How Do I Train a Service Dog

This blog post is in response to someone who suggested that I write what I do for the public to see and then invite others to do the same.

Ok, so how is a service dog trained?  What do I do that is the same or different than anyone else?

First off, most of the dogs trained over the last year, have been trained for a specific disorder that causes a person to go into anaphylaxis.  Their throats close up preventing breathing, their faces turn red and blotchy, other parts of their bodies also swell with the over production of histamine and other attendant chemicals.  This means EPI pens (epinephrine injectors) and trips to the ER.   

Most of the service dogs I train are medical alert dogs.  Under normal circumstances, the dog is trained from puppyhood and has a thorough understanding of what their job is and a commitment to doing it.  In some cases, an older dog is found and trained until competent.

What I train:

Commitment to the scent involved in the disorder/disease
Strong, persistent alert to the presence of that scent
Multiple alerts depending on what the person is doing at the time the scent becomes present (for instance, capturing the foot if the person is standing or sitting with feet down, licking the face and standing on the persons body if they are laying down, or giving a hard bump to a part of the body repeatedly)

In some cases, more than one scent and more than one set of alerts
Self control to the point of being able to leave a plate of food on the coffee table alone, without being reminded
Impulse control when something falls to the floor or road kill is encountered on a walk
Proper heeling depending on need.  For some dogs that means slightly ahead of the handler so the dog can block quickly or pull away from a trigger.
How to ignore strangers and other dogs
How to understand new environments based on known object types (a table is a table) so as to prevent or minimize anxiety in a new environment
The Its (drop it, leave it, take it, bring it, give it, do it)
Accept all kinds of handling from vets, groomers and overly excited children. 
Stay with their handler even when the leash is dropped.
Sit, down, stand, come, stay and wait to a high level
How to do all that around a wheelchair, a dentist chair, an emergency room and more



And depending on what the client needs much more.

Starting with a puppy, it takes 4 months to get through all the puppy stuff, but with a service dog puppy, that will include things that a pet puppy would never need to learn.  Climbing stairs, getting in and out of cars, learning about different surfaces, being able to get on and off things on cue, moving around wheelchairs, walkers and canes, and much more. 

Then at 6 months, the public access games start.  Sit, down, come, heel and stay are a very small part of what is needed with public access. Being in restaurants, handling noise and lots of movement, lots of people and even other dogs, eliminating on cue and knowing that doing so otherwise when in public is not tolerated. Until the dog is 18 months, public access games continue wrapped around the task training.

For a medical alert candidate, scent training starts at 8 weeks with games that help the pup learn to follow a scent, find a scent, being creative and persistent about getting to the scent, solving puzzles and learning to solve problems and do what they’ve been asked to do no matter what distractions there are.  By the time a medical alert candidate reaches 9 months they should be doing spontaneous alerts on strangers as well as alerting when the trainer brings out the target scent in session.  A medical alert puppy also starts to learn about alert behaviors at a young age. They learn targeting and that its ok to climb on a human to get to the scent.  And the humans, if they are involved at all in their puppy’s training, learn that it’s ok to allow the puppy to make choices and decisions about things.  Intelligent disobedience is a necessity for a medical alert dog.

From 9 to 18 months, everything the dog has learned is honed and tested and proofed until the dog can find scent blindfolded, stay at heel with 20 kids jumping around, and ignore other dogs and prey animals.  Bomb proofed.

It takes about 3 months to thoroughly train the first scent.  More to get to 92% accuracy.  Once that first scent is learned, it takes from 1 to 3 weeks to learn new scents.  But each one still needs proofing.  And that is with a trainer who knows how to train medical alerts.  With anyone else it can take a lot longer.

But always remember, each dog is an individual and each handler is also.  Train the dog in front of you and work with the handler that is being targeted. Don’t assume and don’t make generalities.

Should You Board and Train Your Dog?

Sending dogs away for training has become an extremely popular choice in recent years.

I do offer board and train, especially for service dogs in training, but it comes with 4 hours of human training along with the 2 weeks of dog training. It sounds totally wonderful to send your dog out to get trained in life or to fix behavior issues.  Most people can afford 2 maybe 3 weeks of this.  But is that realistic to expect a dog to be trained or fixed in that little time?  


How many years did you spend in school?  How good a job did you manage to procure based on that education?  Did you learn everything you needed to learn about how to live as an adult?  Do you really expect a dog, who is NOT human, to learn everything there is to know about living in a human world in 2 or 3 weeks?  Especially if that dog is not even 3 months old yet?


Here are some tips to help you set realistic expectations for your dog’s board & train program, and how to ensure your dog doesn’t end up in the wrong hands.

What can you expect in 2 or 3 weeks?

