the length of time varies.

agency programs first has to breed the puppies or locate puppies that have in their background good history for social skills and other qualities needed for service animals.

then they do background checks and interviews to make sure those willing to foster and pre train the puppies for the basic behavioral stuff like potty training, sit, heel... are good foster homes for the new batch of pups.

then they get the year old pups back from the foster homes and begin the pups professional training process.

while all this is going on a waiting list of customers is growing. the agencies do back ground checks on their customers in the waiting lists to make sure no animal abuse and other criminal activity in their history is or has gone on. they dont want their dogs to end up in dog fighting, drug trafficking and being other wise abused.

when a batch of dogs have been trained they go through the waiting list of approved customers and schedule interviews so that they can match up the trained dogs with the right person... they dont want to match up a high energy dog with someone who's life is not going to be able to keep up with the dogs needs of playing and running off that high energy. they dont want to match a slightly shy dog with someone who has an active / over active/ loud social life... they want the customer and dogs to be matched to fit each other.

finally the agencies select 2-3 dogs for the customer to meet. the customer narrows the selection down to 1 dog. then the customer and dog and a trainer work together so that the customer knows all that dogs commands, bonds with the dog, and the dog bonds with the customer.

this is a general run down that goes on with any professional agency but like always sometimes the way they go about doing all this may be a bit different.

my suggestion is to just keep in touch with the agency you are going through and when your name gets to the top of the list they will let you know and they will help you to prepare for everything as time goes on. by keeping in tough with them you can also ask them all your questions that may help make this process easier.