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A reliable service dog is not created at the end of training, but begins with the right parents, health testing, early development, temperament evaluation, task training, public-access prep, matching, and lifetime support.
Most people picture service-dog training as something that happens to a dog: send a dog to a program, get a service dog back. Over 15 years of breeding and training these dogs, I can tell you it doesn’t work that way. A service dog’s reliability is decided long before formal training starts — in which two parents we pair, in the health testing we run before a litter is planned, and in the first eight weeks of a puppy’s life.
That’s why this page doesn’t start with training. It starts where the dog starts. Below is the complete standard we hold every Snowy Pines service dog to. If you’re comparing programs, hold every program to it, including ours.
Where does a service dog actually begin? Yeah, I think it begins with the parents. Um, and so it starts with genetics and making sure that you’re breeding healthy dogs. Um, but ultimately also getting into the temperament of those parents and making sure that we’re pairing the right parents together. Um, and it really is about trying to get that service dog prospect, but also making sure that the whole litter is a very well rounded litter that will give us both pets and wonderful service dogs.
What would you say the percentage of, uh, of our puppies that are born here turn out to be service dogs? Chloe, you might know that that. Yeah, I would say we’re right at about 15%. So, um, you know, not everybody is cut out for service work, but we do have a really high percentage.
Right. And cut out for service work. What does that mean? Because it can almost sound like these dogs are special or they’re better than these other dogs, but that’s not really the case.
It’s not the case. It’s not the case at all. So some of these dogs, whenever we’re looking for service dog prospects, we’re looking for a very specific dog, usually a higher drive dog with a higher set of tolerance to environmental changes. So that would not be the best dog for a family, because a family doesn’t want a higher drive dog that you’re having to go and walk, you know, multiple miles a day and stuff. They want somebody who’s going to curl up with them at the end of the day and just hang out and look at everything with the kids and stuff. And that’s not your typical service dog. Your typical service dog is there to help that handler. So they are on high alert kind of at any given time.
Yeah. Service dog wants to work. Yeah, right. They they have that drive to want to do and accomplish things. And if they don’t have things to do and accomplish, uh, those dogs as family dogs can be the ones that you walk in and find all your shoes chewed up, right? Yes, absolutely.
No federal certification, registry, or ID card exists for service dogs.
The full story on certification, registration, and accreditation — what each word means and what the law actually requires — is in our complete guide: service dog certification and registration, explained.
What makes a service dog legitimate is the training and the tasks, nothing else.
Skip one, and you’re gambling with a family’s safety and a dog’s future.
Yes, our Labs are white and our Goldens are cream, and families love that. But color is the last thing on our list when we select breeding parents. Here’s the order we actually work in:
Gary, you mentioned, you know, talking about genetics and pairing. So dig a little bit deeper into how we’re getting 15 plus percent of our dogs to be service dogs, because I would say that is a very high number statistically across the industry. Uh, so why why are we why are we at that?
Well, I think it, you know, it has a lot to do with just the, our time in, in, in the bloodlines and, um, the, the amount of time we’ve been invested in, in generation after generation. I mean, we’re going on 7 or 8 generations at this point on the Labrador side of things. And so it’s it’s, um, really important to know what you’re breeding. Um, and I think that and then I’m sure Chloe will get into it a little bit, but it has to do with how they’re raised as well. And so what happens really from birth to that, say seven week mark when we’re actually conducting temperament testing?
Nice. Maybe we’ll come back to that one just in a minute. But going down that path for parents. So what do we look for in parents. Not just service dogs, but maybe parents in general from a dam/sire standpoint? And then maybe what do we look like look at for dams and sires that we intend to get service dogs out of?
Yeah. So I mean, we’re going to look at obviously health first and foremost with that. That’s going to be, you know, uh, hips and eyes and elbows and, uh, getting into a genetic test that gives us 100, 200 different genetic markers. At this point, they add new genetic markers every year. And so, um, we’ll continuously do that. And so, um, and then ultimately, you know, it comes to holding back the right dogs. And so it’s a very fine tuning process over years of time. But the health and then obviously the temperament, um, we want to make sure that they’re very well balanced. And so it’s really about the mix to of what’s this sire’s, um, temperament and what’s this dam’s temperament. And so making sure we’re mixing and pairing the right both for genetic purposes but also temperament purposes.
Perfect. And, uh, would you say that, uh, well, to back up, you also, you mentioned some, uh, genetic tests. You mentioned hips, elbows, cardiac. Is that part of it as well? It is. Yeah. Yeah, cardiac is part of it. And so, um, over the last ten, 15 years, um, Arkansas has really lacked the, um, having a board certified, um, cardiologist. And so we’re able to do the basic test and make sure we can get that. But also there are a lot of genetic markers on through the Embark that also have to play into the cardiac piece. And so things like EIC (Exercise-Induced Collapse) and making sure that the heart is very, very healthy.
Good. Uh, so we look for dam/sires, we look for genetics, we look for history, we look for temperament. Does color matter, Chloe.
