ensure the health and temperament, which is much different than what we do in the States.

And that was how I began.

Julie Swan | 15:47

Can you share a little bit about that philosophy?

Cynthia Kelly | 15:49

Absolutely. So there are three different types of breedings that breeders do in this country. And I kind of say it with a negative tone because we have very limited breeding standards when it comes to breeding standards in the United States.

You have inbreeding, which we all know what that is, mother to son, right? One to one, 11 toes, a heart and a half, that kind of thing.

Julie Swan | 16:18

Well, you’re talking about very close inbreeding.

Cynthia Kelly | 16:20

I’m talking one to one. I’m talking mother to son. Father to daughter.

Julie Swan | 16:23

Okay. Okay.

Cynthia Kelly | 16:24

That’s one to one.

Julie Swan | 16:25

Okay.

Cynthia Kelly | 16:25

Then you have what the majority of the breeders in this country do, which is called out-line breeding. Out-line breeding by definition means that there’s absolutely no familial or family tie between the dam and the sire anywhere. When you out-line breed, it’s almost impossible to guarantee the health and the temperament of the puppies that you’re producing, because you are bringing in different genetics.

Julie Swan | 17:08

Well, there’s so many variables, right?

Cynthia Kelly | 17:10 

Variables. Correct.

Exactly what I was thinking. You’re bringing in genetics from all different types of bloodlines. And unfortunately, when you out-line breed, you’re not producing the best traits of the dam and the sire that you’re using, but instead you’re bringing in the worst.

Now, that’s not to say that you can’t produce puppies of sound mind and sound body by out-line breeding, but it’s also not to say that you will.

Julie Swan | 17:50

Can I summarize if I’m understanding this right so far? What you’re saying is, because there are so many variables, this has this temperament, this has this temperament, the likelihood that you’re going to produce what you’re looking for, the best of both, is just inconsistent.

Cynthia Kelly | 18:04

Very inconsistent.

Julie Swan | 18:05

And so you’re going to get a couple that are that, and then you’re going to get a couple that have the worst traits of both. Again, there’s no consistency when you’re out crossing.

Cynthia Kelly | 18:14

The funny part, specifically with German Shepherds, is the way someone can tell, and this is what I tell my prospective clients every day, is the way in which you can tell that a litter, for example, of German Shepherds has been out-line bred, is when you look at a litter and every single puppy in the litter looks different. One’s black and tan. One’s black and sable.

One’s black or black. Black and red. Big head, small head, long nose, short nose.

There’s absolutely no way for anyone to offer guarantees, because there’s really no scientific reason that they should be able to. And chances are, they’re not.

Julie Swan | 18:50

Right.

In your mind, it’s sort of like people saying, “oh, mutts are healthy,” but they’re unpredictable. We have no idea what they’re going to be.

Cynthia Kelly | 19:07

Correct.

Julie Swan | 19:08

And so you’re in a microcosm.

Cynthia Kelly | 19:11

And so what we do, and have done for over 30 years is line breeding. Our bloodlines began out of the top two kennels in the world, out of Von Arlett and Bad-Boll, when it was West Germany. They’re still the top two kennels in the world.

Line breeding by definition means that there is a familial or family tie somewhere between every single one of my breeding pairs. So for us specifically, what that means, is that we never breed any closer in than five to six generations, but we desperately try to stay within 15-17 or 18. That is why, when people go on my website, and they look at my adolescents and adults, for example, you immediately recognize the tremendous similarities in what they look like.

But when you look at my individual litters page, every single puppy in each of my individual litters looks identical. That’s the perfect line bred litter. That’s why contractually, we offer lifetime guarantees on health and temperament because we know what we’re producing.

Again, that’s why we are the only organization in the country that is able to provide service dogs for children ages one and up. Most of these organizations wouldn’t even think of offering a child a service dog prior to ages seven or eight.

Julie Swan | 20:40

Right. And then those parents just have to sort of figure it out with a kid who can’t communicate and has no tells.

Cynthia Kelly | 20:46

And you’re already late on the language development. And so you’re behind the eight ball.

Julie Swan | 20:58

Yeah. Wow.

So you have this beautiful line that you’ve crafted, and you’re saying five or six generations. Can you explain relationally what that would look like? Okay.

So you have a female here, and you’re going to breed her to some stud. Where do you look in your lines for that stud?

Cynthia Kelly | 21:20

So fortunately, I have the ability to have all those generations on my property. That is why we are always, oh, so careful, always having the pedigrees in front of us, to ensure that we never breed any closer in than five to six generations.

We try to stay within 15-17, just because we don’t want to go too far out.  But that’s how we do it.

Julie Swan | 21:58

In my head, I’m thinking 15 to 17 generations would be a dog that’s 15 or 17 years old at a minimum.

Cynthia Kelly | 22:04

Correct. Correct. Correct.

Which they’re not breeding anymore. Right. But when you’re talking about the different generations, if I have a female that breeds to five generations out, right.

I’ve got different dams and different sires that coordinate all of the bloodlines.

Julie Swan | 22:27

Oh, okay. So you’re saying, if you went 15 generations back, you would have two females, maybe that split off.

Cynthia Kelly | 22:33

Exactly.

Julie Swan | 22:34

And so you’ll have a stud from this line that you can pair with this female because you’ve now gone back. So you’re looking for a pairing that’s that far out.

Cynthia Kelly | 22:42

Correct. Correct. That’s what I’m referring to.

Julie Swan | 22:45

Okay.

Okay. Does it get hard to manage that? Are you all within your lines, or are you able to bring in other dogs? I mean whatever you’re doing is working.

I can’t even begin to criticize.

Cynthia Kelly | 22:59

So every five or six years, we will call either Von Arlett or Bad Boll.  And we will bring in a stud or a dam that I will purchase to bring in new things, whether I’m looking for a redder coat, or I’m looking for a taller body, or I’m looking for more muscle.

Julie Swan | 23:33

Got it.

Cynthia Kelly | 23:34

So whenever we feel as though there’s something that we can possibly better, that’s what we look to bring in.

Julie Swan | 23:42

That makes sense. That makes sense. So you’re staying within your original lines, but they’ve been managed similar to how you’re doing it, but giving you genetic variety. That makes sense, but not so much genetic diversity that you lose your consistency.

Cynthia Kelly | 23:56

Exactly. For example, Xena started with pointed ears, and that was something we wanted to breed out of them. We wanted more of the rounded German Shepherd ears instead of the East German working line pointed ears that you see in those dogs.

Julie Swan | 24:16

Is there any reason other than just preference?

Cynthia Kelly | 24:21

Just preference. I think that the pointed ears remind young children of witches and goblins. And with the rounded ears, they get more of a feeling of bears.

Julie Swan | 24:35

Your dogs look a lot more like bears. And they’re fluffier than the normal.

Cynthia Kelly | 24:39

That attracts the kids. That’s when they feel safe that they can pull the dog’s face into their mouth, and know that, although the parents object to that a little bit, my dogs don’t.

Julie Swan | 24:53

Yeah, that makes so much sense. Okay. So share a couple of the other things that your dogs can do. I’m already in awe of all this.

But what else besides epilepsy?

Cynthia Kelly | 25:07

So autism, we are really on the cutting edge of that, especially with nonverbal autistic children. Our mission is to be able to expand the knowledge base for people in general, to understand children on the autism spectrum. And with these special children, almost all of my families have the same concerns.

Number one, their biggest concerns are that their young children want to elope. They want to just take off. And if the mom goes to blow her nose in a Kleenex, she looks up and the kid’s gone.

So we’ve taught our dogs to tether. It’s a custom belt. I don’t like to call it a leash. I call it a belt.

It’s a custom belt that goes around the child’s waist, and the dogs are trained to not allow the children to go off the property line. When they’re in a store, because they’re service dogs, the child can’t walk out of the store, because the dog will absolutely lay down and ground itself, and the child cannot physically move it. Another important thing, specifically speaking with nonverbal children, is their meltdowns. And what we can handle, and what might look cute at two and three, when they’re banging their fists on the wall, gets a lot more frightening for parents when their children get to be 14, 15, 16, 17-years old.

