Melissa Mitchell can measure her life in dogs.

First, came the pets of her childhood.

As an adult, she’s lived and worked with dogs who were far more — lifelines.

Mitchell trains service dogs for Summit Assistance Dogs, a North Whidbey nonprofit.

She just moved to Oak Harbor and took on her third service dog, Tanner. He’s a good natured Golden Retriever with a fluffy tail. He’s a bit of a goofball.

He opens doors for her, retrieves items and helps her take off her shoes and coat. He can push buttons and help her get her chair if it slips out of reach.

Her service dogs have given her an independent life. They’ve outlasted jobs and boyfriends.

“They don’t judge me,” she said. “They don’t complain, they don’t wish I was different and they don’t worry about what other people think.”

MITCHELL WAS born in San Antonio on a military base in 1978. She arrived early, far too early at 26 weeks. The birth nearly killed her and her mother. The doctors wanted to let her die but her parents fought for her.

She stayed in the hospital two months. But it was once she went home that one final insult to her brain caused cerebral palsy. Her mother stepped away for a few moments, and Mitchell stopped breathing.

“Everyone with cerebral palsy is very different,” she said. “Some people have a barely noticeable limp, some people have cognitive deficiencies and other people might be locked inside their body but be a flippin’ genius.”

Mitchell said she’s thankful she didn’t lose cognitive function.

She can’t walk. Her balance is poor, so she runs the risk of falling every time she reaches for something. She uses a wheelchair but can drive using hand controls.

She never considered using a service dog until she met a man who did on an airline. All the other passengers were allowed to deplane while the airline fixed a mechanical problem, but she and the fellow were forced to sit for three hours. The conversation was life changing. It was the first time she’d seen someone who wasn’t blind with a service dog.

MITCHELL FIRST applied for a service dog in high school and it took five years of waiting before she adopted her first, Bastien.

She trained Bastien and herself, taking obedience classes and receiving support from Assistance Dog Club of Puget Sound. She learned what Bastien could and couldn’t do to help her.

“They don’t have thumbs – they have four paws and a mouth they can use to help,” she said.

A service dog can be trained to do all sorts of tasks, including open cabinets and drawers, turning on lights and picking up objects. The dogs also help diminish the depression, anxiety and loneliness that sometimes accompanies living with a disability.

Her second dog, Shiloh, saved her from at least one scary scrape. She was returning home late at night from class, unloading her car, when she slipped and fell. No one was around.

Her cell phone was in her backpack out of reach. Shiloh patiently sat between her legs, braced her doggy shoulders and let Mitchell use her to push back into the chair.

“If she hadn’t been there, I don’t know if I could have done it.”

Having a service dog can be a blessing and a curse in public.

Mitchell learned long ago that to use a wheelchair is to be invisible. So she appreciates that her dog brings people into her life. At times, she doesn’t feel like stopping to answer 20 questions about her dog while she’s trying to get her errands finished.

Mitchell suggests you ask before petting her dog. And please don’t feed him. She’s had people try to sneak her dog treats.

“You can always ask but you should be prepared to hear ‘no’ and accept it,” she said.

“My dog is with me in public to work. He’s not there for social work.”

MITCHELL HAS held a variety of jobs, including work with nonprofits. Training service dogs has become a way of life for her.

Summit Assistance Dogs was founded 15 years ago by Sue Meinzinger, who wanted to meet the demand for skilled dogs. The nonprofit recently bought property in North Whidbey and is building kennels, a training center, and offices.

Mitchell is looking for a place in Oak Harbor that is wheelchair accessible and will allow her to take three dogs, which will stay with her as she trains them.

Part of her job is teaching dogs advanced skills, but she also is searching for dogs to enter the program.

Perhaps one out of three dogs from a breeder might have the temperament and good health to work as a service dog. She also looks at shelter dogs, but it’s even harder for these dogs to be successful.

She’s looking for a dog who is highly-sociable, likes to be around people and will follow his human everywhere. A lot of the skills dogs learn involve tugging or retrieving, so often the retriever breeds work best. These pooches have to be driven, the kind of dog that loves fetching the ball again and again and again.

And again.

They can’t have any doggy anxiety issues; they need to be calm in new and startling situations.

Once a dog gets in, that’s no guarantee it will work out. The ones who wash out are adopted by other families. Her last two dogs went to live with her parents after they retired.

THE AVERAGE service dog takes two years to train, and costs Summit about $30,000. Summit gives the dogs away for free, although they ask people to contribute something if they can, even if it’s time or a skill. They have 29 people on the waiting list, and the average wait for a dog is five years.

The nonprofit has to find the right match between canine and human. The dogs are individually trained to do the tasks for the person they’ll be matched with.

“Dogs don’t grow on trees,” Mitchell said. “They take at least two years to grow and train, and then we have to find the right match.”

Finding the right match is harder than a marriage.

“We don’t speak the same language, we don’t live life at the same speed and we have vastly different perceptions of the world,” she said.

The dog and the human each make a choice, and they both rely on each other.