Junior Chris Winegarner is well known for having an adorable pooch Schooner trot about the school by his side. Schooner is a black English lab who helps Winegarner with his anxiety.

Winegarner has been in therapy for five years, and he received his service dog in the summer of 2013 from an organization called CARES.

“The majority of our dogs are produced from our own breeding program,” according to the CARES website, careskc.com

“[Having a service dog] is very helpful in the day,” Winegarner said. “When I first got him it was stressful because of the adjustments I had to make and answering people’s questions.”

Another service dog owner, freshman Alta Durrant, has a service dog for epilepsy, which is a brain disorder that causes seizures.

Durrant, on the other hand, does not need to take her dog to school, because she has people around her at all times to watch for seizures while she’s at school.

Durrant said owning a service dog was “a bit intimidating at first, but now it’s more like ‘okay I have a dog that’s cool.’”

Service dogs need to be trained to accommodate their owner’s needs.

Durrant says her service dog, Zeus, barks when she is about to have a seizure to alert her parents or a nearby adult. She trained her dog to recognize certain sounds she makes when she is about to go into a seizure. Durrant also says her dog helps her with anxiety.

Winegarner has an entire binder of commands that Schooner recognizes. Mainly, Winegarner says he uses just a few, like sit, stay and heel. Winegarner and his mom did a full week of training with his dog before he was able to take him home. Prior to that CARES trained him for more than a year.

“We have a variety of individuals, some disabled, and families who volunteer to be foster raisers,” CARES website.

Service dogs are more helpful to their owners than meets the eye. For some, just the presence of their lifesaving canine is helpful enough.

“When I was around 9, I had a big seizure and he barked to get my mom’s attention. He got up on my bed and licked my hands to make me feel better,” Durrant said.

“My family and I went to the Mall of America two years ago in the summer for vacation. The mall was huge, and I’m afraid of heights ad that caused a lot of anxiety, he helped me feel more secure,” Winegarner said.

CARES isn’t the only place people can go to get a service dog. Servicedogproject.org provides service dogs for people with mobility issues.

“The Service Dog Project provides a better quality of life for the mobility impaired,” according to the SDP homepage.

Service dogs can also teach their owners a lot.

For example, Durrant said, “I’ve learned a lot of responsibility because he’s my dog and I have to take care of him. I have to remember to feed him and give him water and play with him and stuff.”

Winegarner said, “I feel that I’ve learned about being more comfortable with communicating.”

Owners certainly do treat their pets as family, and the love is even stronger when a dog is a personal superhero.