And for them to put on that display in the real world, people are not going to be so understanding. They’re going to be afraid of it. And because of that, what we have found, is that with my dog’s ability to bring a sense of tranquility, a sense of stillness to a child in the midst or the beginning of a tantrum, that when these children put their arms around my dogs, they find within several minutes, that tremendous anger and frustration that they’re feeling has dissipated.

And so instead of the child, and this was my experience with a 19-year old young man, who had never had a service dog before. And I had delivered him his dog, and I was getting ready to leave. And I said, “I have a present for you.”

And I gave him this present. I said, “don’t get real excited about it.” It was a timer.

And I said to him, “before I leave, you’ve got to promise me something.” He says, “anything, Miss Cindy, just, he’s going to stay here. He’s going to stay here with me. Right?”

He was very afraid that I was going to be taking his dog back home with me. So he was very compliant and ready to listen to what I was asking of him.

I said, “you’ve got to promise me that the next time you feel yourself get angry, and your fists start to close, that you’re going to do something for me.” And his eyes are big and wide, and he’s waiting for me to explain it to him. And I said, “I want you to take your dog by the collar, and I want you to bring him into your bedroom.

And I want you to sit on the floor and you see where I put the heart.” I put a red heart at a minute and thirty seconds on this timer. I said, “I want you to turn that little button to the red heart I made.

And I want you to sit there until the bell goes off.” And he looks at me and he says, “that’s it.” I said, “that’s it.”

“But you have to promise me that the first time you feel that, you’re going to do that for me.” He said, “I promise Miss Cindy, I promise.” So I leave, and I leave his dog with him.

And a day goes by, and I’m thinking, oh my goodness, I need to know what’s going on, nobody’s calling me. Three o’clock the next day, the phone rings and I look and it’s him.

And with his mom, it’s always him and his mom together, by the way. And I pick up the phone hesitantly and he’s screaming saying, “Miss Cindy, Miss Cindy, I did it. I promised.

I did it.” I said, “what did you do?” He said, “what I promised.”

I said, “well, explain to me what happened.” He said, “I came home from school and my mom made me mad, really, really mad.” And I’m trying not to laugh on the phone.

And he said, “and I could feel my fists start to get really strong. And I took my boy by the collar, and I walked into my room and I slammed that door. I mean I slammed that door hard.” And he said “and I sat on the floor, and I put that button right to the red heart like you said, and my dog climbed right on my lap, and I put my arms around him, and we waited, and then that bell went off.” And he’s silent on the other line now, and I’m waiting, and I finally say to him, “so what happened after that?” And he gives me this long pause and finally he says to me, “oh we went outside to go play ball.”

Now in the background his mom, I can hear her crying hysterically, because this was the first time in 19 years that this young man had not put a hole in the wall. So that’s what I’m referring to when I’m talking about my dogs having the ability to calm. For the first time, these children are able to communicate feelings and emotions to their dogs, that they were never able to express in any other way, and therefore the tantrums are cut by almost 90 percent.

That’s what I’m referring to in that.

Julie Swan | 31:22

And that’s incredible, because one who wants to repair drywall, but they can finally decompress. Is it the dog’s presence? How does that happen?

Cynthia Kelly | 31:36

It’s the breathing. It’s the temperament of the dogs that I produce. It’s the fact that they bring a calm wherever they go.

Julie Swan | 31:46

And so they become this consistency piece emotionally.

Cynthia Kelly | 31:49

They do. It’s not just a German Shepherd. It’s the difference between an East German working line dog, which is going doing herding panting every minute of every day, no off-switch. Versus the West German dogs that I produce, that have a calm about them that is like no other.

It’s the same thing that my dogs do for veterans with tremendous PTSD and anxiety that deal with trauma. My dogs have removed the medication that these veterans, men and women of service, have been on, and they’ve been on since the day they left the service. And they’re no longer in need of it because they found a calm through the breathing. Or when they wake up with night terrors, and the dogs are educated to do body compressions so that they don’t wake up in a terror. They learn, after the first or second time, their subconscious learns that they’re waking to a compression of peace instead of anxiety.

Julie Swan | 32:54

And so the dog gets on them? I’m not familiar with what that means?

Cynthia Kelly | 33:05

Yes, yes. The dog literally, depending on the size of the person, if it’s a full-grown man, the dog will put his entire body across the man’s from his waist up. If it’s a woman, and it’s a male dog, the dog will compress itself on her chest, under the chest in the belly area, so not too much of a weight on top of a woman’s more delicate body.

Julie Swan | 33:26

Yeah absolutely, that makes sense, and that pressure, are they awake?

Cynthia Kelly | 33:32

Not normally.

Julie Swan | 33:37

So the dog’s presence subconsciously gets programmed in the person, to say you’re safe, and so they can sort of walk themselves out of the night terror?

Cynthia Kelly | 33:43

That’s what it is, that’s what it is.

Julie Swan | 33:50

That’s incredible, I have goosebumps – the whole interview I’ve had goosebumps.

Cynthia Kelly | 33:53

You should see how it feels to actually be in with these families when it happens, their response to it brings me to tears every time. And like I said earlier, I don’t mean to sound redundant but every time I experience it, I feel like I’m watching it for the first time, because it’s a brand new experience for this family.

Julie Swan | 34:16

Yeah which is just incredible. Oh, I wanted you to explain, because you had told me before when you were giving me more details on how the epileptic stuff works, which I know it’s unique unlike diabetic dogs.

Cynthia Kelly | 34:27

It is. So unlike a diabetic dog, when you are educating the dog for the glucose scent, it’s universal, everybody has the basic same glucose in their body. The dogs are able to discern between high and low levels, and alert the clients for that. But when it comes to epilepsy, what’s different, is every time someone has a seizure, they emit from their body a scent that’s 100% specific to them. And so the dogs are trained according to that specific scent.

Julie Swan | 35:06

That makes sense, so it is a little bit more in depth with the person, the training process.

Cynthia Kelly | 35:11

Correct. We also do saliva swabs.

Julie Swan | 35:14

Oh that makes sense just to get their scent.

Can you explain also, you started to explain to me the impact it makes on say teenagers who have epilepsy, and how the dog just gives them that peace of mind, can you walk us through a little bit more about that?

Cynthia Kelly | 35:40

There are several things that we do. It seems to be a lot more prevalent also with a disease called POTS, that seems to be affecting many many young adults, teenagers. It’s a drop in their blood pressure, and it happens so rapidly that they can be in the shower and instantly pass out. And it happens without warning. They can’t take a shower alone, they can’t walk down the street alone, and it’s affecting obviously every aspect of their lives.

But specifically when we’re talking about teenagers with epilepsy, there’s several new things that are out there, which help. For example, when I begin the education of my pups, I start by using a puzzle board with pegs on it, and one of the healthiest things for German Shepherds happen to be blueberries. So I start with, imagine that you’ve got a puzzle that’s a circle and there are 10 pegs, and you lift up each peg, and there’s a hole in the bottom of it. So when I’m opening up the dog’s scent training, I put one blueberry under each peg, so if there are 10 pegs in the beginning, when they’re mastering it, they have 10 pegs that they pick up find the blueberry, eat it, go to the next one. And then as they become more efficient at that, I use seven pegs, and then four pegs, and then one peg.

In doing that, I’m also using these buttons, and they’re different color buttons, and the dogs are more than capable of understanding and going to very specific colors. So whoever said they were colorblind, it’s a fallacy, they’re not.

What we’ve found is a system that you can attach to your wall for example, and it has a button on it, so let’s say the person with epilepsy is home alone with their dog, and they were to have a seizure, go down, and not regain consciousness. Or even if they do regain consciousness, the dogs are trained from the minute they have the seizure, to go push the button, which directly connects to 911 and another family member. So they are never left to their own devices.

Another aspect of that, is many people that are having seizures will end up on their back with the fear that they’re going to choke to death. So we’re also educating the dogs to grab onto them, to roll them over onto their stomachs. So these are the different systems that we’re able to use.

