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.