Color. So it doesn’t, but it does at the same time. So we are known as our super light yellow Labradors. We’re Snowy Pines White Labs. So it does matter to us, but it’s not the top priority for us. Um, a color would actually probably be one of our bottom priorities because we’re always going to put, um, health is going to be the absolute top, and then we are always going to put temperament right underneath that. And then comes our, our color.
Before any dog joins our breeding program, it is independently screened for the orthopedic, eye, and genetic conditions that matter most in Labradors and Golden Retrievers. We publish the original certificates for each dog — not summaries — so you can verify every result yourself.
There are two independent ways to test a dog’s health, and a responsible program uses both. OFA screening looks at the dog’s own body — the actual joints, heart, and eyes — through X-rays and specialist exams. Embark DNA testing looks at the dog’s genes, revealing conditions it could silently pass to puppies even while appearing perfectly healthy. One tells you what the dog has; the other tells you what it could pass on.
We publish the original certificates for each dog — not summaries.
The Orthopedic Foundation for Animals is an independent nonprofit registry. X-rays and exams are read by board-certified specialists who never meet the dog and don’t know whose dog it is — the evaluation is blind and impartial, and final results are permanently searchable in OFA’s public database.
Screens for: hip dysplasia.
How it’s done: positioned X-ray read independently by three veterinary radiologists who reach a consensus grade.
Why it matters: hip dysplasia is inherited — screening parents is the single best way to lower risk in puppies.
Screens for: elbow dysplasia.
How it’s done: flexed X-rays, read by the same independent radiologist panel.
Why it matters: catches joint disease that may not show symptoms until the dog is older.
Screens for: congenital heart disease.
How it’s done: cardiac exam by a veterinarian — at the advanced level, a cardiologist — listening for murmurs and abnormal rhythms. Cardiac exams are rolling out across our program now, and certificates publish to each dog’s profile as they complete.
Why it matters: confirms the parent’s heart is structurally sound before breeding.
Screens for: inherited eye disease — cataracts, retinal problems, eyelid abnormalities.
How it’s done: dilated-eye exam by a board-certified veterinary ophthalmologist (CAER = Companion Animal Eye Registry).
Why it matters: catches physically-visible eye disease DNA testing alone can miss.
Embark reads each parent’s DNA from a cheek swab, revealing conditions a perfectly healthy-looking dog can silently carry and pass to its puppies.
Screens for: inherited conditions common in Labradors and Golden Retrievers: up to 190 health markers, varying by breed and dog.
How it’s done: cheek-swab DNA sample analyzed by Embark; results published on each parent’s profile.
Why it matters: a carrier can appear perfectly healthy. Knowing both parents’ genetic status means no pairing can produce a puppy with two copies of a tested condition.
The first eight weeks shape a dog for life. A puppy that spends them in a quiet barn meets the world already behind. Ours don’t.
From the first days, every puppy is handled daily — gentle, structured handling that builds tolerance for touch, which matters for a dog that will one day be leaned on, examined, and reached for in public. As their eyes and ears open, we layer in sensory exposure and watch startle-recovery closely — how fast a puppy bounces back. And we build human focus: that orientation toward a human face is the seed of everything a service dog later does.
What happens from birth to eight weeks old. From birth to eight weeks, I would say is probably the most important piece of that puppy’s life. Um, a lot happens in those that eight week timeframe. So from day three to day 16, we are going to submerge our puppies into what is called early neurological stimulation. And we’re also going to do early scent introduction. So what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to be putting puppies through different stimuli. And what this does is this helps them develop at a very, very early age how to properly react and how to get themselves back calm once new things have been introduced to them. Um, which is what is going to make them super stable. Not only service dogs, but also family pets.
So what kind of what what are those things that you’re you’re exposing them to? So what we’re going to do is we’re going to expose them. So we’re going to be lifting them up. We’re going to be inverting them over. We’re going to be holding them upside down. We do a lot of tickling of their feet. We put them on different types of surfaces, such as like really cold surfaces. And all of this is just stimulating. Their little brains right out of the gate, um, and what this is like I said, what this is going to do is it’s going to help them. And by the end of that, you’ll notice at like day 15 and day 16, they’re very much less reactive as you’re going through that with them. Um, you know, the first few days they’re very reactive. They’re very Protestant of it. But by that day, 15 and 16, they just kind of accept it. As, you know, this is just kind of an everyday thing for me. Um, so that’s what happens that first couple of weeks.
And then after that, we, um, we’ve taken a lot from different things such as puppy culture and, um, things along those lines. And we’ve taken what we really like and we’ve added some new things into it to really begin, um, just kind of early developmental things for them. So we’re going to get them used to different textures, different surfaces, elevated surfaces, uneven surfaces, um, and then different types of people. So we bring in really young kids to let them, you know, just play with puppies. We bring in older people to let them play with puppies. Um, just kind of everything that we can do, we get them used to different noises. So we’re going to be doing a lot of, um, playing over our speaker system of like, thunderstorms, fireworks. We do a lot of busy city sounds. We do different types of, you know, like police sirens, um, firefighting sirens, just to get them used to all of these different things, um, during those first eight weeks of life, to just get them really submerged into whatever they could be exposed to as an adult.