Some people have watches, I’ve heard that Apple actually has an app on their phone, but there’s no way that a dog’s nose is going to be able to press that. It’s no different than some things they’ve come out with watches that the clients wear, but the buttons are too hard to push, and they’re too small, and the dog is not going to press their nose against something that’s going to hurt them, and not allow them to recognize that they’ve done it. There’s no beep to it, there’s no sound to it, so they’re not receiving the acknowledgement that what they pushed is working. When I educate them on buttons, they’re always receiving a bell, or my voice saying good job. I record my voice on the buttons or different things like that.

So that’s all in trial right now, but those are the different systems that are out there right now that I’ve already educated my dogs for, so that when they come out, and when they’re properly made, the dogs will already be educated to be able to push those.

Julie Swan | 39:47

Which is just incredible. But it makes so much sense. I mean we can leverage technology, leverage the dog’s abilities, make this and that’s so much independent living for someone.

Cynthia Kelly | 39:57

That’s what we’re working for. We’re not raising children, we’re raising adults. And especially when these teenagers all of a sudden at age 11, 12, come down with epilepsy. It’s the most formative years in terms of their social lives, their feeling of being able to go out and be independent. And without a fully trained medical alert dog, there’s no possibility of them becoming independent. Because up until them receiving a dog, they really have no forewarning as to a seizure. So it enables them to live their lives. Whether it’s through grade school or middle school or high school or in college. It enables them to live a “normal life” without limitations.

Julie Swan | 40:54

Yeah, I had a veteran friend who had seizures ever since going to Iraq. And he had a dog, not quite as cool as your dogs, but it would alert him. And he said “Julie, I can’t tell you how many times this dog saved my life. I’ll be driving the dog will give me the alert, and I’ve got to pull over and just wait.” He saved traffic problems, I mean who knows who could have been. So then he couldn’t drive. I mean just everything it opens the door to, that you didn’t even think about. It didn’t even occur to me thinking that I don’t know when I could just fall over. Taking a shower becomes scary, it becomes scary anytime you’re anywhere where you could fall on hard ground, which is kind of everywhere.

Cynthia Kelly | 41:37

One of my young adults who’s in college with a service dog went to her first concert. And along with her epilepsy, she found herself becoming incredibly depressed because she was not able to do the things that all of her peers were doing. Well she contacted me a week ago, to say to me that she went on to her very first concert. Not only did she go to her concert, but as everybody was leaving, what I’ve trained her dog to do is to be educated for crowd control, so that number one if she’s not feeling well the dog always puts a two-foot perimeter around her and everybody else. So there’s never a time in a crowd, where someone will be able to bump into her, knock her down.

That works with my clients with MS. It works with my clients with cerebral palsy. So that they can feel confident in their ability to walk, and not be afraid that someone who’s not paying any attention, or could care less just knocks into them, and knocks them over, not realizing that they’re limited physically. So that was very exciting news I had gotten from my client last week.

Julie Swan | 43:12

How does the dog do that? How do they keep everybody away?

Cynthia Kelly | 43:18

They literally will continue to put a perimeter around them. This whole theory started for us with a young woman with cerebral palsy. And she had come to us because one of her biggest fears was in high school. When we started with her, she used to have the same nightmare over and over again, that she would be standing at her locker and the bell would go off, and the kids you know they pay no attention to anything or anybody. When the bell goes off, they want to get to their locker, they want to grab something to eat, or whatever, so they’re just running blindly. And she would wake up in a drenched sweat every night at the thought that she was standing at her locker, somebody knocked her down, and she has very limited movement on her right side, and what the nightmare was, there were kids at the end of the hallway laughing at her because she was physically unable to get up. That was where this whole thought process of crowd control came from.

So I educated her dog Malibu to be able to protect her on all three sides as she is facing her locker. So there would never be a time that anybody could run into her, and not slam into the dog first. And she hasn’t had that nightmare since. So that’s the kind of gift that the dogs provide. And that’s the same thing with a concert, or leaving a stadium, or a lecture hall in college when everybody’s piling out at the same time.

Julie Swan | 44:58

Oh it is just such a gift. It’s just so incredible, I think it’s peace of mind for parents. And I think your dogs also help the children prevent themselves from hitting heads, is that something you can explain?

Cynthia Kelly | 45:08

They do. It started with teaching the dogs to catch their fall. So for example, when someone has a seizure, and they drop, my dogs are educated to place their bodies under them to the best of their ability, prior to that person falling. Especially their heads. And that then transfers over to the ability to protect that person itself, and being able to be there for the soft landing.

Julie Swan | 45:51

Wow. I can’t even imagine the training skills you have.

Cynthia Kelly | 45:57

Trust me, it has nothing to do with me. It has nothing to do with me, these dogs they show me where they want to go. And then I just help provide the vehicle for them to continue to learn their skills that they were born with.

Julie Swan | 46:13

So you can kind of tell working with the dog, with what kind of work they would love to take on.

Cynthia Kelly | 46:21

Yes, and the funny thing is, people ask me how I train their alerts. And I don’t. My dogs show me their alert. Some of them want to bark at you, which is the least favorite of all, because the last thing you want is to be in a doctor’s office, and your dog starts barking at you. Because people just think it’s an untrained animal. They don’t understand that it’s alerting you to something. So I try to minimize that one, and mold it into something else.

But they do different things. Some of them will stop and tap you with their feet, some of them will spin, some of them will stop and refuse to get up, they will refuse that until you have acknowledged that they are telling you something. And there is nothing more frustrating for my dogs, than to offer an alert, and not be acknowledged. They just keep ramping up and ramping up and ramping up until that person acknowledges. And the person may think that the dog is crazy, but I promise you they know so much more than you ever will.

Julie Swan | 47:24

I know sometimes when you talk about your dogs I just feel like humans are stupid

Cynthia Kelly | 47:28

Right? Exactly, exactly.

Julie Swan | 47:34

It’s so incredible. And then some other stuff, I just want to give people an idea of all these incredible things your dogs do. Didn’t you have, would you call it mobility support?

Cynthia Kelly | 47:44

Yes, and that’s something also. It is the ability for our dogs to not only when someone falls down. But when people are having issues with mobility, their biggest fear is falling. Because they need leverage in order to get up.

What we specifically train our dogs to do, and mind you, before any of this, they are all fitted with a custom harness. You cannot get anything online, because it will end up harming the dog physically. It has to be a custom harness, and it’s been measured specifically for that dog’s anatomy, chest width, height, leg length, so it doesn’t impede on their access to free mobility.

But what we teach the dogs, is we teach them to start on the ground, with their person, and then lift in levels, to help support that person to eventually get upright. When they’re walking, if the person leans to the right, my dogs lean to the left. If the person leans to the left, my dogs lean to the right. That’s how they help to keep people upright.

Julie Swan | 48:59

That makes sense. So that helps them stay stable, plus the harness really gives the dog the ability to do that.

Cynthia Kelly | 49:06

And gives the person the ability to have something solid and secure to hold on to.

Julie Swan | 49:11

Are you finding, is that mostly somebody who maybe had a stroke, and lost balance, is this the kind of clientele maybe that’s looking for this support dog?

Cynthia Kelly | 49:15

Absolutely, absolutely. Or children with cerebral palsy. Or yes, adults who have had strokes. They cover all of it.

Julie Swan | 49:30

That makes so much sense. What else have you trained, I know you’ve got so many things – tell us a little bit about your veterans. Because I know you provide anxiety and emotional support, not just for veterans.

Cynthia Kelly | 49:40

I wasn’t quite sure in the very beginning, if I had the ability to direct my dogs into more than PTSD, anxiety, trauma. How they’re trained to do the body compressions. How they’re trained to alert prior to the onset of someone having a panic attack.

Like I said earlier, I didn’t have to do much, they do most of it. What we found specifically with our veterans, is they have so much trauma, they have so much PTSD. And anything can trigger it. If it’s a car backfiring, if they’re walking through Walmart and the lights start to flicker, it reminds them of being back in war. And so my dogs are so highly sensitive to them, that they are able to alert them prior to the onset of a panic attack specifically. And what my dogs tell them is, we either need to find a place to sit down and regroup, or we need to get the heck out of here and go take a walk in the field, and decide if we want to continue shopping this day.

