A dog tends to have enough of the training if it does not get interesting rewards (such as food, toys, playtime, and petting). It presents itself as being easily distracted as well as depression. One of the useful tricks is food motivation. Prepare a handful of delicious treats before training. Use a treat to attract your dog’s attention and recall the dog when unexpected behavior occurs. Offer the treat while your dog responds well to your command. A dog that focuses all attention on you shortens the duration of training.
If your dog is a puppy, it is recommended to start the training from the age of at least six months to one year. This helps your puppy to grasp the basic skills such as socialization as well as establishing a potty habit during the perfect growth phase. A puppy with sound temperament and friendly manners will require less time to train. However, long sessions are not good for a young dog because puppies have less patience to focus on intense courses. Most new owners are quickly fed up with normal puppy behavior and quickly try to make the puppies behave like adult dogs.
Dog training is usually a great thing for both dogs and owners because it keeps your dog obedient and develops the bond between you. As more and more owners prefer to discipline their dog as a service dog due to the high cost of special training organizations, the training of service dogs is often done by individuals or families. However, it should be noted that the training intensity and duration can directly determine the outcome of training because dogs, like humans, feel overwhelmed when filled with too much training. Occasionally, intense sessions can break your plan and deviate from your goal, such as causing a fearful personality. Therefore it is important for each owner to set a reasonable schedule before training your service dog candidate.
Many people have high expectations and set an impractical training goal that their dogs cannot achieve. Too fast a process can make the training take longer, while a slow and careful training course will reach your goal more quickly in the long run. If you rush your pup frequently, this will lead to undesirable results, such as a training setback and new behavior problems. In short, the rule for training a service dog is “slow is fast.”
If you have an older dog, you should take into account some factors that affect its physical activity, such as medical conditions, low mental sharpness, and unhappy experiences. However, old dogs still can still learn new tricks as long as you are prepared to use extra patience and short training sessions.
No. 2 -What age do you start the training?
Some people prefer to start training their dogs to be Service Dogs when they are 1.5 to 3 years old. This is so you can get to know your dogs temperament first and know if they have the capabilities of being a Service Dog. But if you train your dog from a puppy you can shape your dogs behavior and grow with them. This gives you some sense of control over the puppy’s temperament from a young age, making it easier for you to train them to become the Service Dog you are looking for.
Generally, basic training starts for a puppy from around 8 weeks. More advanced training is delayed until around 6 months of age. It is up to you when you want to start training your dog. If you notice when you start that your puppy doesn’t seem particularly ready yet, leave it for another few weeks and try again.
How can my dog become a service dog for anxiety?
How to get a service dog
Your Complete Puppy Training Schedule By Age
Starting with three basic commands and generous time and attention — and lots of biscuits and kisses — you can train your four-legged friend to eventually become the best medical device you have. Owner-training the dog eliminates time wasted on training school waiting lists and creates a steady routine of challenging your dog to learn new tasks as your needs change. Depending on your lifestyle and dog knowledge, there are several ways to owner-train your service dog.
One night several months ago, Melissa Mitchell, of Eugene, Ore., was aroused from sleep by her dog, Bastien, who was whining and running in circles. Because Bastien was usually calm, Mitchell knew something was wrong and thought she had better get him outside, so she pulled on her robe and opened her bedroom door. Out in the apartment hallway, the fire alarm was blaring an evacuation warning. Mitchell hadn’t heard a thing while in her bedroom.
“High-pitched alarms and noises are very painful to dogs,” says Mitchell, who trained Bastien since puppyhood. “I’d have fire drills with Bastien and taught him that when the alarm goes off, we get his leash and we go outside. I knew something was wrong with him. It pays to know your dog.”
Before getting Bastien, Mitchell, who has cerebral palsy and uses a manual wheelchair, was on a waiting list at a local assistance-dog school to get a trained helper. She prepared herself by researching her rights and responsibilities as an assistance dog partner, and she also researched laws pertaining to having an assistance dog in public — what the rules are for taking them into airports, restaurants and on public transportation, and what certification the dogs need to be deemed an assistance dog. She waited five years, never hearing a word from the school, before discovering there was no U.S. law against training your own assistance dog.
“I thought, gee, I’ve got a college degree, I’m smart, I grew up with dogs … I could train my own dog!”
First Things First The first step to owner-training is the most important: choosing the appropriate dog for its temperament and your personality.
After carefully choosing a mixed breed for his temperament and personality to fit her own personality and lifestyle, Mitchell says it took two years to train her Newfoundland/Australian shepherd to do everything she needed him to do for her. Now Bastien helps Mitchell get dressed and undressed, helps her with laundry and shopping, pulls her in her chair to save her strength and knows what to do in case of a fire emergency.