Well, and that that’s so good because, you know, and I know, like when we expose them to cold surfaces and we might call a cold surface, taking an ice cube and rubbing it on their paw for a few seconds, you know, and those type of things. So they’re getting that, that, that experience, you know, it is maybe the easiest way. It is growing their brain when they do that and it is getting them them accustomed to the things that they’re going to experience in real life. And if you look on our website for years, we have always said the first time a puppy goes home is not the first time it’s been home. And this is an example of that. Like they are going to encounter those sounds and those textures and those temperature differentiations when they get home. And our responsibility, our goal is to prepare that puppy for real life. And so that’s obedience and that service dog. And the science behind it is, is really you can’t argue it. I mean, just go Google it. Yeah. Just go check it out. And these these this process makes a difference before we ever start training.
If a program tells you every puppy in every litter can be a service dog, they’re telling you what they sell — not what’s true. Not even every puppy from proven parents, raised exactly right, is suited to service work. Even so, the numbers tell the honest story: only 10–15% of our puppies advance to service work — and of those that do, 90–95% complete the program, because the work is in honest identification, not in forcing dogs through. At day 49, every candidate goes through the Volhard Puppy Aptitude Test, a recognized protocol scoring reaction and recovery across standardized stimuli, alongside what our team observes daily from birth.
Puppies that don’t fit the service track aren’t failures. They become exceptional trained companions — and we tell families exactly which track their puppy is on and why.
How do you how do we evaluate puppies for temperament. And so Chloe, you kind of head that up. You and our director of training. And so talk to me about the rubrics and how we evaluate puppies for temperament.
Absolutely. So we use a test that’s been around for many, many years. We use the Volhard Temperament Testing System. And what this is going to do is it is going to tell us we score them, and it is going to tell us who is more geared for service work, which in our eyes is a little bit more of a drivier type of puppy. So a little bit more high energy. And who is going to be really geared towards like a pet type of home, which is going to be your, you know, the puppy who likes to curl up with the family? Um, and this is our rubric that we do use. And I’d love to kind of go down through here and read off some of what we test them for.
Um, so we test them for social attraction. We’re going to test them for their capabilities of following. Um, we’re also going to test them for restraint and social dominance as well as elevation dominance. So what? All of this is going to mean is we are going to test them on how they’re going to come up to the person testing them and the way that this test is performed. The tester has not interacted with the puppies at all. So it is a completely new person to the puppies. So it’s not going to be somebody who’s been vaccinating them, feeding them or anything. And that’s going to give us the best, best bit of information for somebody who has not met with them. Um, and they are going to come in and they’re going to pick them up or flip them over on their backs and hold them down. And what all of this is doing is we’re measuring the reaction of the puppy, um, and puppies who are just really calm, cool and collected about it, of course, are going to be our great, great family dogs. And then the puppies who are going to put up just a little bit of a protest is going to be great for service work. So there are going to be ones who are going to show like some problem solving skills and things like that. So that’s what we’re looking for. Um, we’re also going to test them on their retrieving capabilities, their touch sensitivity and their sound sensitivity. Um, which is all going to fall into our stability. Piece of it. So. Seeing how they are noticing things like bowls falling and how they react to a bowl falling and clattering on the ground, or how they’re going to retrieve things. All of that does go back to the level of drop that that puppy is going to have at the end of the day. Um, and then the last little bit is going to be attention span. So we’re going to see if they’re able to keep attention, which we, we definitely take into account their puppies. So we’re not looking for big, big leaps there. Um, and then tug response and food drive. So um, that is what we that’s what we look for whenever we’re testing the puppies. Um, and the rubric is laid out very beautifully for us to where we’re able to grade them. And then we take accumulation of those numbers to see where the best placement for that puppy is going to be great.
And so on. An average litter, about what percentage of our dogs would move on to service work. So about about 10 to 15% of the puppies would move on to service work. Excellent.
And Gary. Yeah. No I agree I think it’s you know it’s really about there. We’re not only seeing their drive some of those tests and it equates to recovery. Right. Like the sound sensitivity and touch sensitivity, which is a great sign of a service dog long term is we’re all going to I kind of oftentimes compare it to just humans being startled. Right. Dogs. The best dog can get scared of something or startled by something. And so the question in the the litmus test, so to speak, of, of a great service dog is how fast do they recover? And so I think that’s a great first indicator of what that looks like long term.
It is. And and I also think to you know, Chloe, you mentioned dogs that may have more of a drive or an energy. And and I think a lot of people think, oh, that means my dog is going to be crazy, hyper and bouncing off the walls. That’s not what that means. That that what that means is they have a desire to want to work like they want to do things more so than some dogs are just lazy. Like they just want to curl up with you and sleep on the couch and be that and you know, different that that fits different families. But service dog puppies, they need to have that that want to that drive to work.
Yeah. I think it’s important to mention like on this test, like it’s a scale of 1 to 6. Um, and, you know, service dogs, we’re typically looking for really solid scores. Of threes and fours across. The board for the most part. Um, and those are our high drive and our active dogs, but they’re not scoring ones and twos like you would see in more like a Belgian Malinois or a German Shepherd, like a very, very high drive breed. And so so we’re getting the higher drive end of our dogs, which is still very, very well mannered. Yeah. Great point here.
