September is Service Dog Month
In honor of Service Dogs Across the World, I as a US Army Veteran will try to follow along with a plan to train my service dog, I know I am getting a late start to the train being that it is already September 9 but I am going to give it my all and I hope you follow along with our training and find out who we will be highlighting each day or maybe some specific information on Service Dogs that the general public should know. I strongly feel even those without service dogs need to know about them because if you’re in a store or office one day and you come across one you need to know!
My background and past experiences
Ok, it is only fair to mention I am a trained Dog Obedience Trainer already, and I have learned alongside the trainers at the Guide Dog Foundation in Smithtown, LI, NY. I only worked as a kennel assistant years ago but I did get to work alongside the great trainers Mike, Barbara, Ian, Barrie, Krista, Doug, and more. Some of the trainers there moved on, some may still be at the foundation. Also working alongside the awesomely pawsome Vet Techs Janice, Carol, and Teri I was able to learn how to handle the dogs from that side of things as well. I will also be grateful to these beautiful people.
Moving on to my Plan
Since then, I will be attempting to train my service dogs- Scout, Liberty, and Freedom. I will be using the guide/ ebook by Lelah Sullivan AKA Shana Cohen. Her book is called simply “Training Your Own Service Dog”. I want to share a screenshot of the cover with you and a link where you can go and purchase the ebook online:
Did you know…
Did you know there are different rules and regulations in every state for service dogs? And to be considered a service dog your dog only needs to technically provide one service for the handler. However, to have a service dog you can’t just wake up and say I want to bring my dog into any store or office with me so I’m going to make my dog my service dog. You do need a bonafide reason to have a service dog- and you do need to have that dog trained properly. Whether you train your dog yourself or attend a professional and highly sought-after school such as the Guide Dog Foundation.
Disclaimer: It is not my wish to recommend everyone train their dog as a Service Dog here. Service dogs are reserved for those who need 24/7 assistance from their dog or aide as a seeing or hearing eye or ear dog, or PTSD dog who uses deep pressure therapy. We will discuss this further another day. Or other needed tasks to help them live the lives that they were put on this earth to live. * Also I want to add not all dogs were meant to be Service Dogs– often people can benefit from an emotional support dog– which we will discuss as well this month. Even still some people can benefit from a therapy dog who is brought to them for a limited amount of time or just comes to provide therapy for a few minutes to someone. Again, hold tight we’ll discuss more about each type of dog in the next few posts. We all must know the difference and that we can decide if we do need any of these or if having a dog as a pet or as I prefer to call my companion(s) is what will suffice for our individual needs.
Day One Training
Day One in Layla’s training she gets us prepared for training our dogs with a clicker. This is a fun training that your dogs will love and something that anyone can do. Today’s training you will be “Associating the clicker”
All you need to do this is a clicker and some treats and your dog…
The idea is to get your dog used to the clicker and what it means. What the clicker means is Hey I just completed a behavior that is good and a reward is coming. FYI with clicker training- TIMING is everything!
I do want to mention I will be using Charlee Bear Treats. These are thumbnail size. And only 3 calories each. This will allow your dog to have many treats. While fully understanding the meaning of the clicker while enjoying their training.
Steps to associate the clicker:
- Gather up your dog, you can put a leash on your dog or not. Having a dog on a leash ensures a little more control over any training.
- Get your clicker in one hand. Whichever hand you click with, I automatically click with my right hand. Therefore I’ll hold the clicker in my right hand and have some treats in my left hand.
- Now just click the clicker and immediately pop a treat into your dog’s mouth.
- Keep doing this for 20-30 seconds.
- REST a moment
- Repeat
- Do this a few times. Until you are sure your dog knows what the clicker means. Your dog should look for that treat when you pick up the clicker. Make sure you click and treat though. Don’t just pick up the clicker without clicking and give your dog the treat. We want them to ASSOCIATE the click of the clicker with the reward at the end.
- The action of your dog sitting or picking something up is the behavior you will train them to do. If they know you like it- ie the click will be the communicator in the training, they will look forward to the reward say picking up your keys when you drop them or whatever.
As the dog runner, I am when I go out for a run with my dogs they get a reward. When we come back my dogs look for the reward of a mini bagel. The routine of coming in the door and saying bagel. This my click, and they look forward to the reward of a Trader Joe’s mini bagel. After all, they went out and helped me enjoy my run- protecting me every step of the way.
So thank you…
So thank you for joining me in my attempts to start training my own service dog during Service Dog Month. I will bring more training days ahead that I hope you join me for. This month I will be posting about service dogs, emotional support dogs, and therapy dogs during September. I do think it is important so that we are all on the same page in this great big world. Knowing how to be around service dogs and how to be around their handlers is so important. A lot of my posts this month are to pay tribute to our Service Dogs. As well as offer up help for those professional schools to better help those in need. My part is in educating the public. Which will help the public and service dog teams experience a much more pleasurable experience when coming across one another.