But either way for our veterans, all of our men and women who work in service fields. Our police officers, our nurses, our doctors from covid, firemen, teachers. All of these people that are amongst the group of service workers in our country. Whether it’s from Covid, whether it’s from school shootings, whether it’s from whatever, our people find a confidence in the security they receive with one of our dogs.

And that in and of itself decreases their anxiety tremendously. Especially when they know that even with me being able to say to you, that I guarantee that an owner could cut the legs off of one of my dogs, and they’d never turn their face towards you or one of your loved ones in anything but love and adoration.

On the opposite side of that coin, what I also know to be fact. And I based my daughter’s lives on this, is that they will allow anyone and everyone up to my kids that is supposed to be allowed near them. If someone shows up to do harm, they will not get within 200 feet. Because that is the temperament of a German Shepherd. It’s defined as a dog that is discerning between good and bad people. And it’s pheromones that come from your skin, from your body. It’s guilt literally being secreted from your pores. And you can’t clothe it away, you can’t perfume it away. It is what it is. And when you are guilty, when you have that thought in your mind, that’s what my dogs pick up on.

And so it completes that cycle of someone having anxiety, someone being fear-based, someone being insecure. That’s where my dogs take off from the very beginning, is that sense of safety that person feels from the very beginning from my dogs.

Julie Swan | 53:11

I can see that with the veterans so much. So many veterans are like “yeah well you know my wife’s great, but she’s never going to notice that in the front yard, and I just can’t trust her to watch out.” So it’s like what you’ve done, is you’ve created this pretty infallible partner that they can rely on, that says “I’ll let you know, don’t worry the kids are safe.” Which gives him peace of mind. He’s not the only person who has to manage this at the house. And then also when he’s spiraling, or in a place, the dog can say “hey you’re spiraling let’s move, let’s get out of here.”

Cynthia Kelly | 53:48

And it takes a huge sense of responsibility off of them. Because they know they’ve got a 70/30 partner the dogs being 70, them being 30, in their lives. And it enables them to get back to the life that they had prior to protecting our country and our rights.

Julie Swan | 54:06

Which is just incredible. It’s such a gift giving back. Because it’s quite the price to pay, so many veterans. I had a good friend, and he would wake up in the middle of the night to go grab his rifle because he thought he was in the middle of things again, almost every night. Just scary. There was no rifle, I mean he was grabbing at nothing of course, it was quite a situation.

I do want to summarize, because one thing that just blew my mind when you explained it to me. So you’re saying, just to summarize, when people have a malicious intent, they are secreting a different chemical concoction, and a different pheromone, and the dogs know that. And so that’s a universal thing for humans, and your dogs have discernment. Because I remember in the beginning, when I was first meeting you, I asked you, “all right, how do you trust them to do that? How do they know that I’m not just playing with the kids? And you were like “oh no Julie, it’s so easy, it’s so simple.”

Cynthia Kelly | 55:22

It is. German Shepherds have gotten a bad rap, because they have 300 psi in their jaw, and most people don’t understand that there are four different bloodlines in German Shepherds, and that they’re hemispherically different in terms of temperament and health.

You’ve got the American line, the East German working line, the Czechoslovakian line, and the West German bloodlines. They’re completely different. Completely different in terms of health and temperament.

So many people see movies about German Shepherds and they want to own one, and they go and buy it without having the proper information and education to know what they need to ask for. And then they bring in dogs that either are sickly and unhealthy, or are dangerous by 14 to 15 months, because they didn’t do their due diligence.

I mean, 97 of the people I speak to, have never heard of the fact that there are four different bloodlines. Most people are calling around to see where they can get the lowest price. And this is one of the breeds that you cannot ever purchase according to what you can afford. You need to purchase it instead, you either don’t do it at all or you do it right.

Julie Swan | 56:45

Yeah. Oh it makes sense, because done wrong, it can be very dangerous.

Cynthia Kelly | 56:52

And that’s the horror stories I hear daily from people all over the country who’ve gone out and purchased these dogs. Either due to lack of proper information and education, or have gone ahead and purchased them according to what they can afford. And now they want me to fix their problem. And of course the two traits that can never ever be trained or fixed are temperament and health.

You can never teach a German Shepherd to be gentle and kind, you can never teach it to be discerning between good and bad people, you can never teach it to be confident, so it doesn’t grow up to be an aggressive fear biter. And you certainly cannot pay for it to be healthy. These traits are born upon conception, and that is why proper bloodlines are everything when someone is looking at bringing one of these magnificently brilliant, yet incredibly powerful animals into their world.

Julie Swan | 57:42

Yeah exactly. So tell us a little bit about the process of getting one of your dogs. What would that look like if i came to you and said I need this for my kid? What is that process?

Cynthia Kelly | 57:56

Good question. We have three different age groups of service dogs that we provide. Always dependent upon that particular person being physically and emotionally able to handle it.

So I will sell a 12-week old puppy, which is a full process to a client, with their full understanding that this puppy will come back to me no matter where they live in this country. I have a courier that picks up at their door, drops off at mine and vice versa. But that puppy will come back to me every four to five months, so I can put more age appropriate positively reinforced education on it. It’s a process. Not many of my clients in need of a service dog are capable of physically or emotionally doing that process.

We then have our adolescence. Our puppies are puppies from birth till just about six-months. From six-months to a year and a half, I consider them adolescents, and from a year and a half on I consider them adults.

Up until about six or seven years ago, we only had two categories, we either had the 12-week old puppy which is a full process, or we had a two-year-old adult which I had spent every 24 hours of its life from nine-weeks old on socializing it, immunizing it, using age appropriate positively reinforced education on it. So the cost difference alone between a 12-week old and a two-year-old is ginormous. And then we realized that we needed to open up a third category to try to make it more feasibly possible for our service clients. And that was where we came up with the category of adolescents, which we’re probably selling 99% of right now.

The difference between an adolescent and an adult is that the adolescent has been educated in every single thing that the adult has been, but they’re still not fully mature emotionally or physically. So sometimes if we turn over an adolescent at 12 months, they may need to come back at 16 or 17 months one time for a couple weeks, just so I can finish everything that their maturity finally wrapped around. But our process, once someone contacts us, I really get to know them.

I get to know their families. I get to know if they’ve ever owned a dog before. If so, what breeds?

How many other children are in the family? What their home style is like, if they have access for the dog to be able to go and take its service vest off and run in the backyard, and just let go of the pressure of the day. These are requirements that we have prior to even attempting to move forward with someone.

My best clients are the ones who’ve never owned a dog, because they’re incredibly teachable. And I know that I can set them up perfectly with our process of being with them from the time of conception, till the dog being finished.

Once we have realized that everything that they have is the correct environment, then my mind goes to matching them with what I have available, what’s coming up, how old the dog is. And then once we’ve moved forward with them, because even my pups at nine weeks, I am opening up their knowledge base to become everything, whether it’s an epileptic detection dog, a diabetic detection, a guide dog, hearing impaired, PTSD, mobility, anxiety. And then at about seven to eight months, I kind of sit back a little bit.

If I can keep them that long, which I don’t usually, it’s in an ideal world what I’m sharing with you. But at about seven to eight months, when I have that perfect client for that perfect dog, that’s when I hone in on the very specifics of the needs of that client. That’s when I’ll hone in on specific epileptic detection, or mobility or whatever it is that they require.

Julie Swan | 1:02:27

That’s when you’re specializing the dog’s skills specific to that person. That makes so much sense. So, wow. It is a pretty good journey.

The adolescents make it like crazy to think, that probably within a year, you could have this dog in your possession, like if someone came to you and said, “hey, I want one.”

Cynthia Kelly | 1:02:44

It’s interesting that you even say a year, because so many of those organizations have two to three year waiting lists. And trust me, it’s not because they’re popular, but we’ll get into that another podcast. But I found that obviously the younger the child, like I didn’t realize it had been 10 months from the time that the client that I just came from in Florida hired us. It wasn’t until I realized that he lives in Aruba, and I happen to have been in Aruba with a girlfriend of mine the day he called me, and we’re setting on that journey again, which was totally bizarre.