Once a puppy earns its place on the service track, formal training runs 6 to 12 months — 1,200+
hours of structured, documented work at Snowy Pines University. Families follow that documented work as it happens — weekly letters, films, and manager-confirmed scores — in the Snowy Pines customer portal.
Foundation before training: handling, sensory exposure, socialization, human focus.
House manners, crate comfort, name response, leash introduction, beginnings of impulse control.
Reliable sit, down, stay, recall, heel — proofed against distance, duration, and distraction.
Calm behavior in stores, restaurants, elevators, crowds; neutrality to dogs, food, and strangers.
The specific trained responses your family needs, built one behavior at a time.
Transferring the dog’s skills from our trainers to your family’s hands.
Coaching and follow-up after the dog goes home.
So after all of that training, after we’ve done all of that with a, uh, a puppy, then it’s time to go home. What does support look like after the puppy goes home? Yeah, I think one it’s going to be with our our handoff process. Okay. Um, I think that that process is so important. It’s it’s something that we would just never compromise on. We have to have the hand off, get completed, and get completed well, fully. And so what that looks like is a client or a customer or even an entire family at times comes here and, um, we go through a handoff process. So it may be that they’ve never had a dog before. Um, they may have never had a service dog before and knowing how to utilize it. And so the whole process is geared to educating the handler, whether that’s taking them out to a restaurant or utilizing their task in public. Um, but it also can be. Dogs are not robots. Even the best trained service dogs are not a robot. They are living, breathing creatures. And so they’re going to push boundaries at times. They’re going to need corrections at times. And so it’s giving the handler tools on how to correct that, correct that quickly and keep the partnership going. And that that is a huge part of the handoff process.
How long is that handoff process. What does that look like. So it’s a minimum of three days here on site. Um but we oftentimes have families that will stay an entire week. Um, it’s it’s really about making sure we’re not going to put a timeline on it outside of the fact that we know we need these three days. Um, but if a family says, hey, I want to feel even more prepared. Like that’s something we welcome as much as possible. And we’ve even had families that stay a full week, you know, keep their dog with them at their Airbnb or their hotel over the weekend, and they may even follow up the following Monday for some, some last minute questions before they get on a flight home. Or, uh, a lot of our families enjoy taking a trip, uh, a road trip home for some extra bonding.
Yeah. And many, many families will come even before that. So, you know, we haven’t really even got to the post placement, but that three day handoff may have been they may be multiple visits in. So we encourage people to come as much and as often as you want to to prepare for that relationship. Yeah, it’s actually a really fun time when families can come and just visit throughout training. It’s really good for the family, but it’s really great for the dog, too. Um, and what we typically do on those visits is depending on age, obviously, of the puppy. In the service dog where they’re at in training. But we typically take a pause on training because we do find that visit so beneficial for the dog that we say, hey, take the dog, go back to your hotel, and really just make this about bond. We don’t ask families to do any training during that time, but we just want you to bond and play with your dog and feed your dog and take your dog out to potty at the at the hotel or the Airbnb. And so and then we’ll get the dog back and we’ll ramp training back up. We’re not going to miss a beat because of that.
Excellent. So they’ve done all of that. Families do all of that to prepare for the dog going home. Now they’re at home. How do we support families after that? Yeah, I think that’s a that’s a great question. So, um, we’re going to be lifetime support regardless, regardless of what it is, the lifetime of the dog, we’re going to support our families and we’re going to do it to our fullest capabilities. Um, and that looks, you know, it’s a case by case basis because not every situation, uh, whether it be a, a home environment or, um, you know, what they’ve experienced out in the world is the same. We have families that we’ve served that live in downtown Manhattan. Uh, but they we have families that we serve that live in rural America. And so, uh, no two situations are the same, and we never act that way. And we want to make sure that we get very specific. And so oftentimes if they are experiencing something families our training staff really good second to none when in my opinion, uh, when it comes to, um, being able to diagnose something video via video. And so oftentimes it’s a super simple correction. Um, but we may ask for video. We may diagnose. You know, take some time to diagnose whatever they may be going through. Um, and then come with the solution. Um, but it could be something. You know, we’ve had families that we’ve served that it may be a task we’ve never even trained before. And they may go, hey, we have a new need because life evolves and life happens. And so they may ask, hey, what’s the best way for a novice trainer to possibly train this task? And Chloe or a member of our training staff will jump on a call and really just dive into it with them. That’s so good. And I think you’ve said something earlier that you said the dog is not a machine. It’s not a robot like it’s a living, breathing, organic thing. And so we have all the curriculums and the protocols and we train incredible dogs. And we’ve got 15 years of proving that. But just as important of that, and this is maybe if you’re picking a service dog and maybe, maybe we’re not a good fit, maybe you can’t come to our facility and do everything that we require. And you say, hey, what are what are Water. Things I should look for in a service dog organization. Nobody can say that when you leave in that training period, you’re not going to encounter anything different. So it’s just as important that the dog is trained well. But then you have a group that can support you afterwards. Uh, because you said it, life happens. We need a new task. We need move to a new house. We we’ve been living in Manhattan, and now we moved to a farm somewhere. And that’s all new things for a dog.