All this was accomplished by Mitchell teaching the Newfie mix three basic commands: take, hold, give. With these three commands, Bastien can retrieve items, open and close doors, pull on or off socks and clothes, get things out of the refrigerator and help Mitchell fold the laundry. Well, he can at least bring Mitchell the laundry — she has to fold it herself.
There are several traits to consider when researching the temperament and personality of a breed. Though a large breed — Newfies grow to 100 pounds — Mitchell was interested in one because she liked its trademark gentleness. But she also wanted a little more energy in a smaller size — plus, large-breed dogs have a shorter lifespan — so she settled on a Newfie mix instead of a pure breed.
“Martha Hoffman’s book, Lend Me an Ear, describes how to discern whether a dog has the right personality and the kind of temperament you need in an assistance dog,” Mitchell says. “You don’t want a dog who’s aggressive or fearful, you want a nice dog with a rock-solid, even-keel, easy-going temperament.
“Look at the breed’s energy level and your lifestyle. If you are someone who zips around in a scooter or chair, you can handle a dog with more energy. But if you mainly stay home or live in an apartment, you might want a dog that’s more low key.”
Mitchell’s disability isn’t progressive, but it will affect how her body ages, and she may experience upper body weakness or shoulder problems and a decrease in stamina and energy. This is why one of Bastien’s main tasks is to provide Mitchell with wheel momentum. She lets Bastien pull her chair for periods of the day, which saves her shoulders and allows her to continue using a manual chair. Almost all of Bastien’s tasks reduce Mitchell’s need to wheel herself during the day, as he retrieves and delivers things at home between Mitchell and her sister, or to and from co-workers in her office.
“He’s the only assistive device I have that can change to meet my changing needs,” Mitchell says. “We’re always adding tasks. Right now, we’re working on him pulling my wheelchair to me.”
Creating an Obedient Animal But before you can teach assistance tasks, your dog must know the basic obedience commands: come, down, sit, stay, heel. Whether you get a puppy or have an older dog, it should also be socialized.
Mitchell got Bastien four years ago when he was 7 weeks old. She took him to puppy kindergarten for socialization skills, which can also be done by visiting other puppies, dogs, kids and people. Adult basic obedience training usually takes six weeks. Mitchell suggests taking two months to solidify obedience commands before teaching assistance tasks.
Mitchell uses the “clicker training” method to train Bastien. Clicker training is based on B.F. Skinners’ operant conditioning, whereby a reinforcer stimulant is used to encourage specific behavior. Clickers look like a kid’s pencil sharpener with a metal strip that you push with your thumb (they’re sold at pet stores). Trainers use the clicker or another noisemaker along with verbal, food or toy rewards to reinforce an event. Dogs become excited to learn with operant conditioning, as it becomes a game: I do something you want and you reward me — I love this game!
“But, you have to begin to randomize the rewards after he learns a behavior. I call it the Keeping Hope Alive approach,” Mitchell says. “You don’t want a dog who will only work if they get a treat or reward, you want one who knows what he’s doing and will do it when you ask him to do it.”
Mitchell stresses not to begin the Keeping Hope Alive approach until after your dog learns the new task or behavior; you don’t want any doubt in the dog’s mind that they won’t get a treat after they do what you ask.
Though your level of injury or lack of upper body strength shouldn’t stop you from being able to train your own assistance dog, this process isn’t for everyone. “It’s very emotionally demanding, it’s very time consuming and it’s very expensive,” Mitchell says. “I’m into Bastien for a lot of time, classes, food, vet expenses, adoption fees, books and gear.”
Proponents believe that the benefits of owner-trained assistance dogs outweigh those of school-trained dogs. Many schools now require after-placement updates and reports monthly on bonding and skills; school-trained dogs have to adapt to their partner (Mitchell likens it to the first year of marriage); you don’t know the history of the dog, and may not understand why something stresses him out; and you don’t have the level of trust that is built by shared history.
Owner-trained dogs have drawbacks, too. There’s no guarantee that the dog you choose is going to be successful, and the training it takes may be beyond the time or energy you want or are able to spend.
“I like to say Bastien and I have a symbiotic relationship. He takes care of me and I take care of him,” Mitchell says. “Neither of us are any good without the other.”
Bastien took it upon himself to become her shower monitor. When he hears the shower come on, he runs to make sure Mitchell safely gets into the shower, lies down on the floor to wait, and like clockwork, after 15 minutes, pokes his head around the curtain, as if to say, Hello! Time to get out! This gives Mitchell a great sense of pride and security.
