People of Central: Rylen Jurecko

Story and Photos by: Beth Nocerini

Invaluable is the word that Rylen Jurecko uses to describe her bond with her service dog Malibu. As her first service animal, Jurecko rescued Malibu as a puppy from a shelter with the intentions of training her to become service dog.  

Jurecko is a freshman at CMU studying to become a pediatric nurse practitioner. Having Malibu on her side helps her get through the rough times in college.

Malibu, also known as Mali, is a psychiatric service dog who performs tasks like grounding exercises, deep pressure therapy, redirecting, and more.  

Mali lives on campus with Jurecko. She said taking her on walks and being with her, lowers her stress levels and gives her a break from college stressors.   

While training a service animal can be done by just the handler, Jurecko brought Mali to professional trainers along with doing her own training at home.  

First Mali and Jurecko worked on her obedience training at home, while Mali would be sent to a faculty a couple of days a week to work with professional trainers. On weekends, Jurecko and Mali would work with professionals together to learn how to give commands.  

After a year of basic obedience training, Mali started to learn specific tasks like putting pressure on Jurecko’s leg. Despite moving to more complicated commands, Mali and Jurecko still work on basic training almost daily.  

“A lot of the work was done by consistently practicing at home and just repetition,” she said. 

One of the biggest challenges when training was having to learn what worked with Mali and what did not.

“You also learn how to work with the animal too and how they respond,” she said. 

“With her by my side, she has allowed me to do things I never thought I would do,” she said.

A common misconception about service animals that Jurecko pointed out was that service animals do not go through a registration process.  Instead, service animals are required to have three tasks they can perform to assist their handler to be considered a service animal. While emotional support animals (ESAs) need a letter from a therapist saying the handler would benefit from the animal.