And Chloe, we even follow up with customers, right. And so we we have a a cadence of checking in with customers. What does that look like? Uh, how how do we how do we support customers with that? Right. So whenever the dogs first get home, we give them three days to for that first little bit of decompression. Because we do really focus on the rules of three is what is known as in the industry, um, where we give them three days to decompress. So we’re going to check in with them right there around that day three, because the dogs are just getting home. They’re kind of coming out of their shell a little bit. So, um, really, for that first little bit, we’re going to just be focusing on them getting comfortable, and then we’re going to check in again in a week, because at that point the dog has really started to come out of its shell. Um, and they’re not testing boundaries yet, but they’re beginning to see, okay, here’s the little here’s the fun puppy that they were, you know, they were talking about. And then we’re going to check in at about a month mark, because this is going to be the point where we’re going to see if there’s going to be issues, because there are three weeks in, um, if there’s going to be issues and stuff, we’re going to be able to start diagnosing those, whether it be, you know, the puppy is just a little bit too rambunctious on the leash and how to lock up, rewarding them and things like that to kind of get them back focused on the training that we had done here. Um, so we’ll check in at three days a week in about a month into the puppy’s placement home.
We don’t grade our own homework. Our dogs test against outside standards — AKC Canine Good Citizen (CGC), Community Canine (CGCA), and Urban CGC (CGCU) — and our preparation is built around the concepts used by Assistance Dogs International (ADI).
Before a dog is placed for public work, it demonstrates that it can:
We have talked or we have mentioned, uh, public access ready. So what does a public access ready service dog really mean?
So a public access ready service dog, we base everything on what the ADA says. So what that is ultimately going to mean for us and for them is that that dog is going to behave in public. So, you know, it’s going to behave in public and it’s going to present its handler well, in public. So no barking. Always mindful on the leash. Um, you know, we get it told to us all the time because we take a lot of our dogs to restaurants and stuff. Um, they, we will have people stop us all the time and tell us we didn’t even know you had a dog in here. And that is what our dogs are in public, so we want them to be like their handler shadow. That you would really never know that they’re there unless you were looking for them.
I think that’s a great term. When a dog is public access ready, the public probably doesn’t know that the dog is with you. Exactly. That’s a goal that’s really good.
Program-trained service dogs in the U.S. typically cost between $15,000 and $50,000. The spread comes down to hours of training, the number and complexity of tasks the dog is trained to perform, and the kind of organization doing the training.
A fully trained Snowy Pines service dog is a $25,000+ investment — one price that carries the whole standard on this page: proven, health-tested parents, early development from birth, the day-49 temperament evaluation, 1,200+ hours of structured, documented training, public-access preparation tested against outside standards (AKC CGC, CGCA, and CGCU), matching to your household, and lifetime support. Our At-Home service dog program (Better Dog) is $22,500.
Whoever trains your dog, expect the work to take time — our programs run 6 to 12 months once formal training starts. And weigh selection as heavily as price: only 10–15% of our puppies advance to service work, because honest identification comes first. See how we decide, or compare program-by-program pricing on our service dogs page.
The best-trained dog in the world is the wrong dog in the wrong home. Matching is its own stage here, and we take it as seriously as training: your household and routine, children and other pets, energy fit, handler personality, schedule, and the specific trained tasks your situation calls for.
We’d rather hold a dog longer than place the wrong match. Every family who’s lived with the right match understands why.
After everything above, here’s what we won’t tell you, because it wouldn’t be true from anyone:
If you hear a program promise more than this, ask them to put it in writing. Watch what happens.
Take this list to every program you’re considering — including ours. A good program will love these questions. A bad one will change the subject.
Both parents, every pairing: OFA hips and elbows — Excellent, Good, and Fair are all passing scores — a yearly ophthalmologist (CAER) eye exam, basic cardiac, and a DNA panel for the recessive conditions in the breed. Those basics tell you the genetics behind your puppy are sound.
Yes — and at a good program you shouldn’t even have to ask twice. We keep a file on every parent dog and send it out on request all the time, including to families just buying a pet. Ours are also published on each dog’s profile page. If the clearances exist, a breeder will be proud to show them.
Genetics first: we cross-reference both parents’ DNA results and never pair two carriers of the same condition — a carrier bred to a clear dog cannot produce an affected puppy. Then temperament, from working with our dogs every day. Then structure. Appearance comes last, and by now our dogs already meet the standard we bred toward.
An English Lab is the shorter, stockier, thicker-tailed type with a calmer off-switch than American field lines. A “white Lab” is a very light shade of a true yellow Labrador — there is no white Lab breed. The AKC registers three colors: black, chocolate, and yellow; ours register as yellow. Any breeder should be able to tell you exactly that.
Daily, documented handling from the first days of life: early neurological stimulation, early scent introduction, and a structured development checklist our handlers complete with every litter. Look for a program that can show you its protocol, not just say the word “socialized.”