“I know if I fall, he’ll be right there,” Mitchell says. “I can ask him to get the cordless phone or my cell phone or I can ask him to get my sister. He knows how to do all of this.”
Mitchell joined her local Puget Sound Assistance Dog Club and shares and receives pointers from other members of the tight-knit group.
Spokes Goes Shopping Like Mitchell, Holly Koester initially trained her puppy, but then let a service training school teach her dog the basic commands and tasks for Koester to continue. After socializing and obedience training her black Labrador, Koester [“Under a Microscope,” June NM] took “Spokes” to Assistance Dogs of America, Inc. near her Cleveland, Ohio, home. By fostering her own dog for a year and a half, Koester had already basic-trained the Lab, so it only took three months for Spokes to learn assistance tasks.
“She might’ve had to stay longer to learn more assistance if I were a quad,” says Koester, a T7 para. “They taught Spokes basic commands, then at the end of the three months invited all the people [partners] to come and learn how to continue training by teaching us the clicker method.”
Before teaching the dog partners how to clicker-train, ADAI taught them what it was like for the dog to learn the process. Koester and other assistance dog partners were asked to leave the training room, then were called back, one by one. Koester says she came through the door not knowing what she was supposed to do. As she went in the direction that the ADAI trainers wanted her to go, she got a click and a treat. As Koester worked her way toward a dresser, she realized that she was supposed to do something there. When she touched the drawers, she’d get a click and a treat. Eventually, she understood that the trainers wanted her to open a drawer.
“They were showing us what it was like for a dog,” Koester says. ” The dog has no idea what they’re supposed to do. This was for us to learn what to expect and how to work with the clicker.”
Koester brought Spokes home and trained the dog to remove her socks in the morning, open and close doors and help grocery shop.
To pull off socks, Koester got Spokes to put the sock in her mouth, then gave her a reward. She didn’t add the word “pull” until the dog understood what it was supposed to do. To teach opening doors, Koester held a treat up to the door and allowed the dog to jump up towards the treat. Eventually Spokes would touch the door with her nose and finally push the door hard enough so Koester could attach the word “push” to the action.
To open the refrigerator or a cupboard door, Koester tied a towel to the handle and said, “pull.” While training, dogs will volunteer a behavior just to see if they can get a treat. Withholding the reward after volunteered behavior is called “proofing,” which helps keep the dog from sneaking in the fridge or cupboard at night.
“I was the first person ADAI accepted that had fostered their own dog,” Koester says. “They usually want other parties to do the fostering, but I wanted to see the puppy grow up. Plus, it’s usually a two-year wait because it’s so hard for the schools to find dogs. They tend to work with purebreds that cost a lot.”
To socialize Spokes, Koester took her to public places such as stores, until she grew too big. Then she would bring her to softball games, parks or for walks.
“Official foster parents get ‘Service Dog in Training’ vests for their dogs,” Koester explains. “But I was doing this on my own so I was limited to where I could take her. I’d take her places where I’d be around a lot of people.”
Koester is constantly teaching her assistance dog new things. For instance, Koester taught her how to put the garbage barrel out at the curb, but Spokes couldn’t pull it back up the driveway. Koester could bring the barrel back but couldn’t manage the cover, so she taught Spokes, who loves to play Frisbee, to bring it back.
“I’d toss the top to her, but at first, if she dropped it, she’d pick the top up, but it would flip up and cover her face and she’d stumble around,” Koester says. “It was pretty funny until she learned the right way to pick it up.”
Now with her assistance-dog training certification, Spokes can go anywhere Koester goes, including grocery shopping where the dog carries and drops cans and boxes into the shopping cart for Koester. Spokes also can give money or a credit card to clerks.
“I made a little wallet for Spokes, and put her PetSmart card in it,” Koester says. “I first ask the clerks if they’re afraid of dogs. Now, if I go in without her, the people at the bank or post office ask, ‘Where’s Spokes?’
“She really opens up the communication,” Koester says. “Before, I’d be in line and people would step in front of me, or they didn’t think I was doing the shopping or that somebody else would pay for things for me. Now with Spokes, people see me. It’s a huge deal because it makes them aware that I’m here and their attention is now focused on me.”
Training the Trainer Training your own assistance dog takes training in itself. Having trained four dogs to become assistance dogs, in 1987 Mary George, of Tucson, Ariz., co-founded Top Dog, one of the only owner-trained programs in the United States, along with four others — Lydia Kelley, Stewart Nordensson, Kathy Hurst and Diann Belleranti.
