Rodney Routon and Valorie Burnham pictured with their dogs Buddy, Beau, and Belle at their home in Wellman. Photo by Sam McIntosh.

A service dog named Buddy served as inspiration for how Rodney Routon wanted to spend his retired life.

Routon, who spent his life training dogs for hunting and for search and rescue, decided to start raising service dogs with his Sonrise Service Dogs group in Wellman. Routon’s service dog Buddy aids him for post traumatic stress disorder. Buddy was so helpful that Routon decided to get a female dog, Belle, and start breeding service dogs for not only Washington County and the state of Iowa but across the country. Routon’s Lankas labs most recently had puppies last December, one of which, Duke, went to WCDC, Inc. in Washington. Routon is not certified to train the dogs himself, but once he has found someone seeking a service dog, he then gives the dog to that person in order to bond, and arranges for a trainer for each dog.


Photo by Sam McIntosh

The Sonrise Service Dogs have aided people with a variety of conditions, including epilepsy, autism, and PTSD. Routon comments on a veteran from Kansas who recently received a dog, “Two went to Kansas and one went to a veteran down there that had lots of limb issues and PTSD, and tried to take his life several times. And he’s, I get cracked up sometimes. He’s doing really well. But you know 22 veterans take their life a day, every single day. And having a dog helps, training a dog helps.”

Service dogs are trained to help people in a variety of ways, but a special quality that Routon and his partner Valorie Burnham point out is their intuition to understand people’s emotions. Routon says, “There’s nothing better, no animal on this earth, and they’ve proved this with research lately, that’s better at reading a person, than a dog. Dogs read people better than any other animal, better than we do.” Routon says one reason he believes dogs are good service animals is because they give people constant positive regard. Besides breeding service dogs, Routon and Burnham have gone to different hospitals, schools, and organizations around the state to educate people on service dogs on what they can do and how to distinguish those who have been properly trained.