We use the Volhard Puppy Aptitude Test at day 49 — standardized stimuli, scored reaction and recovery — layered on top of what we know from the parents and from daily observation of every puppy. The scores drive placement: service track, or a wonderful family home.
No — and any program that says every puppy qualifies is one to walk away from. With everything above done right, only 10–15% of our puppies advance to service work. The encouraging part: of the dogs we do select, 90–95% complete the program, because the honest work happens in the identification.
Ask for names and certifications. Our Head of Training, Elizabeth, holds the CPDT-KA and is a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner; she and our General Manager Chloe (Atlas-CT Certified) are both AKC-approved CGC evaluators. Recognized credentials to look for anywhere: CPDT, Karen Pryor Academy, Atlas Assistance Dogs, and AKC evaluator status.
The only standard worth accepting is lifetime support. Life changes — new kids, new homes, new routines — and no dog is a machine. You should be able to call the people who trained your dog in year one or year nine and get help from someone who knows them.
A real program can name dog after dog. We think of Shiloh, who goes to school with his handler; Cooper, who walked the graduation stage and now supports his handler’s independent life in Arizona; Zoe, whose owner travels to see family again. And we won’t just tell the stories — those families are willing to talk with you.
So in this segment, we’re going to cover the questions you should be asking when looking for a service dog program. We can’t serve every customer out there. We can only serve a limited amount. And so whether you’re shopping service dogs with us or another entity, we just want to take a few minutes and walk you through some questions that you should be asking before committing to a service dog to to an organization. So I’ll throw these out there. Let’s all just jump in and answer them. Uh, whoever wants to grab them. So first, uh, one of the first questions you should ask is, are the parents dogs or are the parent dogs health tested? Who wants to take that one?
Yeah, I think super important question. One, like you want to make sure that you’re getting, uh, a service dog that’s going to have a healthy life. The last thing you want to get into is, uh, having to start all the way over or, um, you know, it’s a significant investment, too. So, like, let’s make sure that you’re getting a dog that’s going to serve you well for a long time. Um, what should they be looking for in in health tests?
Yeah, I think health testing is going to be, you know, just genetic clean cleanliness, um, and purity. So making sure that they don’t carry any kind of recessive gene, um, and or being affected by a recessive gene, I should say. And then obviously, uh, hips and elbow health. Um, I think, you know, OFA scores are important and you should have a passing score, which is you could have a score that ranges anywhere between excellent and fair. So excellent, good and fair are all very much passing scores for an OFA. And that can all lead to a very long working life of a service dog. Um, elbows. Uh. Same thing. Uh, it’s just a normal, uh, grade. Um, there are things I’ve seen from time to time on, on various, whether it be, you know, uh, a dog that we’ve had or just tons of research based stuff on other people’s dogs. Um, that you can see sometimes a, you know, a grade one or something on an elbow. And that oftentimes can be, uh, not necessarily a tale of something degenerative, but it could be an injury that that parent dog had when they were a puppy. Um, and so it’s not always an eliminating factor, but I just think it’s smart to ask the question. Absolutely. So OFA hips, elbows.
Eyes, eyes. Yeah. A yearly ophthalmologist, uh, exam is is important. Um, it’s going to give you a good look at the long term health of the eye, but also, um, any kind of things that can pop up on a year to year basis? Sure. Basic cardiac. That’s another thing. That. That is good to look for. And I should say we are speaking of knowledge specifically of, of our breeds. And so there could be service dogs and other breeds that we’re probably we’re just not qualified to speak about special breeds that may have special health testing. And so, you know, take we’re Labradors, we’re golden retrievers, which are a large percentage of the service dogs out there, but there could be other specialized ones. But those basic tests is what you should at least look for. Yeah, there are others, but if you can cover those, that’s a good basis to know you’re getting good genetics from the parents. Yes.
Oh, wow. Perfect. Uh, question number two. Right along with that, you should ask your organization that you can actually see those documents, right. Like what does what do those look like? Are those are there certifications and documents behind that. Yeah. I we have a file on every parent dog that we have. Um, and so I send them often. I, you know, we have request all the time and not just on the service dog side, but we have people that are doing the same type of due diligence when they’re purchasing a family pet, because it’s important to them that they’re getting a healthy pet that’s going to be with their family for a long time. Yeah. I asked to see the paperwork. It exists if the clearances are there.
Okay. Number three. Chloe, you take this one. How are parent dogs selected beyond appearance? So the first thing that we are always going to check, and this is something me and Gary, we both work really hard together on this. Um, we’re always going to check their genetic, um, their genetic testing first. So Embark does test for over 200 items. Um, and while some dogs can carry certain things, a carrier is not a it’s not a bad thing. So we just make sure that we don’t pair two carriers together. Um, to ensure that we get the most healthy litters that we possibly can. So we’re going to always cross-reference and check genetics. And then we are going to check on temperament. So I work with them just about every day. So I’ve got a good idea of our parentage. And whenever we are looking at parents and pairing dogs, I’ll tell Gary, hey, we’re looking at this pairing. How does that sound? And he’ll go in and he will look and do all of the genetic research of that pairing. And whenever we clear it, that is how we’re going to pick that pairing. And we’re also going to take into account, you know, appearance and stuff for the for what we’re looking for out of that, out of that specific pairing of parents.