“We want to help people become more independent,” says George, who uses a scooter outdoors and crutches at home due to juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. “We really want high-quality dogs out there and we work very hard to achieve success in each team we certify.”
By team, George means the partner and the dog. Top Dog’s training books and videos, Teamwork I and II, are considered by some to be the best in the industry and are inexpensive to purchase. If you are in the Tucson area, Top Dog will help you find a dog to train, unless you already have one. They hold classes once a week for beginners and also provide subsequent intermediate courses (see sidebar).
“Though you can start out with a puppy, I like to start training the dogs for service between 1.5 and 3 years of age,” George says. “You don’t know a dog’s temperament until they start to get older and are exposed to things.”
George and Kelley agree that some breeds are better than others to learn assistance training. Top Dog suggests mixed breeds — those with an edge are breeds from the sporting or working groups. Dogs from these groups are bred to do a job and receive pleasure from the task.
“We’ve trained some breeds you wouldn’t think of using, such as chow chows and greyhounds,” George says. “With sight hounds [greyhounds], you have to be very aware of the area around you because they see things before you do. Scent hounds [beagles or bassets] keep their nose on the ground all the time and may not be as alert to visual surroundings. You have to really know your breed’s characteristics to work with it and not against it.”
While task training, George says to think carefully about what word you want to use. Dogs don’t know English, so you can teach them any word. By attaching a treat or praise to the word, they’ll learn how to do it.
To get her golden retriever, Liberty, to help her dress, George says, “dress me,” and the dog will help her pull on her pants. When she hears “pull,” Liberty knows it means to grab a door strap in front of her. “Give me five” will get Liberty to lift her paw to shake hands, and for Liberty to find the cordless phone in one of three places, George says, “ring-ring.”
“I didn’t want her to just answer the phone when it rings,” George says. “I want her to retrieve it if I fall and need to call for help.”
When teaching the dog to retrieve the phone on command, George would put another object nearby. If Liberty retrieved the wrong item, George knew the dog needed more training.
Assistance dogs can be taught to brace in order to help someone who has fallen or who needs support to transfer, but George warns that dogs can’t handle too much weight, and any pressure should be put on the dog’s shoulders or hips.
As the Top Dog training manual states, you can teach dogs without putting one piece of equipment on them, but it’s quicker and easier to use a halter or collar and other devices to help the process. Because she has arthritis in her hands, George uses a Gentle Leader to teach heeling and other obedience commands. The Gentle Leader prevents dogs from pulling and takes only a gentle pull from the partner and a voice or food reward to train.
“I had a man who was born without legs or arms who would keep his treats in his mouth and spit them out to reward his dog,” George says. “Another person who had CP attached to his chair a small gumball machine with a lever that he could nudge for the treat.”
Though service dogs can be extremely helpful, George likens traveling with a dog to traveling with a baby; it takes more time to plan, there’s a lot of gear to cart around and people become curious and want to meet and greet the dog.
“You also have to make sure your dog is on a regular feeding and bathroom schedule,” she says. “I can’t bend over and pick up waste in public, so I make sure Liberty goes at home before we go out. I also take enough food and water with me if it’s going to be overnight.”
George warns that a change in water can upset a dog’s system, causing diarrhea. She also calls airlines ahead of time to be sure there isn’t any boarding trouble. All service dogs are allowed in public but, she says with the exception of police dogs, are to be on leash at all times.
Allowing strangers to pet an assistance dog is up to the partner. “I tell kids at demonstrations to always ask before they pet because the dog might be in the middle of a task,” she says. “Then I tell them to put their hand out and let the dog sniff. I encourage petting, I’m shy and it’s a good bridge for me to meet people. Once people start talking about your dog, they forget you have a disability. I’ve made many friends this way.”
Recognizing Friend or Foe Not all assistance dogs come in big packages, nor do they all pick up fallen objects or open doors. Just ask Terry Rock, of Huron, Ohio, a T12-L1 para whose loveable little Chihuahua, Bob, has been Rock’s “pain medication” and bodyguard for four years.
“Bob keeps my mind occupied so I don’t dwell on my pain,” Rock says. “Just talking to him and petting him distracts me and calms me down. He helps when I feel down, and if we’re out in public, he alerts to strangers who are getting too close to me.”
Rock got Bob when the dog was 1.5 years old and has trained him since. The ex-Vietnam vet was told early on by therapists at the VA that because of Bob’s size and demeanor, he’d make a great therapy dog for those staying in the hospital. He visits Iraq vets and friends in the hospital and says he gets positive responses from Bob’s visits.