I couldn’t believe that was that coincidental. But what I realized, is that it really did take me a good 11 months to prepare this female to be with this child in every single area that was required. The older the child, the younger I can get with the adolescent dog, but the younger, they definitely have to be older, just because they’re still puppies.

They still want to run and play and go and do. They’re not concrete in where they’re supposed to be doing that. But I will say that the moment a service vest goes on one of my dogs, they 100% know that they’re working.

They absolutely know that’s their job. When you take it off of them is when they get to puppy play. What I’m referring to is the zoomies.

When you’ve got a couple toddlers on the ground, the vest is off and the dog is running full out throughout the foyer, in the living room, that’s what I’m talking about in terms of the maturity or immaturity.

Julie Swan | 1:04:44

How do you help people give your dogs that quality of life so that they’re not just a working machine? Because they’re a living animal.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:04:54

They are. And that’s why the vetting process is so detailed with us, because these are my babies. I always use the line with my people.

You may be paying me for them, but I’m really only borrowing them out for their lifetime. They will always be mine. And so I am in contact with my clients from the first time they contact me until the end of the dog’s life.

There is never a question that they will ever have that I will not answer. There is not an issue that I will not physically go out and fix if needed to do that. And the reason for that, is because there is nobody on this planet that knows my dogs better than I do. From their daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, not only physical development, but emotional development as well.

So I need to know as I’m vetting, you know, people call me because they think they’re vetting me.  And my dogs and my program and my process.

While in actuality, the reason that we probably deny 65 to 70% of the people that contact us, is because I not only listened to what they’re saying. But every bit as important, I listened to what they’re not saying. And after years and years of doing this, I have to say, I’m pretty darn good knowing within five to six minutes.

Julie Swan | 1:06:13

Yeah. I’m sure you know right away, before they know.

Now, do you find some people come in completely unaware of what would be required and involved, and you’re able to work with them and educate them through?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:06:29

Most people. It is such a daunting journey for them.

Julie Swan | 1:06:32

Yeah.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:06:32

And there are so many misleads out there.

There are so many organizations that are nothing but puppy mills, that require you to do things that would be impossible for my clients to do to receive a service dog. And even then, the chances of the service dog being equipped enough to provide what they’ve been hired to provide, more times than not doesn’t exist. Doesn’t exist.

For example, many of these organizations out there have a two to three year waiting list. And you think, wow, I need to get into this because they’re so popular and they’re this and that. It’s actually not the case. There are three things that bother me about some of the organizations and what they require.

Number one, once you’ve waited two to three years for your dog, they contact you. And they want you to uproot your life for three weeks and go to their facility, where they then train you and the dog at the same time. Now I have a couple issues with this.

Number one, I don’t care where my clients come from. I don’t know many, if any of them that have the ability to uproot their life for three weeks, to then go to someone else’s facility, for that facility after three weeks to say to them, I’m really sorry, but it’s not a match. So let’s go back on the waiting list for two to three years, and then you can come and uproot your life again.

The other issue that I have with this, is the fact that these programs are taking in dogs from breeders all over the country. So when these organizations take in these dogs, they have absolutely no clue as to the temperament, the health, the intelligence of these dogs. So the reason there’s a two to three-year waiting list, is because most of them fail out.

Number two, if they don’t fail out, they’re dying at three, four, five years of age. I could think of nothing more catastrophic than one of my three, four, five-year-old children with autism finding their voice, finding their confidence, finding their social skills, finding their words, and then having that very medical machine die on them, because it’s unhealthy and leave them. It would undo everything that had been joined together for them.

The next thing that bothers me, is I could care less as to how my dogs perform on my property. They have been bred here. They have been raised here.

They have been educated here. I want to know how my dogs are performing in my clients’ life, and their daily activities. Their kids going on the school bus, going to school with our service dogs, taking the bus home, going to the gym to work out. I want to know how our dogs are performing.

That is why we set up a two-step process, of I first go out there when the dog is 95 percent complete. I fly out to wherever they are, and I spend three to four days. I basically go through their lives from 7 a.m. until the person goes to sleep at night, and I look for gaps. I look for gaps in the communication between the client and the dog. If the child’s too young, it’s the parents. I look for gaps in the parents’ ability to understand the alerts of the dog.

I really look very heavily for things that I could finish better. Then I bring the dog back home, and I fill in any of those gaps. Then I return for another three to four days, and that’s when I leave the dog there.

But to go to someone’s facility and say, “okay, you and the dog now learn together. Go home. You’re now on your own,” which is exactly what happens.

I couldn’t imagine. I couldn’t imagine putting my dogs in a position to fail like that. The clients that have waited this long for life-saving medical devices in the form of a service dog, are now not receiving what they’ve waited so long for.

I have a problem with all of that for those reasons.

Julie Swan | 1:11:07

For sure. I mean, those are really a big deal. I remember thinking when you brought it up. I again, just hadn’t thought about it.

When you go to the location, you see things. Maybe they have a split-level house, or maybe they have a different step somewhere. I mean, there’s got to be so many little things.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:11:22

Maybe they have stairs with three feet in between each one, that look downwards, that the dogs have never experienced. They’re not going to experience it with them. They’re going to experience it with me.

I had that. I had that situation where it was for a young woman, 17-years old, who lived on the upper level of the house. These stairs, I could not physically get my body sideways up the stairs, but that wasn’t even the worst of it.

The worst of it was that there was literally three feet of air between each stair. My dogs had no clue as to what they were stepping on. It took me, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but it took me 10 minutes to show the dog that it was okay going up the stairs, but there’s no way they could have done it alone.

That’s what you’re referring to.

Julie Swan | 1:12:12

That makes sense. There’s just all these little things. How would you know?

How would you know if you’re just bringing them to you? And like you said, at your property, of course, they’re going to perform well. It’s where everything worked.

The test is in the real world, and that’s what you’re presenting. And I love that. If I’m summarizing this, we start with, they contact you, they explain their needs, you vet and see if they can manage one of your dogs, and then you come back and say, okay, cool, I think this would be the best fit for you. That might be an adolescent, generally speaking, an older dog, potentially an adult, or a puppy if we have a little bit more time in the process and really need something catered.

Then you cater your program to finish out that dog specifically for them, in whatever capacity, go out there when the dog’s about 95%, and you do your quick sort of pre-test. Is this good, ready to go? You pick out a couple of things you need to work with, maybe bring the dog back, finish those things usually.

Now you have this very polished dog that’s ready to bring back, and then you integrate that. In those processes, when you go out those two times, are you also explaining how to manage the dog, where they need to go to the bathroom, when they need a break, are you giving them a routine?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:13:34

That’s a really good question, because before my dogs ever leave my property, I have a two-hour Zoom meeting, whether I’m selling a family companion dog or a service dog. First and foremost, what I do is I send out links to every single one of my clients with everything they will ever need for the lifetime of the dog. Then prior to the dog ever leaving here, I have a two-hour Zoom meeting with every single client, where I go through with them from morning till night, their schedule with this pup. From what to feed, when to feed, how to prepare the food, how to ensure that within five days of owning one of my pups, not only will it pee and poop in the same exact spot for the rest of its life, but it will potty on demand. One of the links I send out is for a bell that hangs from the door. Within eight to nine days, my pups will be ringing the bell to tell them they have to go outside and go potty.

When I get there, I literally go through that same exact Zoom meeting all over again for my service dogs, where I feed the dogs with them, I take them out, I show them what I mean by standing in one spot, giving the dog the circumference of the six-foot leash only, using the words “hurry up” that the dog’s been trained on to pee and poop on demand. And then we go from there. And obviously, the older the dog gets, the more time between, that the dog can handle it prior to ever going out to needing to go to the bathroom again.

And that fits in with the kids that are in school. Next week, for example, I’m delivering a service dog that’s sitting behind me right now, to a seven-year-old boy who’s still in grammar school. So the question was, do the teachers go out with the boy to let the dog potty? And when do we do that?