Yeah. So those are the type of questions you should be asking the organization that you’re getting your service dog from. Uh, what about color? Should that even come into play? It really doesn’t for us. Um, you know, we we’re at a time in life where our dogs, we pretty well hit the standard of what we’re looking for. Um, so color isn’t a big factor for us because we we have very, very light colored. Light colored dogs.
Nice. So in that same question, if you’re working with a service organization, uh, maybe not us or whoever, and they and we’re going to speak labs specifically, uh, and they say that they are, uh, an English lab or a white lab. Uh, what questions should you ask that breeder on? What is a white lab or what is a English lab? And what should they be saying?
Yeah, I think I think when you answer the the answer to that question is, is very, very simple. An English lab is typically, you know, short, stockier, thicker tailed body structure. Um, they, they typically don’t have the pent up, built up energy that their American counterparts have. Like when you think of a duck dog or something like that with a lot more high drive. Um, and so they, they still will run and fetch and and want to work for service and all of those things. But they just, uh, also have a really good what we would call an a great off switch. And so where it’s time to chill out and relax in the home, they have that capability. And so the true English bloodlines do give that. And we’ve seen it for, you know, a decade and a half now at this point. Um, and then um, in terms of white labs, um, it’s a color, right? It’s a pigment. It is a shade, a very light shade of a true DNA. Yellow Labrador. Um, we’ve just taken our light colored yellows and bred them with our other light colored yellows, and over time have achieved the white shaded dog. Um, as a byproduct of that breeding. No such thing as a white lab breed right there. There’s not there. There’s three. Right. There’s three. When it comes to registering, uh, Labradors. You have chocolates, you have blacks and you have yellows. Yes. And ours are yellows. Yes. And so you should, uh, you should ask that question, especially if you’re talking to a lab breeder. And by the way, our name is Snowy Pines White Labs. But there are no such things. Uh, no such dogs of a breed that are called white labs. But what they are is genetically pure, healthy, yellow labs that are very light in color, that when you look at them, it’s fair to say that’s white lab looks. Pretty white to me. Looks pretty white. But, uh, make sure you’re getting those genetic testing, those genetic questions so you know that you’re buying a yellow lab. That’s light color. That’s pure. Yes.
And so question number five, you should ask the service dog organization that you’re working with. How are puppies raised before they go home. Yes. So it’s very important I would definitely be looking for like what we do. So lots of early puppy development. Um look for somebody who is doing early neurological stimulation, early scent introduction a form of either puppy culture or like we do, puppy development. So we have a very specific set of guidelines and rules and regulations and check marks that we do with all of our handlers to make sure that all of our puppies are being handled daily. Yes, we work with them daily. Like that’s key to it from the date. Well, maybe not the day they’re born, but a few days after they’re born. Uh, interaction is key. So ask about how your puppies are raised.
And, uh, so question number six, you should be asking your service dog organization. How do you evaluate temperament? Chloe, you want to take this one? Yes, absolutely. So we are going to evaluate temperament. First off we’re going to look at the parents because you know, all of our parents, we we have had we’ve had at this point. So look at the parents and see what their true temperament is like. And then go in and do a form of a temperament testing system. So again, we like to use the Volhard temperament testing system where we are going to evaluate them on day 49. Um, and this is going to put them through different stimuli, and we are going to measure their reaction and their recovery, um, processing. And we are going to grade them on the scale of rubric that is given to us. And we are going to determine which ones are going to be placed where, whether that be service or pet homes. Yes. So ask your service dog organization or your breeder. Do you have a long history in those bloodlines so you understand that temperament? And then what testing protocol are you using?
Okay. Uh, number seven, uh, and this one is a question, but also a red flag. You should always ask a service dog organization. Does every puppy qualify for advanced or service dog training? And the simple answer we would all agree on is no, they do not. Any organization that says all of their dogs qualify for service dogs you should run away from because it just does not happen. For us, we’ve been in this business a long time. We checked the boxes on all those things we’ve been talking about, and we still only get 10 to 15% of our dogs that move on to service work. Yeah, yeah. No, I think it’s, you know, it’s 10 to 15%. The great thing though is that 10 or 15%, about 90 to 95% of them make it through. And so it’s really about the identification and then the training process and programmatic experience for those dogs. It is. So yeah, that’s spot on. And any organization that, uh, train service dogs will tell you, uh, there are career changes, there are dogs that, that are better suited for other things. And so, um, never would every puppy qualify for service work.
All right. Next question. Uh, an important question to ask a service dog organization. Who trains the dogs and what are their qualifications? And so we have a lot of qualifications here at Snowy Pines. But, Chloe, uh, tell us what some of the standard certifications out there in the country are that you should look for. Yes. So, um, for our trainers, we we especially like certifications. Um, some of the standards are things along the lines of, like Karen Pryor, um, CPDT-KA, um, Atlas Assistance Dogs. And there’s also a lovely set of um AKC certifications that you can get, such as being an AKC, um, canine good citizen evaluator. And there’s three sets of those, um, an AKC S.T.A.R. Puppy evaluator. Um, so there is lots of certifications to look for. Yeah. So look for organizations that have some certified educated trainers.