“He’s the positive part of depression,” Rock says. “I’ve gone through enough down days where the pain in my legs is so bad … if it wasn’t for him, I’d at least be more irritable.”
“I help manage a seasonal campground facility,” Rock says. “People are always coming into the rental office and Bob watches the doors. If someone we don’t know comes in, Bob will run to them, tap their toes with his paw just to let them know Hey, I’m here. When they acknowledge him, he lies down.”
Experts agree that some of the therapeutic or safety aspects of animals are instinctual. For instance, Melissa Mitchell relates an incident that proved her assistance dog’s instincts.
“I trained my dog from a very young age not to bark more than once at something,” she says. “One night we were walking down a dark alley when all of a sudden Bastien started barking at this guy who was about a football field away from us. I said, ‘quiet,’ but Bastien kept barking and wouldn’t stop. While I was trying to figure out what the hell’s the matter, the person who was walking toward us abruptly turned and walked away. Then Bastien shut up.”
Another time, Mitchell says she boarded her daily bus to work and while the bus driver was strapping down Mitchell’s chair, Bastien let out a deep bark.
“He knows he’s supposed to be quiet on the bus and in public, so I knew something was wrong,” Mitchell recounts. “I whispered to the driver, ‘There’s someone on this bus who’s not right, watch yourself.”
Sure enough, the driver later told Mitchell that she had to throw someone off the bus because he “went off his rocker.”
Those in the service dog industry stress the importance of making sure your assistance dog is well-behaved in public. Partners we talked to all agree that knowing their dogs from the time they were young animals allow them to understand their dog’s instincts as well as their habits and behavior. For Mitchell, Rock, and others, it has helped them feel safe as they go about their lives.
Top Dog of Tucson, Ariz., one of very few owner-trained service dog programs in the country, encourages dog owners to attend classes, where they are partnered with a volunteer training assistant. The two-course program costs $200 and includes two years of training. Materials cost $80 and include two books and videos, Teamwork I and II. An online course is also available.
The beginner’s course teaches basic dog obedience, including sit, come, stay, down, heel, and also how to understand the dog and breed characteristics. Co-founder Lydia Kelley says it’s important to know what your dog has been bred for, to understand its body language, what it’s trying to communicate and the hierarchy of pack leadership.
The intermediate class continues to practice on basic obedience, but with added distractions such as kids, skateboards, other dogs or anything else they may encounter in public. Also, certain undesirable behaviors are eliminated and service task training is started.
After the intermediate class, the team takes the Assistance Dogs International public access test. After an Advanced Training Service Exercises course, the team becomes certified as a Top Dog team.
One way a dog can get dismissed from the Top Dog program is by exhibiting any type of bad behavior, including overt shyness or aggression — meaning growling and barking out of control and unprovoked aggression.
“The problem is there are an awful lot of service dogs out there that have very little training,” Kelley says. “Unfortunately, people use the ADA law just to take their dog out in public. We have a responsibility to each other so assistance dogs don’t get a bad name.”
It seems there’s always controversy surrounding service animals and the public. Most recently, the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners, with 2,000 members worldwide, has taken the U.S. Department of Transportation to task, urging it to modify language covering transport of service animals by air.
“The FAA doesn’t want dogs intruding into the floor space or legroom of the neighboring passenger,” says Ed Eames, of Fresno, Calif., president of IAADP. “Meaning a large dog, a dog that hasn’t been trained to sit under an airline seat, a dog whose equipment would be such that it could not easily shift in space, in front of a seat, or in space provided in the bulkhead.”
Now the floor space issue is causing airlines to consider charging service dogs for an extra seat.
Other concerns are with emotional support dogs. ES dogs provide comfort or emotional support to a person who has a psychiatric disability. Eames says a lot of people with ES animals are claiming they have the same legal rights as a person with a service animal. The problem with ES dogs or therapeutic dogs is they have not been trained to mitigate a disability and are not necessarily trained to behave in public. The ADA defines a service animal as any dog or other animal that is trained to provide assistance to individuals with a disability. Types of service dogs include assistance, guide and hearing.
ES dogs may also show aggressive or threatening behavior. “We don’t want our dogs to be threatening in any way,” Eames says. “We don’t want them to be protective. The worst behavior a service dog can display is aggression. A step down from aggression is protection. The mere presence of a dog will be a deterrent to any kind of negative behavior towards a person with a disability.”
Eames adds that training a dog to bark or take a threatening pose towards others is something the IAADP finds
reprehensible. He warns it will turn the public off to accepting service dogs and could create backlash demanding that service dogs be banned from public.
The IAADP lists minimum training standards for public access on its Web site (see resources) and encourages new members.