Answering this question is going to depend on what it is that you are sending your dog away to learn.  If it’s basic obedience and your dog is over 6 months old, you can expect quite a lot.  However, if you don’t ALSO get some training, are you going to understand what it was that your dog learned?  Most places that offer board and train do not train the humans.  They may give you a booklet of instructions, but how many people actually read the instructions for anything?


If your dog is under 6 months, you will get a dog who understands what training is, might be 90% potty trained, and has a good start on what will be expected of him through his years as your pet.  But this puppy is not a robot, it isn’t being programmed or brain washed and will still exhibit puppy behaviors.  This is especially true, again, if the humans don’t get any training on what the puppy learned and how to maintain it until the puppy has matured enough to keep to the program (usually 18 months to 2 years old).


A board and train program can be effective for teaching new behaviors and solving a few problem behaviors and is a good choice if you are also going on a vacation that won’t allow dogs. But in most cases, it’s just a bandage unless the humans involved also get trained in how to maintain what the dog learned.  This is the crux.  If the humans don’t also get some training, in a month or two, it will be as if you’d never sent the dog away.


I love teaching foundation skills, leash walking, and house manners.  I especially love training service dogs. I even love helping dogs gain confidence in a strange world and shedding behaviors that irritate humans or are dangerous to themselves or others.


In a 2- or 3-week board and train I can teach a lot.  Mostly I teach self-control, leash manners and the basics of obedience. It has been my experience however, that severe behavior issues cannot be resolved in that time frame.  Not even with punishment or corrective based methods.  The board and train can do a lot, but most severe behavior issues have their roots in the home environment. So, if the humans don’t change anything once the dog gets home, even when a shock collar was used in the training environment, the dog will lose everything it might have learned to do or avoid.

What you can’t expect from a board and train

A board and train program is not a quick, magical fix. There are no magic pills or powders and definitely no magic tools.  A dog is not a robot, you can’t program it like you can a computer or your DVR.  Believe me, I know about programming computers.  Dogs are not computers.  You also can’t truly punish or correct a dog into submission or into believing that humans can be a packleader or alpha dog.  Humans are primates not canids and most of the “think” about packleaders and alpha dogs is just humans projecting their own insecurities on another species.  Control at any cost.


Almost everyone who guarantees behavior change or even permanent obedience from a 2- or 3-week board and train is most likely using less than desirable methods and tools.  If they’ve done any training at one of the several dog training academy’s that promise to turn you into a dog trainer in 6 weeks and be able to train any sport, any service dog (including guide dogs) and handle any behavior issue, is most likely using these undesirable methods and tools. They are taught to promise and guarantee.  They are told that people are gullible and will believe just about anything.  Including that shock collars, the punch in the carotid artery, the kick to the kidneys or prong collars, do not hurt the dog.  And that the scream or squeal you hear is just the dog being startled. Anyone promising guaranteed behavior in a few weeks’ time is most likely doing any or all of the above-mentioned methods.


And method matters; the end never justifies the means.  Not with humans, and not with animals. There is no scientific inquiry or research that shows that heavy handed methods actually work and leave no future fallout.  In fact, most research has proven exactly the opposite.  Corrective and punishment-based methods, and the tools they promote, cause future behavior issues worse than what your dog exhibited before you sent them away for this type of training.


There is no short-term program, not even board and train, that can make your 8-week-old puppy grow up so fast that they understand that peeing and pooing indoors, no matter where, is an inappropriate place to eliminate.  It takes at least 4 months of potty training and even then, a dog will never be fully reliable.  It all depends on YOU!! I just had a discussion today with a client about his dog suddenly peeing and pooing indoors when he is gone from home. The dog is a full-grown adult.


I even had a fully trained service dog pee right in the middle of the concourse at the airport.  She had only been on the plane for an hour, but the stimulation of the flight filled her bladder and she couldn’t hold it.


One of the reasons I started training service dogs is because I had to help too many of them over the years get out of behavior trouble.  They were never taught how to think, how to problem solve or how to live as other than a service dog doing its job. And taught forcefully in most cases.  But even a medical alert dog who is “on” 24/7 has down time and is just a dog at those moments.

What happens to your dog in a board and train situation?

When you send your dog away for training, you are entrusting their physical and mental health to the trainer and possibly others that work for that trainer. There is no standardized code of ethics nor any required certification or testing for being a dog trainer, and no laws governing how to train a dog. 

There are many cities and states that are starting to advocate for the dog’s, however.  There are several European countries that ban shock collars and prong collars.  


So, unless you do your homework, you could be sending your dog for 2 to 3 weeks of torture.