Okay. Question number nine. If you’re working with a service dog organization, us or anyone like us. You should be asking what support is available after the dog goes home. And Gary, what’s a pretty good standard that you should look for from a support standpoint after after the dog goes home? Yeah, I think the only standard of support that you should be looking for is lifetime support. Because you it it’s a it’s a partnership and but it evolves over time. And there’s new needs that come up and there’s there’s new exposures. And so anything in my opinion short of the lifetime of the service dog, you’re falling short as an organization. And it’s just super important that you have someone that you can lean on, that you’re already invested with, that you already have a relationship with, that already knows that dog, and being able to have them as a as an ear and just a sounding board to to get help. You’ve said life changes, you have kids, you move to new environments, and all of that is a change for a dog. It is. And those, no matter how well trained, no matter what you do, that dog is not a machine. It’s not a robot. And so there are factors that will change in your life that you are going to have to have help on navigating with that service dog. So service dog organizations need to offer support for the life of the dog, because life will change and you will need some help. Guaranteed guarantee.
All right. And the last question you should ask a service dog organization, if you’re looking at working with them, is what proof do you have that dogs succeed in real homes? Or what’s been your history of placing dogs in homes? And so, uh, if someone asked us that question, I would think I just start thinking through my mind. I start thinking about the different customers we’ve had and maybe just talk a little bit, um, what that sounds like. Think of a few customers that we’ve had over the years, or maybe just 1 or 2. Yeah, the how it’s changed their life and how it’s succeeding. And then maybe listen for stories that sound something like this.
Yeah. So, you know, just off the top of my head, I mean, I could if I sat long and hard about this and I could, I could. Yeah. And and just I may shed a tear or two, you know, thinking about it. And so I just constantly go back to, um, you know, dogs like Shiloh that give, give their handler independence and companionship and that have went from not only are they succeeding in the home environment, they’re succeeding in the school environment where where the dog goes to school with that person. I think of, you know, Cooper and the person that he is with, and it’s allowed him to go halfway across the country and start his college journey with without, you know, where he he didn’t have that independence before, even when he was in high school. I mean, and Cooper went with him across the stage and got his high school diploma and now has moved. Uh, you know, like I said, halfway across the country and is is out in Arizona by himself. Um, and thriving and and it’s changed his entire life. You know, so I think of all those things. I think of our Swiss Switzerland family. Yeah, yeah. That dog. It’s just amazing. I get it feels like we get video or picture updates. I mean, it’s maybe once a week, and I’m so thankful for it.
Um, Chloe, what’s a few dogs that you can think of just even recently, uh, that we’ve sent home that have changed lives? She wasn’t recent, but Zoe, I think of Zoe, and I actually was. I was able to speak with her owner. It was just a couple of weeks ago. And, uh. Zoe, she, um. She was just such a successful dog because her owner, like, was unable to really travel or do anything. And it had been years since she had been able to go and visit her, her children and stuff. And she gave me a wonderful update just recently that she’s been multiple times to see her, her family over the last little bit and just spectacular, just a spectacular experience. I and I think like that, that dog and that family in particular is, you know, to go on. One of our former questions is do you support they they went through the dog, went all the way across the country with them and they had, um, you know, during the first month or so of being home, they had some experiences that they had to work through, and we partnered with them in that. And, uh, she got through that with Zoe and Zoe thrived through that, and now it’s enabled her whole life to change.
And so sometimes and I tell a lot of families this when you when you, when you insert a service dog into your day to day life, it changes the rhythm of your life a little bit. Like it’s just to me a little bit like taking a child. And so you have to pack a bag when you go somewhere. You may have to pack some food and things like that. And so you have to prepare and it changes it. And so sometimes, especially when you’re already dealing with anxiety, um, your anxiety is going to go up a little bit before it comes way back down under the threshold, which was what is originally intended, intended behind the acquisition of a service dog. You know. You’re spot on. So, you know, we kind of took the long way around there. But but I think that’s an example. If you’re working with an organization, us or anyone like us, you should be able to ask about past successes. And you just they they should just talk about them. Like you should be able to think those off the head and that’s, that’s that’s who we are. And we suggest that you work with someone that that has that kind of relationship and can just name off dog after dog after dog that they’ve been supporting. Yeah. And the great thing is we won’t just talk about it. All those people that we just talked about. Yeah, they’re willing to connect with people, you know, and getting referrals. You can talk to their customers. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah.
So ten questions that you should ask any service dog organization you’re working with, whether that’s us or anyone else, if we’re not a good fit for you or if we’re just too many years out in providing a dog, we still want to help support our families and our people, uh, because we believe service dogs change lives. And that’s a responsibility to serve people well.
If our standard is the standard you want behind your family’s dog, we’d love to talk.
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Written by the Snowy Pines team · Reviewed by Elizabeth, CPDT-KA, KPA CTP, AKC-approved CGC Evaluator (Head of Training) · Last updated July 28, 2026
