With these articles PSDeurope informs you about current developments, events and circumstances.

PSDeurope NEWSLETTER

Dear PSDeurope customers and dog lovers,

In the first weeks of the New Year our newsletter reaches you already traditionally. We are happy to report on our developments and innovations. It was an exciting last year.

Thank you for your support and good cooperation. If your dogs weren’t so conscientious and unobtrusive as to fly along through the world, our success rate – it’s over 95% – wouldn’t be so fantastic! By 2022, we have trained nearly 200 human-animal partner teams. This is a great success that we would like to share with you.

More and more airlines are talking to us or accepting us without much discussion.

We did that in 2022:

Test Program: The PSDeurope Assistance Dog

Because more and more airlines outside the U.S. are moving away from classic PSD U.S. DoT standards, we developed a test program for a PSDeurope assistance dog in 2022. Many of you participated. So far, the airlines largely accept our program.

A large proportion of our ESA customers have signed up for the PSDeurope program. Flying seems to be a real issue for most of you.

Your feedback:

Thank you for your many feedbacks, the overwhelming majority of which report positive to overjoyed experiences. Aktuel we are still looking for a good visible place on our homepage https://www.psd-europe.eu to display the feedback experience for all to see.

Experience:

Please be careful with your choice of words when communicating with airlines!!! It has been shown that it is important to make flight bookings in the right way. Except in – within or from the U.S. – register your dog as an ASSISTANT DOG only.

Not as a PSD, not as a servicedog, not as an ESA.

Low-cost airlines:

Airlines such as Wizzair, Ryanair, Easyjet or Sunxpress generally make it more difficult for assistance animals to travel with them. In particular, the following geographical areas are affected: Greece with the Greek airlines and England/Ireland with the airlines based there. We are working to improve the situation here, currently still have opposition. General disadvantages with low-cost providers are:

• Unqualified staff decides in customer service if your dog is an assistance dog or a pet.
• Difficult accessibility and almost impossible to communicate
• The checkin is chaotic
• Flight staff unfriendly
• No early entry at the gate for assistance dog and owner
• Seats are narrower than on a commercial airliner
• Often long transport routes or buses to the boarding point

We point out once again that general regulations are still lacking in Europe.

For the most part, scheduled flights are handled much more tolerantly and offer better service and customer contact opportunities. We really pointed out this issue from the beginning, so we are always surprised when our recommendations are ignored.

If you have difficulties with bookings, please contact us in time. We will support you with detailed documents, which so far in almost all cases have convinced the airlines to allow our trained dog to fly in the cabin. You can also download some of them in the store. We have prepared some special offers for this purpose.

Price adjustment:

More and more customers fly with their dogs within Europe. The overall effort for care activities has multiplied for us. This concerns in particular requirements with regard to tasklists to be created and also the certificates to be issued. Basically, the airlines force us again and again to make adaptations and additions that are extremely costly.

We are therefore increasing the prices of new bookings and have generally decided against flat service fees or membership fees.

Compared to other providers, we still want to offer a particularly favorable price/performance ratio. As you know, our basic attitude is – to promote and help people and animals and not to become a commercially oriented company.

Further developments: PREVIEW

2023 we are making our products even more transparent. The homepage appears in new splendor!

NEW: The PSDeurope Assistance Dog

We offer you a new product that the airlines accept well. In addition to the PSD according to US DoT standards, which is sufficient for flights to and from and within North America, we have taken the stricter requirements into account and developed another product with which you should be able to manage well outside the USA. Especially the personal tasks were deepened, as well as the training. We also increasingly have to meet airlines’ demands in terms of training periods. Here we have developed a concept of 6 months with some credit periods that meets these new requirements.

In 2024, we expect the first binding requirements from the EU on training standards for assistance dogs. Training evidence will play a big role in this. This has prompted us to offer you face-to-face lessons in online mode as well. You can find corresponding options in the new store,.

Assistance dog training new!

Besides our Mrs. Helga Widder, Stefanie Holzmann from Switzerland joins the team. She will take on face to face presence training online and in person.

Here you can order single lessons and 5 hour packages at very favorable conditions for additional questions about your own training.

We recommend everyone who can afford it to book the 5 hour package. This will cover you now in case you need proof of training. With the release of the EU Assistance Dog Scheme, training is credited.

You will also have the confidence to train correctly with your dog and will also be shown the correct instructions. Information about Stefanie can be found here

Stefanie Holzberger

PSDeurope is becoming increasingly international!

Indonesia and the Asian region:

In preparation is also trainer support from Rhonda Lepsch. She is very dog experienced and currently in assistance dog training.

We have the “angel from Bali” as they affectionately call people, very much in our hearts. Please read her story on the website of EURO.DOGS.eu

See for yourself their great work caring for and neutering street dogs and cats. With every $100 donated, an animal can be spayed/neutered or receive an adoptive family. It opened our eyes to what a poor status dogs have in the Asian region, in China they are still eaten. There is a lot of work waiting to make people understand that dogs and cats have the same feelings as we humans and should be protected and loved by us – our gratitude is assured 1000 times over!

Rhonda runs a dog and cat shelter that must sustain itself entirely on donations. She trains dogs to travel home with you as assistance dogs!

We are of course happy if you are interested in a dog or cat from this shelter in the future and adopt or support it as a sponsor. 10 customers have already done that in 2022 – THANK YOU for that!!!

Rhonda

USA, Canada:

We are receiving more and more inquiries from the USA, so we have decided to reorganize this area. Meike Wolff and Till-Matthias Jürgens commute between. Spain and USA/Texas and will actively support us with marketing and customer care. The aim is to establish our own presence in the USA.

Thank you for appreciating our work and bringing us new customers with your recommendation.

Re-certification:

This year, our oldest customers are already entering the phase of recertification, or renewal of PSD confirmations. If you want to stay PSD according to USD DoT standards, please let us know by mail. If you want to convert to a PSDeurope Assistance Dog, please book the “Upgrade Course”. For normal extensions, we are currently in the process of developing an appropriate program. We will publish the corresponding conditions in the next newsletter.

Social Media:

We would like to give you the possibility of exchange and have created a closed Whatsapp group “Flying with PSDeurope”. It is exclusively available to our community and is intended to be a platform for exchanging experiences, posting pictures or asking questions. Language is English- so everyone can read along! You can tell us by mail or Whatsapp-message if you want to join the group. Or use this link to register right here:

Registration WHATSAPP GROUP

The group is supervised by Mr. Rene Schwarz, one of our first customers! Of course there is a picture and description of his person on our team pages in EURO.DOGS.eu.

Rene Black

We wish you a good time in 2023

Beate & Burkhard for the PSDeurope Team 🐾 🙋🏻♀️