Do we do it during lunch? Do we do it when it’s recess time? How do we do that?

So literally, when I tell you that from Wednesday morning, I will be hopping on the school bus to make sure that the dog is comfortable in the seat next to the child. Oh, that reminds me, I have to get a nonstick pad, because the bus seats are so slippery that the dogs can’t stay on them. They slip right off, it’s crazy.

And then spending the day in school with the young man. Making sure that he is handling the dog properly, that there aren’t any questions that the teachers have for me.

And then I ride back on the bus with the child. We go home, and we finish out the day. So yes, to answer your question, we go through the whole process over again, because I’m living there to make sure that they have no questions.

Julie Swan | 1:16:13

Yeah. That makes sense.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:16:16

But not even any questions, that they physically experience the daily life of their new companion.

Julie Swan | 1:16:26

Yeah. And where are certain struggles you see that people don’t anticipate, or that you have to go over ahead of time with them? What don’t people think about?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:16:42

What they don’t think about mainly, and I just had it this weekend, is the fact that when I provide a dog for a young child like this, I need the dog to literally be attached at that child’s hip all the time. So I was in a situation last weekend where they had three nannies, a cook, and someone to clean the house. And because of this little boy’s seizure so often, everyone was always holding him.

And because of that, he has lack of mobility. He’s not walking. He can barely stand on his own.

And then what happens, is when he sits, because he has this other issue with his stomach core, if he sits up, he falls down and lands with his head. So they’re always holding him. And because they were in such a routine, there were several times when they went to take him upstairs with a bottle to put him down to bed.

And I’m like, “wait, where did he go?” You know, I need to be a part of this. So what they don’t recognize is the need, especially in the beginning, for this dog to be a part of whether you’re changing a diaper, whether you’re feeding a bottle, whether the kid is eating lunch or breakfast, the dog needs to be there.

And when you have other people or the mom, and this is the big thing too, it wasn’t that the dog wasn’t ready to stay there this weekend. It was that the mom wasn’t ready for the dog to stay there this weekend.

And what I mean by that, is most of my families are living such a crisis, trying to make sure their child lives from seizure to seizure, and calling all the hospitals to look for new things that are coming out, new medical advances. That for her to split 25% of her brain to now focus on, when you take the child to physical therapy, it doesn’t sound like a lot, but you open up your door, you get out, you take the stroller out, you put the child in the stroller. Now you go to the back of the truck, you open it up, you put the leash on the dog, you call the dog down now.

It’s another whole facet that she needs, that my parents need to become seamless, so it doesn’t become a problem. But instead remains the asset that they paid me for. So those are some of the big things, is incorporating it into every single aspect of life.

And they’re not used to doing that.

That’s one of the biggest issues.

Julie Swan | 1:19:30

I bet that’s a little bit of work, right? It’s kind of a bubble, because you have to take on more work, so that this can eventually stream out and make it better, which everything like this is. So that makes sense.

You’re in there in school. Have you run into any issues in the schools? How does that work?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:19:48

Always, because people aren’t abreast of the law. Everybody had ESA dogs. And actually, American Airlines was the first ones to shut it down, because people were bringing pigs and birds and monkeys on planes, calling them emotional support animals.

American Airlines finally said, we’re done. We have yapping dogs the entire flight. It’s disturbing our customers.

We will no longer allow ESA animals on our planes. But by law, they were required to allow service dogs. So even before this, I never registered my dogs as ESA animals.\

I just thought it was meaningless. And of course, for those who aren’t aware of what defines the difference between an ESA dog and a service dog, a service dog must be trained to perform an act for its owner. And so, for example, a month ago, I went for my first visit with a 17-year-old boy, nonverbal autism.

And all of us went out for recess. And his school, he’s in a streamlined school, which is the first time I had ever experienced that before with an autistic child, where they were in just a regular school, instead of being in a specialty school. And his school was attached to a high school.

And for recess, the Special Ed teachers took the children out to walk this big track that the high school had. And so I’m in the middle of the track on the grass. And I’m watching this young man with the custom belt, which attaches to the dog.

And he’s walking the track with the dog. And all the sudden, I hear from behind me this golf cart, coming up quickly. And I immediately ignore the golf cart.

And I walk to the boy, because I know something’s going on. And the golf cart stops, and so does the boy and the teacher and myself. And this gentleman turns to me and says, “I’m sorry, but we don’t allow dogs on our equipment.”

Now he was referring to his equipment being the track that they were walking on. So at this point, I’m exhausted. It’s been three days of me doing this already.

And I really did have to bite my cheek for a minute and take a deep breath. And I turned to him and I said, “excuse me. I so appreciate the fact that you don’t allow dogs on school equipment.

And I can totally appreciate and respect that. Now let me inform you of something. Number one, this is not a dog.

Number two, this is a medical device. Number three, this is a service dog that this young man requires. And number four, it’s illegal for you to even mention it to me.

So unless you guys want to take this to court.” And he says to me, “well, it’s coming from the county or the something, whatever regulates the school.” I said that “I support you in taking exactly the information, and exactly my tone back to your superiors, give them that information and give them my phone number if they’d like to contact me.” This happens all the time.

And people are just unaware of the laws. And we don’t stop walking the track. We continue to walk the track.

And we go back in the building. And within two minutes of me being in the building, the supervisor from across the way comes flying in to the classroom and says, “Ms. Kelly, Ms. Kelly, I’m so sorry. I apologize.

It was a complete misunderstanding. Of course, he’s allowed anywhere he wants to go.” I said, “thank you very much.

Please educate the rest of your staff as such.” But that’s where it’s my responsibility to continue to educate the public because they are unaware of the laws.

Julie Swan | 1:24:13

And I do think there’s a lot of confusion, because ESA is very different than service dogs.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:24:20

And they abused it. So everybody knows the abuse. Everybody’s been in the airport, or flown on a plane with a dog barking in their ear the entire time, or responding to another dog on the plane.

That’s not what defines a service dog. So there’s a reason why we’re skeptical.

Julie Swan | 1:24:38

Yes. And these laws that you’re referring to, they’re federal laws, right? It’s not state specific.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:24:43

They are.

Julie Swan | 1:24:44

So it’s anywhere in the United States. Do you have to educate your clients on this part of it as well?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:24:51

Yes, very much. Very much. Because they would be so intimidated.

I mean, the teachers all of a sudden became white, and I’m like, “I got you guys, just stand back for a minute. I’ll handle this. Don’t worry about a thing.”

And they kind of laughed at me, because they had already picked up on my meek personality. And so I handled it, but this happens often. I don’t know why this just came up, maybe because we were just talking about airports.

But I can’t tell you how many times I’ll be in the airport, because I’m always flying somewhere to deliver my dogs, and I’ll be walking in one direction, and someone will put their hand out to touch my dog. And I feel like I want to break the wrist because first of all, whether it was a service dog or it’s not a service dog, to impose your body and touch my animal is infuriating enough, but for red vests to be everywhere on this dog, hanging from its neck and everything else. And to absolutely not have any respect for anything like that is infuriating.

It’s infuriating. That brings me to the young kids that always come running at my dogs in airports, and again, my response is stop, and it’s my job again to say, you know what, number one, you never, ever touch anybody’s dog without talking to mom and dad and getting their permission for it. Number two, when you see a vest like this, it means the dog doesn’t get touched at all.

So if we can start them young enough, maybe by a couple of generations from now, people will have a better understanding for what defines it and the rules behind it, but they don’t.

Julie Swan | 1:26:41

What do you wish people knew about service dogs that they just don’t?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:26:46

I wish that people really understood the medical necessity and how, if we had the ability to get out of our own “perfect lives,” and imagine just for a moment, what you would feel like as a parent, as a brother or sister of someone who’s impaired, as a grandparent, as anyone envisioning having a child that you’ve brought into this world to be the very best that they can be. And to find that from the onset, they have tremendous limitations.

But to remove so many of those limitations, all they need to do is have a dog, to give them the freedom, the physical and emotional freedom to live like you and I do. To be independent, to be social, to be active, to be part of our world, our society.

