posted on December 8, 2014 by Margaret Daley

Why I Write About Service Dogs

By Margaret Daley

Healing HeartsWhen I taught students with special needs, I occasionally had the chance to also work with a service dog. They are amazing animals. Dogs are used to help people with various problems, not only with different disabilities (like blindness, epilepsy, diabetes, physical, post traumatic stress disorder). I am currently writing a series for about Caring Canines who are service and therapy dogs. Below is the first in the series featuring a therapy dog for a child who was depressed and recovering from a severe injury.

Canines also help law enforcement agencies with bomb detecting, drug detecting, suspect apprehension, tracking and cadaver retrieval as well as in search and rescue endeavors. Their scent of smell is keen compare to ours. For example, they can smell a dead person buried in the ground or deep under the water. Below is a book I wrote about a cadaver dog.

Detection Mission

They can sense things in us that we aren’t even aware of. My vet told me about a service dog that was with his owner who is diabetic at the airport. The service dog indicated a passenger who was forty feet away had plummeting blood sugar, which was the case. Many animals can sense when someone is in need of emotional support, whether in grief, depression or pain.  Below is a cover of a book (coming out in February 2015) of To Save Her Child. The hero has a tracking dog used to find lost people.

To Save Her Child

Have you known a service (or therapy) dog or seen one in action? What kind of dog was it?

 DEADLY HOLIDAY

Deadly HolidayDeadly Holiday, coming out December 15, 2015 (This book features a service dog for people with PTSD):

Tory Caldwell witnesses a hit-and-run, but when the dead victim disappears from the scene, police doubt a crime has been committed. Tory is threatened when she keeps insisting she saw a man killed and the only one who believes her is her neighbor, Jordan Steele. Together, can they solve the mystery of the disappearing body and stay alive?

 

margaretdaley.com

Margaret Daley

Margaret Daley

Margaret Daley is an award winning, multi-published author in the romance genre. One of her romantic suspense books, Hearts on the Line, won the American Christian Fiction Writers' Book of the Year Contest. Recently she has won the Golden Quill Contest, FHL's Inspirational Readers' Choice Contest, Winter Rose Contest, Holt Medallion and the Barclay Gold Contest. She wrote for various secular publishers before the Lord led her to the Christian romance market. She currently writes inspirational romance and romantic suspense books for the Steeple Hill Love Inspired lines, romantic suspense for Abingdon Press and historical romance for Summerside Press. She has sold ninety-two books to date. Margaret was the President for American Christian Fiction Writers (ACFW), an organization of over 2600 members. She was one of the founding members of the first ACFW local chapter, WIN in Oklahoma. She has taught numerous classes for online groups, ACFW and RWA chapters. She enjoys mentoring other authors. Until she retired a few years ago, she was a teacher of students with special needs for twenty-seven years and volunteered with Special Olympics as a coach. She currently is on the Outreach committee at her church, working on several projects in her community as well as serving on her church's vestry. On a more personal note, she has been married for over forty years to Mike and has one son and four granddaughters. She treasures her time with her family and friends.

https://www.margaretdaley.com

4 thoughts on “Why I Write About Service Dogs”

  1. Margaret, I love your books. I think like most people your stories have brought a better understanding of service animals. I assumed they were only used for the visually impaired. I love that they can help with PTSD. It’s an often over looked problem. Thank you for sharing.
    Blessings

    1. Katrina, the story coming out in July is about a service dog that helps with epilepsy. Amazing.

  2. LaurieL says:

    My Standard Poodle and I are a registered pet-assisted therapy team with Therapy Dogs, Inc. We visit hospitals and assisted living centers. We actually belong to a group of therapy teams called Caring Canines! The dogs in our group range from tiny Yorkies and Maltese to a mutt that is half Great Dane. We have a lot of Shelties, bully-types and Golden Retrievers in our group. As a handler of a therapy dog, I find it really important that the writer and reader understand the difference between a therapy dog and a service dog. I currently have a second Poodle in training to be a therapy dog.

  3. I agree about the difference between them, Laurie. I have a friend that takes her German shepherd to see patients.

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