At Your Service Dog Training

27/11/2024

Tips to keep service dogs in training safe, healthy, and well-behaved during the holidays. https://atyourservicedogtraining.com/keep-your-dog-safe-during-holidays/

Learn tips on how to keep your dog safe and healthy during the holidays!

15/11/2024

Lots of great tips in this article, “My dog wakes up too early!” I am a morning person, but I prefer my dogs to sleep in so I get some quiet time when I first wake up. I have successfully convinced my last 6 dogs that they were not morning people. 😉

Some dogs seem to have an uncanny knack for anticipating the alarm by 15 or 20 minutes. Here's what you can do if your dog wakes up too early each morning.

14/11/2024

Wise words from my friend, Nancy, about puppy raising. This goes double if you’re raising a puppy as a future service dog! Take the pressure off. Let the puppy see the world in a relaxed, positive way.

13/11/2024

Huge thanks to Thornes Marketplace, the Heart of Northampton, for sponsoring our Service Dog Scholarship Fund!

11/11/2024

Thank you to all the veterans who have served, risking their health, security, and lives to protect freedom and democracy in this country. A sacrifice that means more than ever these days. It is always a joy and an honor to help veterans train their own service dog. One of the veterans I had the privilege of training with was US Army and US Air Force Veteran Frankie Mazzei. Enjoy our profile of this very soulful human. https://atyourservicedogtraining.com/joy-and-kisses-remembering-frankie-mazzei/

As a service dog trainer, I have the privilege of working with a lot of wonderful people and dogs. I grow very fond of all the service dog teams I train with,

07/11/2024

Ask THREE service dog trainers the same question... Will you get one answer or 3?? Here's your chance to ask three different service dog trainers a question! This weekend, I'm meeting with Claire Kilburn of Alliance Service Dogs (Toronto) and Rebecca Brame of Rubydog training (Philadelphia). We'll video our answers to your questions!

05/11/2024

Your dog can join these other successful service dog graduates! Our Level 1 service dog class, PEARL DISC, has 1 space left. Starts this Thursday, Nov. 7 at 12 PM Eastern (9 AM Pacific). Taught LIVE by professional service dog trainer, Alex Wise CPDT-KA. Get instruction and individualized coaching. 10 weeks + assessment. https://aysdtschedule.as.me/

03/11/2024

Get your service dog questions answered this evening. Register to attend FREE. https://aysdtschedule.as.me/schedule/b1d35bd3/appointment/69038794/calendar/4119355/datetime/2024-11-03T19%3A00%3A00-0500

01/11/2024

I ask the clients or trainers I meet with, at the start of every private lesson or mentorship meeting for a "win" -- something that has gone well with their dog since we last met. Sometimes these wins are so inspiring and joyous, we have decided to start sharing them on social media and in our newsletters. Here are two recent client wins that made me particularly happy. Do you have a "win" with your dog that you'd like to share? (It doesn't have to be momentous like these two! Small wins are really important!)

*Dentist appointment success!* In the past, KD, a young woman with autism, required three paid support staff, in addition to her mother, to get through a dental cleaning. KD's dog is now able to accompany KD to the dentist. With her dog by her side, KD was able to visit the dentist with just her mother and no other staff.

*Relaxing with Deep Pressure.* The mother of TA, an 8-year-old with severe PTSD, reported that the deep pressure behavior we’ve been training their dog, Bode, to do is successfully interrupting symptoms of dysregulation. In the past, when he was dysregulated, her child might hit, kick, and scream. Now he is able to relax under the weight of his beloved Bode.

01/11/2024

Do you have questions about service dog training? Get answers FREE, live, from a professional service dog trainer this Sunday! 7 pm Eastern (4 pm Pacific). Get your free ticket here: https://aysdtschedule.as.me/schedule/b1d35bd3/appointment/69038794/calendar/4119355

01/11/2024

Some of our client's dogs (and our own) in their Halloween costumes. There is a definite "bat and pumpkin" theme! Did you dress up your dog for Howl-o-ween? Post their pictures in the comments!

31/10/2024

Children visiting over the holidays can be hard for dogs. This webinar by dog/child specialist, Michelle Stern, will provide practical tips for harmony. https://educanine.thinkific.com/courses/pawsforprepholiday?fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR02VFEGVTdEbS0uZCamr3ZTtSkp1zVv_ABt6R7lDNTunhKBhCO38S2Y9-8_aem_aUw3fE8UfpsCawRwOS7Cmw

Join us for an insightful session on preparing your dog for children visiting this holiday season! This webinar provides practical tips for promoting harmony and safety when children visit your home.