Most correction and punishment-based trainers do not advertise that they do this.  You might be lucky and see prong or shock collars on pictures of dogs on their website.  Or even a page selling such tools. But unless you dig deep and ask pointed questions, you may not know what methods and tools any individual trainer uses. Be your dog’s advocate. Find a training program with transparency.


I once asked a question on Facebook to those trainers who use shock collars.  These trainers all claim that shock collars don’t hurt the dog.  So, the question I posed was “if the shock collar doesn’t hurt, then what about it is teaching the dog? How does the dog learn from the use of a shock collar?”.  I got answers ranging from “its just uncomfortable enough that they listen” to “I don’t really know how it works, its magic”.  


What should happen in a board and train situation is:

• 1.       At least one hour per day of teaching.  It doesn’t matter if it is broken up into segments during the day, but one hour is minimum in my opinion.  That is what has been optimum for the board and train dogs I’ve had.  
• 2.       Training should be more than just 6 or 7 things – sit, down, come, heel, stay, go to your mat and maybe stand or go around that.  A 2-hour stay seems to be common with many trainers.  I’ve never seen the point of that type of training, not even for a service dog.  What should be taught is self-control, impulse control, loose leashing walking (not just heeling on a tight leash), do nothing (my version of stay), wait (what many others call stay), no door-dashing, no inappropriate chewing on objects or people, potty outside, crate games but not living in a crate, and about 20 other behaviors that all lead to a dog that understands the human world and its rules.
• 3.       How to live in a human world, not a crate or kennel.

Before you commit to spending a $1000 or more and sending your dog away from home for 2 or 3 weeks, ask questions.  Find out exactly what is going to happen to your dog while in that training place.  Find out what happens to your dog when he does something right, what happens when he does something wrong, what tools will be used and the exact usage and fallout of those tools and an explanation of why that trainer uses those tools.  Find out also if you will receive instruction in what your dog learned and what maintenance you will have to do.  Done correctly, you should never have to do more than 5 minutes of maintenance training per day.

Be Aware, Be Prepared, Get Trained

Almost all behavior issues come from the home.  Most humans don’t understand dogs.  Especially those that profess that “all dogs love me”.  Dogs with behavior issues are either being misunderstood – i.e. normal dog behaviors are called problems because the human doesn’t like them, not because they are actual problems or abnormal behavior – or the humans are actively promoting abnormal behavior. They may not realize they are promoting this behavior, but it is true that aggression breeds aggression and a heavy hand produces fear in those that lack confidence.


So, if the humans don’t change, don’t learn, or refuse to accept that their dog is in fact a dog and not a furry human, all that money spent, all that time of learning will be for nothing. You cannot send your dog away to learn an entirely new set of rules and behaviors and then return them home to the exact environment and family behavior you started with and expect it to stick.


Training never ends.  Every moment of the day is training.  Learn how to maintain what your dog learned.

Should you train your pet dog for service?

I receive many inquiries from people wondering if I can train their dog, who has been a pet dog, to be their service dog. I don’t blame these people for trying to minimize expenses in training and not having to accommodate another dog in the home. But not all dogs can make it as a service dog.

The first question you must always ask yourself is “Am I a candidate for a service dog?” The ADA (Americans With Disabilities Act) defines a service dog as a dog that is trained to do a task or work for a person with a disability.  It is important to remember that in the context of the ADA, “disability” is a legal term rather than a medical one. Because it has a legal definition, the ADA’s definition of disability is different from how disability is defined under some other laws, such as for Social Security Disability related benefits.


The ADA defines a person with a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activity. This includes people who have a record of such an impairment, even if they do not currently have a disability. It also includes individuals who do not have a disability but are regarded as having a disability. The ADA also makes it unlawful to discriminate against a person based on that person’s association with a person with a disability.

Some examples of disabilities are:

• ·         vision Impairment.
• ·         deaf or hard of hearing.
• ·         mental health conditions.
• ·         intellectual disability.
• ·         acquired brain injury.
• ·         autism spectrum disorder.
• ·         physical disability affecting movement
• ·         Impaired ability to breathe
• ·         A disease that limits your life experience (diabetes, epilepsy, etc.)

The second question you need to ask, if you do actually have a disability, is, “how could a service dog help me to live more fully in the area my disability affects?”


A service dog is much more than just a dog who is highly trained in obedience.  By ADA law, a service dog is one who is trained to do a task or work for a person with a disability. That task or work must DIRECTLY relate to that person’s disability.  I know of no disability or disease where a dog doing a “sit” is helping that person.  And yet there are trainers out there, many of them, that will sell you a dog from 30 to 60 thousand dollars and the only training the dog has had is sit, down, come, heel, stay and maybe go to your mat.


