By Nancy Huddleston, Editor

It’s hard to beat a win-win situation.

But Linda Ball of Pawsitive Perspectives Assistance Dogs (PawPADS) is trying by adding another “win” to the equation.

Her nonprofit “facilitates the power of the human-canine bond” through the process of training service dogs and placing them with people with disabilities. That’s the win-win.

The extra “win” comes from providing at-risk youth the opportunity to train the dogs through the Project Y.E.S. (Youth Empowerment Services) program.

And in the future there’s a fourth “win” that Ball hopes to foster along – Paw Corps, which is a program for veterans who are experiencing post-traumatic stress (PTSD) to get them to train assistance dogs for fellow veterans.

Ball admits she has a lot on her plate, but her love for helping others is what’s driving her to succeed.

One of those days

Ball was having a frustrating morning one Saturday – one that’s not uncommon to people starting up a new organization.

She’d resigned herself to going to Target to buy a hose and have a cup of coffee without one of her dogs (she has two service dogs and two regular dogs). “I was thinking, ‘is this worth it’ and feeling overwhelmed,” she said.

Normally on Saturdays, Ball scouts out garage sales looking for items to use for PawPADS to help train her troops. But as she left her home, she decided to forgo that routine.

Then fate intervened.

She decided to stop at a garage sale run by Partners in Excellence, a program for autistic children. There, she found a wheelchair and some tables for PawPADs.

“One thing led to another and I ended up coming back and talking with the director to share my ideas of the assistance dog program using at-risk youth,” Ball said.

During the course of the conversation the director offered up a home on seven acres on 150th Street in south Savage, right behind Prior Lake High School for PawPADS to use as a training facility.

“So in one hour I went from ‘is this worth it’ to finding a place to change the course of our program,” Ball said with a huge smile on her face.

PawPADS

Ball is originally from Minnesota but has been all over the world in a career that has revolved around helping others. She’s worked with people with disabilities in Minnesota, worked with deaf and hard-of-hearing people through the Peace Corps in Mongolia and done humanitarian missions with GOAL in the Balkans and Central America.

In describing her career, she says quite simply: “It has been and continues to be working to make others’ lives better.”

Her path toward working with dogs came about after she and her husband decided to come home to the states after living abroad for a long time. She’s from Minnesota; he’s from Colorado and they just kind of “ended up” in a small coastal town in Oregon.

While contemplating coming back to the states, she thought about her two dogs and how smart and trainable they were and decided to look into a career where she could help people through dogs. She attended the Assistance Dog Institute and afterward founded Pawsitive Perspectives. Ball has a degree in Service Dog Education and an Instructors Certification in the High Schooled Assistance Dog Program.

“About a year ago I thought if I’m going to do this and make it happen, I needed to come back to Minnesota where I had some connections and there are more opportunities,” she said.

At the same time Ball was making a career change, so was her husband. He has had a career in law enforcement for about 25 years, the last part of which was training police officers in Bosnia. He’s now a catastrophic insurance adjustor.

The dogs

At home, Harvey and Macy are part of one big happy family that includes two more adopted dogs (one from Bosnia and another from Honduras) and two cats (one from Mongolia and one from Bosnia).

Harvey was donated to PawPADS and is a 2-year-old lab mix, whose been recovering from a broken tail for the past four months. Macy was also donated and is 16 weeks old. She’s a lab and golden retriever mix.

Both dogs wear their PawPADS vests while they work and train. They can cue on 90 tasks, which includes turning on lights, picking up items from the floor, opening doors and tugging wheelchairs.

Although there are other organizations that train service dogs to help people with disabilities, there’s still a long waiting list – the average wait is 3 to 5 years.

And even though her life-long desire to help others is what got Ball into the assistance dog program, it was the at-risk youth component that touched her even more and drives her to set her program apart from others.

The High Schooled Assistance Dog program (HS A-dog) helps kids at risk by focusing them on a program that provides them the “unconditional love” of a dog, something many of them miss in their lives. Ball is hoping that with the training center’s proximity to PLHS, she can partner with the district for this aspect of the program.

Students in the program learn impulse control, consistency and the power of positive reinforcement. As well, Ball points out, youth in the program gain social and emotional competence and they are able to participate in an activity that is of a significant value to the community.

Another spin off of the high school program is Paw Corps with veterans training dogs for other veterans, but that one is off in the future.

Help is needed

Pawsitive Perspectives is an all-volunteer organization still struggling to get off the ground. Ball has put her own money into it and is looking for any and all volunteers to help.

“We believe that ‘it takes a village to raise a service dog,’” the brochure says, so there are many ways to help, including donating puppies, training services, writing grants/fundraise, assist with public relations, or offering expertise in other areas. What’s more, help is needed to do some repairs and modifications to the house on 150th that is now the training facility.

“Basically, the sky’s the limit,” Ball said of the needs of PawPADS.

The average cost of raising and training one of the dogs is between $20,000 and $25,000. PawPADs accepts monetary and in-kind donations and are always looking for wheelchairs, dog food, toys, bedding and veterinarian services.

Nancy Huddleston can be reached at editor@savagepacer.com. 

To help

What: Pawsitive Perspectives Assistance Dogs, 8239 W. 150th St. Savage

Web site: www.PawPADS.org

E-Mail: info@pawpads.org

Phone: (952) 226-2063