That’s what I want people to know. I want people to know that it’s not a game. I want people to know that they don’t go on Amazon and buy a service vest and put it on their dog.

That this is a medical device, and it cannot be treated as a joke because you don’t want to pay for your dog to sit in a carrier on a plane. That’s what I want people to know most.

Julie Swan | 1:28:26

Yeah, because there is no organization that’s stamping this. There’s no stamp.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:28:31

None. And it’s a fallacy for people to think that they are. You brought it up earlier.

It’s the law, right?

In terms of service dogs, there is no law that stamps a service dog to be a service dog. And that’s why people get away with abusing the system.

Julie Swan | 1:28:55

Right. Which is why, I mean, regulation is a whole other discussion.

But there is a considerable difference from my dog who’s nice and won’t bite anyone and bark in public emotional support animal, to your dogs who are medically alerting people. I think there’s just no comparison. And you’re right, it’s really hard because people are really abusing the system for what it is.

Yeah.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:29:22

Yeah. It just makes it harder for the people that are in need of it.

Julie Swan | 1:29:26

Yeah, absolutely. So you had talked about with the four different German Shepherd lines, and how yours are specifically this.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:29:38

The four different bloodlines in German Shepherds.

Julie Swan | 1:29:39

Yes, the bloodlines that I’m seeing in German Shepherds working the border, because I live by the border in Arizona, are a very different temperament, very different.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:29:49

Completely different. Those are soldiers, literally. When I was discussing the differences between the American line, the East German line, the Czech line, and the West German bloodline. Number one, the East German dogs and the Czech dogs in this county have just been destroyed. The American line is flooded with major hip and elbow dysplasia, renal failure, leukemia, cancer, and DM. The East German dogs, and the Czech dogs, were originally created by and for the Soviet Union’s military. And then we brought them over to the United States for our military and our canine police force.

And our departments haven’t touched these East or Czech dogs in this country for the past 12 to 14 years, because their minds and bodies can’t be trusted. They’re dying under the age of five or six, they’re crippled by three, or they’re dangerous, anywhere between 13 to 18 months of age. And so what they’ve done, what our military and our canine police forces have done, they’ve done one of two things.

They’ve either moved over to the Malinois breed, which is strictly a professional breed, or they’re going directly to the Czech Republic to get them. But these are working dogs in the strongest sense of the word. These dogs absolutely are on 24-7.

They have no off-switch. They do not make family companion dogs. It was like when Osama Bin Laden was taken down by that Malinois, and everybody thought, this is the breed I want.

I want a Malinois in my house. And the breeders actually had the gall to sell it to them. And then they were returned two months later, because these are soldiers.

That’s why they go underwater with Navy SEALs. They jump out of helicopters. These dogs, they’re soldiers, they’re robots.

They’re the most brilliant, physically agile animals on the planet. They’re not family companion dogs.

Julie Swan | 1:31:36

No, they’re much more intense than my German Shorthairs. And my German Shorthairs couch surf for hours. You know, if you let them.

And you just take that to the whole other level. You could never have one of those dogs do what your dogs are asked to do. It just wouldn’t work.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:31:52

And the funny thing is, when you bring that up, is because my dogs will take down a 300-pound man in 2.5 seconds. The difference is, they don’t work 24-7 to do it. Where the East, the Czech dogs, or the Malinois, they work 24-7 to do just that.

You know what I mean? That’s what they get rewarded for. They get rewarded for picking up a scent.

They get rewarded for taking down a man, finding a man in the bush. They work to be praised. Whether it’s with their ball, or whatever it is that they use, that’s what they live for.

So we’re just building that drive over and over. We’re implementing more drive, and more drive, and more drive, because that’s what they get praised for.  And that’s why they’re cloning them.

Julie Swan | 1:32:40

Well, yours are entirely different. So they’re not working to play tug.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:32:44

They are. They are, though. They’re defined as a working dog.

But the difference is, my dogs have an off-switch.

Julie Swan | 1:32:52

Yes.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:32:53

These dogs that the police force, and the military use, do not.

That’s why when people bring them into their homes as family companion dogs, and they’ve taken them on a 20-mile run, and they come home, and the dog looks up at them and says, hey, mom, dad, that was a great appetizer. What are we doing for real? And when they don’t do the for real, the dog starts to chew the siding off their home, because these dogs need something 24 hours a day.

There is no off-switch.

Julie Swan | 1:33:22

Yeah.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:33:22

My dogs are napping, as we speak. You know, they’re napping. They’re not working.

Julie Swan | 1:33:30

Yeah, and that’s temperament and bloodlines. There’s no way around that.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:33:35

Correct. You can’t train it.

Julie Swan | 1:33:36

I feel like your dogs are just emotionally more mature, much quicker.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:33:43

I have a couple here you’d beg to differ, but yes.

Julie Swan | 1:33:49

For the most part.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:33:50

They’re babies. But my boys really don’t fully physically or mentally mature until they’re three and a half. So they’re just big galoops.

I mean, literally, big galoops. They’re unbelievable. They’re unbelievable.

Julie Swan | 1:34:04

Well, you talked about the differences in the two, and you said it’s very important to pair people with the right male or female for their needs. Can you explain a little bit, some of the differences?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:34:16

So it’s funny, because when people ask me how I match people, and I say to them, I know within two to three weeks of the dog’s age, what puppy is going to go for what type of service ultimately. And they’re like, “that’s insane. How would you ever know that?”

And every breeder listening to this is going to say, “that’s impossible. How would you ever know that?” I’m going to explain it like this, okay?

So imagine you’ve got a 12 by 12 whelping box. And the mom is laying on one side of the whelping box, and you’ve got eight puppies on the other side that are sleeping. And the first one wakes up and looks at mom across the whelping box and says, “I know darn well I’m gonna barrel over, tunnel through, go around. I’m gonna make it to mom’s milk. I know I am. Nothing will stand in my way.”

And then you’ve got the second grouping of puppies that wake up and say, “wow, you know, she’s pretty far away but I heard slow and steady wins the race. So I’m going to start moseying on that way now.”

And then you’ve got the third grouping of puppies that wake up and say, “oh my goodness, Uber X please. There is not a chance I can make it.” So although it makes it sound like there’s a cavern between the three of them, it’s so minute that only someone like me and my husband would recognize it. The first grouping of puppies, are puppies that I use as epileptic or diabetic detection dogs. I use them as guide dogs. They have that little extra, omph. And it’s usually a female.

The second grouping of puppies I will use for PTSD and anxiety. The third grouping of puppies I will 100% use for depression, anxiety, panic attacks, autism, children with autism.

And then of course they morph over into being epileptic detection dogs at the same time. So all three can do it all. When you’re talking about guide dogs or hearing impaired, that kind of a thing, it takes just a little extra oomph for them to be able to be educated.

And I know it sounds simple for us who have sight, but to walk straight, teach a dog to go around a sign and then continue in a straight line is quite advanced. It’s quite advanced. And so it just takes a little extra oomph from the puppies that say, “I’m gonna barrel over, under, through but I’m gonna get the job done.”

And that’s the kind of temperament I need for that.

Julie Swan | 1:36:50

They’re just a little bit more driven to the purpose.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:36:53

Driven, yep, yep, yep.

Julie Swan | 1:36:56

Yeah, which is why of course, the easiest thing to do is just call you and say, “this is what I need. You tell me what I need.”

Cynthia Kelly | 1:37:03

That’s why, whether it’s a family companion dog or it’s a service dog. What people hire me for is to match them with exactly what it is that they need. Because as a kid, I’d go to a breeder, and even then I had a really good eye, but the breeder would let out 10 puppies, for example.

And what I didn’t know when I’m picking out my puppy to take home, is that the one puppy that is running around crazy has to poop, right? The one puppy that’s laying there lethargic just had a six course meal. So for me to spend 20 minutes, and pick out the puppy that I want, it’s a crapshoot.