There are also many owner trainers out there, mislead by others, who will wash their dog out of the training and start over with another dog, just because the dog doesn’t do a down in a grocery store but in the tasks the dog has been trained to do the dog is nearly 100% effective and reliable.  Where is a down necessary for a disability?  Unless it’s a trained alert to a medical condition, I don’t understand why someone would wash a perfectly good service dog.


So along with the question of “how could a service dog help me to live more fully in the area my disability affects?” you should include “what can I train the dog to do to help me with living more fully in the area my disability affects?”


Here is a story about one of my clients.  


M was 12 years old when she was diagnosed with a condition called Mast Cell Activation Syndrome.  Basically, her mast cells had decided that she was allergic to everything.  For the next 3 years, she lived in her sealed bedroom with three air purifiers trying to prevent a trip to the ER because her throat had completely closed up.


When she was 15, she found me and asked if I could train a dog to help her.  I did and since that time she has gotten her drivers license, bought a truck and has a job.  Her service dog watches her histamine levels and warns her when they start rising giving her time to take her rescue medications and avoid a trip to the ER.


That is what it means to have a service dog.  The dog helps you live more fully and is trained to assist you with those things you cannot do.  I don’t know of any human or any machine that could detect the minute rise in histamine levels in a human body with the accuracy of the dog I trained for M.

Last and final questions, and they basically have a lot to do with each other.

1.        Do you have the finances to pay a trainer or the time to do the training yourself? And if doing the training yourself, are you qualified or educated in dog enough to do so, or can you learn with the help of videos, books or a qualified trainer?

2.       Are you prepared to fully commit to 12 to 18 months of initial training and then a dog’s lifetime of maintenance training?  Even a highly trained service dog needs maintenance.  I dare anyone to suggest that what they learned in high school French is a fluent as it was in high school.  Don’t expect your dog to retain that training any more than you did.

3.       Do you have a home that can accommodate your service dog?  No other dogs, or if you do have other dogs, they have no behavior issues that your service dog might emulate because it’s allowed? A landlord that fits into the FHA rules for having to accommodate a service dog (not all have to comply)?  Family that will support you and learn along with you about your service dog?

If you can honestly answer all those questions in the affirmative, that it’s time to figure out if your existing dog can make the grade.

Is my dog a candidate for service dog work?

Here are some questions you should ask yourself about the dog you want to train.


Is my dog…

• ·         Friendly but reserved with strange people?  Can he ignore them when working?
• ·         Friendly or neutral towards other animals? Can he ignore them when working?
• 
  ·         Healthy and with good physical structure? Of a young enough age that the time or money expense and the years of service the dog could give are equitable?
• ·         Comfortable around loud noises, traffic, and even minor distractions?
• ·         Quiet, even when excited?
• ·         Self-confident, self-controlled, doesn’t need major impulse control training, especially around food?

There are more questions of this type that should be looked at, but if your dog passes these questions, the main ones to consider are: how old is the dog?  How many years of service could this dog actually give me? How trainable is this dog? Is this dog of a size to do the job?


You wouldn’t want to consider a dog under 55 lbs. for mobility assistance, but a 10lb dog would be perfectly adequate doing medical alert as long as it didn’t involve waking you up.


Is my dog…

• ·         Suspicious or wary of strangers preferring to advance to warn them off?
• ·         Easily startled with novel experiences”
• ·         Overly excited, reactive or frustrated around other dogs?
• ·         Warning level to others generally higher than just a growl?  
• ·         Fearful of new places, strange noises, people, or animals?

In most cases, a competent behaviorist could handle these issues.  There are no guarantees however, and the dog could revert at any time. My current service dog Chesovy is suspicious of most men due to an incident with a man breaking into our home. He has gotten better, but mostly I just keep him away from strangers.  No one needs to interact with a service dog anyway.  


Again, there are other things you should look at when considering your current pet dog as a service dog candidate.  In 90% of cases, the answer is no. Most people give their pet dogs too much leeway for unacceptable behavior and that is not always quickly handled with training.

Age of the dog is a big consideration.  In most cases of people asking me to train their current pet, that pet is too old or of a breed that has a short life span (Great Danes, Irish Wolfhounds), or a breed that has traits that preclude being able to fully focus on a human (scent or sight hounds).  If you are going to spend 12 to 18 months training your dog, you should be ready to expect at least 5 to 6 years of service before you have to start training another dog.  You should also be willing to start training a replacement before your current service dog is too old or too sick to work effectively.

Our Online Academy

We do have an online training academy.  About half of it is for the regular pet dog owner, the rest is all about service dogs and in particular medical alert service dogs.

Come join us on March 1st, 2020 in one of the discounted classes !!  Sign up in advance to get the discount !!! http://brainsbonesandbehavior.com/page57.html