23/10/2024

Kismet has a magical nose. This is kind of a weird thing to be grateful for, but here it is... Kismet, my five-year-old standard poodle, gets extremely excited by any dog who smells "unusual." There are two scenarios when this arises.
1. When one of his housemates gets groomed, they smell fragranced, and he gets overexcited. He pokes them with his nose, dances around with his tail jiggling and as high as it will go, and usually he also relentlessly tries to mount the other dog. This is NOT useful. It is annoying. But at least it is predictable and short-lived.
2. When another dog has an infection, he does the same thing. To date, so far, he has "diagnosed" the following infections, mostly by pestering and hu***ng the afflicted dog:
- Barnum (my dog, now deceased), two urinary tract infections (UTIs)
- Clyde (my friend's dog, now deceased), two UTIs
- Lotti (my partner's dog), a severe skin infection
- Heidi, a board-and-train dog, a bacterial vulvar infection
- Gromit, a UTI
In all of these cases, we did not know the other dog had an infection due to their symptoms. But because of Kismet's bizarre (and by now, very familiar), behavior with these dogs), we sought out medical care. In all cases, these were dogs who he otherwise behaved politely and "normally" around. Because of his overactivated attention to these dogs, these infections were caught early because they were "diagnosed by Dr. Kismet."
Dog noses are amazing things. Sometimes the way they tell us what they are smelling is not ideal, but as they cannot text us, we have to be learn to "speak dog." Thanks also to for always being willing to test another dog's urine just because Kismet said we should.

22/10/2024

How much does it cost to own a dog? An important consideration for pet owners, and even more important for those who want to train their own service dog. Fire up your calculator!

Dogs provide us with unconditional love and companionship daily. However, the costs of owning a dog can add up quickly if you're unprepared.

11/10/2024

Service dog foundation classes for puppies and older. PEARL DISC classes coming up (Pups Engaged Attentive Relaxed Learning - Dogs In Service Certification). Courses are ten weeks and include the written and practical assessment at the end.
Nov 7 - Thursdays at 12pm ET (9 AM PT)
Jan 6 - Mondays at 5pm ET (2 PM PT) https://aysdtschedule.as.me/

08/10/2024

The Difference between Agility and Service Dog Training

I have been involved in owner-training service dogs for 26 years. A couple of years ago, I took agility classes with one of my dogs because I knew he would love it. (He did. We both did. If he hadn’t gotten injured a year into training, we would still be doing it.) Taking agility classes was tons of fun, as well as humbling because I was a beginner in this realm of dog training that is so different from service dog training. I learned how to better train around or with obstacles and to be more aware of how my arms, legs, and torso communicate different things to my dog.

It also made me better able to understand and help service dog clients who have a background in agility or other dog sports. When I started agility, I had to unlearn a lot of the ways I reflexively train because training dogs for agility is, in some ways, the opposite of how you want to train dogs for public access! (This is why the one thing everybody complimented my dog on was his outstanding start-line stand-stay!)

The four critical components for public access work are 1. a long, relaxed down-stay, 2. a relaxed, sustainable loose leash walk, 3. attention on the handler and 4. a default leave it.

Handlers who come to me with a background in dog sports usually have a higher skill level in general in rewards-based training, along with more skills in motivating their dogs and maintaining connection with them. They also often have trained their dogs to have a remarkable ability to pay attention to them around high-level distractions. So, #3 and #4 on the list above are often well above average compared to typical (pet or inexperienced) trainers.

Where agility folks almost always struggle is in training their dogs to relax and settle. A sustained loose-leash walk is also often a challenge.

This makes sense if you think about the different jobs of a canine athlete versus a service animal. An agility dog should move as fast as possible with a high degree of attention on their handler for a very short period. Agility is all about maintaining arousal at the same time as precision and attention to very specific cues for less than five minutes.

A service dog, on the other hand, is being trained to work all day long, every day. A high degree of arousal is catastrophic for a service dog. The dog needs to be taught to disconnect from its handler and just zone out or nap a lot.

Because precision requires a lot of mental (and physical energy), training for unnecessary precision also burns out a service dog candidate. (Some precision is needed in some cases, such as when training positioning for guiding or forward-momentum pull. But in cases where precision is not needed, it is best to go for “good enough.”)

This can be hard to hear in this internet age because a highly trained competition obedience or agility team look SO SNAPPY. A dog prancing along with its eyes glued on its handler and then exploding with grace and running obstacles is really exciting. It’s sexy. For a dog training nerd like me, it is sometimes so beautiful it brings tears to my eyes.

But what also moves me deeply (and some of my clients have seen me get choked up when they achieve this with their dogs) is the service dog team who can just amble along together down a grocery store aisle. The handler stops to look at something on a shelf, and the dog just slumps to the floor and sighs, seeming to ignore their handler and everything else. It doesn’t look sexy. But, it’s sustainable. Because, let’s face it, trying to be sexy all day, every day, is exhausting.

Different arenas require different skill sets. Nobody can know everything, and specialists can help us with crucial details that would evade a generalist or a specialist in a different area. This is why we don't go to the gynecologist for a broken arm. ;-)

Service dog owner-trainers can learn a lot of valuable skills from obedience, agility, or other dog sport training. But if you're training a service dog for yourself or your family member, it can be extremely helpful to get some specific coaching (ideally early in your puppy’s life) from a service dog trainer on the aspects of training that are diametrically opposed to dog sports. That way, you can train your dog to context-specific cues: In the agility ring, keep moving, stay fired up. Away from the agility ring, when wearing your service dog vest, chill out and mosey.