There’s no way to know. But if you’re looking for a puppy, find a reputable breeder that has taken the time to know their puppies inside and out. That can give you, whether you have two-year old triplets at home or you have all teenagers over the age of 11, your breeder will be able to match you with the specific pup that will best fit your family.

I would never give a family who’s never owned a dog before, a male. I wouldn’t do it. They develop much more slowly.

They don’t know where their bodies are. They’re teddy bears. I love them, but they just mature too slowly.

I would start them with a female and then have them come back for a male.

Julie Swan | 1:38:33

That makes sense. If people wanna get a pet from you, can they just get a pet? Can they have one of those incredible dogs as a pet?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:38:42

Absolutely. A family companion dog.

Julie Swan | 1:38:44

Yeah.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:38:44

Absolutely. We’ve cut down a lot on that in terms of doing family companion dogs. But I always do make exceptions to families, especially families that have never owned a dog before, because I know they’re going to be teachable.

And I know that I can provide them with something that their children will remember for the rest of their lives.

Julie Swan | 1:39:08

Yeah. And that’s a lofty goal anyway. That’s beautiful.

For someone considering a service dog, what should they know before they start the journey? Is there anything to get their head in the right space?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:39:22

It’s a process. Yes. It’s a process.

It’s not an event. And anyone who sells you an event, you’re gonna get a very expensive family dog that does nothing for you. It’s very important that wherever you get your dog from, I personally think it’s got to come from a program where they are breeding their own dogs, they’re raising their own dogs, and they’re educating their own dogs.

Because just like every dog I sell, whether it’s a family companion dog or a service dog, we include full comprehensive training when the dog is old enough. Almost every one of our dogs come back to us between nine to 11-months of age. And they stay with us for three to four weeks for their full comprehensive training.

The reasons that we include that in with the purchase price, there are several reasons. The first reason we include it is because I want my pup to be a part of every single aspect that family wants it to be a part of. Whether taking a family walk in the evening, or they’re vacationing with their dog, or they’re having family dinners, whatever they’re doing, I want to know their dog is 100% responsive to them at all times.

The second reason we include it, which is by far one of the most important to me, as of today, I have seven generations alone on my property. I have pups from three-weeks to 17-years of age. So when their puppy comes back to me between nine to 11-months of age, it is out with its brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles, mothers, fathers, grandparents, great-grandparents, and great-great-grandparents.

And the education that my elder dogs are able to teach the younger ones, is something I’ve tried to replicate as a human for as many years as I’ve been in business and been unable to do it. The next reason we include it, is because you can’t own one without it being properly educated. Which leads me to my final reason, I don’t want anybody else touching my dogs. There are just too many yahoos out there that want to control a German Shepherd, instead of using age appropriate, positively reinforced education.

So the same thing goes when you are looking at these organizations for a service dog. 98% of them are outsourcing their puppies. So not only are they being bred by somebody else, but then you’re bringing them in to be trained by somebody else. Which then means you have no clue as to what you’re producing, if it’s going to succeed or if it’s going to fail. Or if it’s going to live past five or it’s not. If it’s going be dangerous with young children or not. Because none of these dogs have had those kinds of experiences.

So my suggestion is when you’re looking for a service dog, you find an organization that completes the process from conception of the dogs through the end of the dog’s life. And if you can find anybody other than me that does that, let me know.

Julie Swan | 1:42:31

After you explain it, I don’t know how you could get reliability in any other way.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:42:37

I agree.

Julie Swan | 1:42:38

Can you tell us a little bit, I know breeders are listening to this thinking, “okay, so how does she do it all?” You’ve got days you’ve got to go out with each dog twice.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:42:51

I have some incredible people.

Julie Swan | 1:42:53

Yeah, so tell us a little bit about what happens on the back end of your business.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:42:56

So my husband is really the development/mental process really of the babies. From conception to socializing them to educating them as young ones to play. We have my kennel manager, Benjamin, who’s phenomenal with them.

I have someone else who works for us. So the puppies are out being socialized every day. And the thing that’s so amazing about what we do here, is that all our dogs can go out at the same time.

They can all go out and play together. It’s not like I ever have a situation where a male can’t go out with a male, which as breeders, we understand how many people can say that they can let one stud dog out with another stud dog. Well, I have to be able to do that, not for lack of space.

I have to be able to do that to ensure the temperament that I’m producing, because I couldn’t allow them to develop any other way.  Are we very careful with certain stud dogs that know that there are bitches in heat when they’re out playing?

Absolutely. I’m not going to be stupid about it. But for the most part, all the dogs can go out together.

Julie Swan | 1:44:17

Wow. Which is, that’s an incredible feat in and of itself.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:44:21

Yeah.

Julie Swan | 1:44:22

Yeah. Do you do that through training or is it just temperament mostly?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:44:24

It’s bloodlines. It’s all genetic.

It’s 98% genetic. Honest to goodness. It can’t be done any other way.

But we also make it prosper, by continuing that socialization. The one aspect that I can’t fix, is my dogs have a thing for white dogs. I can’t tell you what it is, but it’s in their bloodlines.

It’s genetic. They see a white dog, and they think that hell has opened up to bring them down under. They just do not like little white dogs.

I can’t do anything to help it.

Julie Swan | 1:45:01

Like little white dogs?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:45:02

Little white dogs. I swear to God, they think that they’re ghosts. I don’t know.

I don’t know. It’s the only color breed on the planet, it’s like an elephant being afraid of a mouse. That’s what it reminds me of.

Julie Swan | 1:45:18

Hilarious.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:45:19

Right?

Julie Swan | 1:45:20

Do they get scared of them or do they wanna eat them?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:45:22

They get scared of them and then they wanna eat them. I mean, it’s crazy. I don’t know what it is.

I don’t know what it is. I’ve never been able to figure that out.

Julie Swan | 1:45:32

That’s so funny. Oh man.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:45:36

So some people run the field at a Sieger show. Some people run it with like their dog’s favorite toy. You know, I’m running it with a little white dog on top of my head.

Julie Swan | 1:45:52

Yeah. That’s pretty funny. So your husband’s running the whelping puppy rearing stuff for the babies, right?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:46:00

Yes, yes.

Julie Swan | 1:46:01

He’s got other people who are interacting.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:46:03

And the socialization, he takes them out every day, whether he’s going to the bank, or he’s going to the grocery store, he’s going here or there. And we start them at a very young age. We have vests that are very, very small.

We start them at a very young age, because whether it’s a vacuum or it’s a mop in a grocery store, it’s just something else like that every day they get to see something different. And that develops and continues the confidence that they were bred with. And then, when it comes to the more intricate training of the opening of the scent training, for example, that’s where I come in with the different puzzle games and things like that, that are more intricately detailed for each specific need.

Julie Swan | 1:46:59

That makes sense. Wow. So with all of your experience, what advice do you have for new breeders getting started?

Cynthia Kelly | 1:47:08

My advice would be, you need to start with the very, very best of whatever breed you’re looking at. You need to make sure that whatever breed it is, you need to look at the worst physical defects that arise in that breed. And you need to do your due diligence to make sure that there’s not one, not two, not three, that there are eight to 10 generations that you’re buying from that have been cleared of all of those genetic defects.

Not just some of them, all of those genetic defects, so you know when you start, you are starting with a clean slate. That’s the most important aspect of it.

Julie Swan | 1:47:48

The things you can’t undo.

Cynthia Kelly | 1:47:50

Things you can’t undo. And then you buy one from one litter. I don’t recommend buying two puppies at the same time ever.

I’ve never allowed a client to buy two puppies at the same time, because we do not want them to become dogs dogs. We want them to become people dogs. And they’ll create a bond with each other that eliminates human need.

So what my clients do, is when they bring me their dogs at nine to 11-months for training, that’s when they take their other one home, because the other dog is already bonded with the human. The older dog already knows where it gets everything from. So the puppy will just follow suit.

Julie Swan | 1:48:31

I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Cynthia Kelly. You can learn more about her on her website, regisregal.com or on social media. She’s @RegisRegal on Instagram and Facebook and on YouTube as Regis Regal German Shepherds.

Thank you Cynthia for taking the time to talk with me and thank you so much for joining us for this conversation.