<p>We recently adopted a youngish dog(1yr) from the shelter who seems to have already had a bit of training. My daughter could benefit from having a helper dog and as they seem expensive and difficult to find, the idea of training a dog myself appeals to me ( & at least finding out what it takes to be a certificated trainer)</p>
<p>Anyone have any knowledge at all about this process?
It sounds to me like a great field as their potential to assist, IMO is underutilized.</p>
<p>A “helper” dog can mean a lot of different things. What do you expect this dog to be able to do?</p>
<p>Also, I’m no expert, but I don’t think you can train just any dog to do any set of tasks. You have to work with the dog’s natural inclinations. For example, I have two dogs. One will never fetch a ball or a stick – she’ll sometimes run after a tossed ball but she will never grab it in her mouth or bring it back. The other dog loves to play fetch – not only will he readily chase after a ball or toy, but whenever he wants to play, he’ll find a toy and bring it to me. If I wanted to train a dog to be a helper by learning to pick up specific objects and bring them to the owner – something I would imagine would be quite useful to someone with mobility restrictions – I’d want to train my fetcher, but I know I’d have a hard time with the other dog. </p>
<p>From various sources on the internet, it seems that 70-90% of dog being trained to be service dogs “wash out” – so basically the odds would be better if you had more dogs to choose from. :)</p>
<p>Also, some dogs are just smarter or more responsive to training than others. Some dogs need a lot more practice and repetition to get a concept. </p>
<p>That being said, if you’ve observed some behaviors or traits in your own dog that you think could be marshalled into the helper role you envision, certainly it’s worth a try. Just be patient and don’t set expectations unreasonably high.</p>
<p>A relative has had highly trained police dogs. You can go to classes for training, but the ones I’m familiar with are stuff like crowd control, which I think are open to police types. The dogs have to be sent to a special facility to learn bomb sniffing and the like. (Not kidding. Nothing like a huge German Shepherd sniffing stuff to make people comply, even if the dog is actually a softie lick your face monster.)</p>
<p>You can search for specialized training classes and see what’s available.</p>
<p>The main thing I want to train the dog to do is to be able to be in public in any circumstance and be easily controlled.
However, my daughter cannot smell, and in case of fire/ natural gas leak, etc., I want a dog that can notify her of a potentially dangerous situation.</p>
<p>This dog is very bright and someone has worked with him to wait& sit until he receives the ok to enter a room, climb stairs or cross the street.</p>
<p>Its such a change from our previous dog, a lab/ garbage disposal.</p>
<p>I know that part of the training of helper dogs involves exposing them to any conceivable place the owner might go. I was once on a flight with a dog-in-training, and last year saw one at the State Fair, getting exposure to large crowds and the strange noises and smells. However, those dogs were in certified training programs in order to be allowed into those places or, say, a restaurant or other places dogs aren’t usually allowed to go. You’d probably also have to be certified in order to teach it to alert to something like a gas leak. You don’t want to just crank up the gas at home to teach him. :eek:</p>
<p>It sounds like this dog is highly trainable, and might do very well as a service dog.</p>
<p>OK, those are two different things. </p>
<p>As far as the “be in public” part I would think that you would first want to teach the dog basic obedience commands at home or in quiet settings until the dog has got them down very firmly. You can be taking the dog out in public with you on leash during this, but you want the dog to master sit-stay, down, heel, come, etc. at home first. When it’s clear that the dog understands all those commands, then you can increase the challenge level to more stimulating and confusing environments. Teach the dog also to “focus” on a signal – that is, some command or signal that make the dog immediately turn his head and look at the handler. That’s fairly easy as long as the dog isn’t already over-excitable. </p>
<p>Getting the dog to alert to a specific smell is tougher. You have to figure out what behavior you want from the dog when he alerts. (Should he bark? Or come and put his paw on the owner? Is there a specific signal you can teach that is different from what the dog will do when he needs to go outside or is excited about a squirrel outside the window?) Then you would have to teach the dog to alert on each specific smell- in different environments. That is, you would have to created a gas-leak smell, reward the dog for exhibiting the alert behavior for that smell – and at the same time not reward for any other scent. You can’t do it all while standing by your kitchen stove – it has to be in other settings, so the dog understands that it is the particular smell you want, not just the setting in which you are training. (You might find a smoke alarm a lot easier than training the dog to smell a fire – though I did have a dog who might have saved the lives of my neighbor and everyone in my own house because of she started barking when the neighbor’s chimney caught fire – we were able to warn the neighbor, call the fire department, and hose down our own roof to prevent the fire spreading. The dog was not specifically trained to bark when houses caught fire. But she barked at just about everything else even slightly out of the ordinary (cats, garbage collectors, the mailman) – so no training really needed.)</p>
<p>The wild card in all this is your daughter. Trained behavior needs to be practiced and reinforced, and the handler’s behavior is as important as the dogs. So if your daughter wasn’t on board with everything you had taught the dog to do, the dog might just give up on the good training in favor of other behaviors that the daughter was rewarding. (The “reward” doesn’t have to be intentional – a lot of us have “trained” our dogs to be utterly spoiled because we give them attention when they are doing things that we don’t like, and the dog simply likes getting the attention.)</p>
<p>Hi EK–Service dogs are a special category of dogs within the ADA law. For the kind of odor-detection dog you are talking about, the dog wouldn’t ever need to go out in public (because in public someone could tell your D about gas odors). However, you should look up the Federal and WA state law regarding service dogs.</p>
<p>There are many organizations who provide service dog certifications. However, one helpful source is a Yahoo Group called Training Levels, which is a discussion group for Sue Ailsby’s Training Levels, which many many people use in training their own service dogs. Sue Ailsby has published a two-volume book explaining how to train a dog to do basic helper tasks (and many other things); you can buy it from her website [url=<a href=“http://www.sue-eh.ca/]Home[/url”>http://www.sue-eh.ca/]Home[/url</a>]</p>
<p>In my opinion, the Training Levels books are the single best resource for dog training there is.</p>