Ahwatukee Foothills, Phoenix, Arizona, United States
Training for Therapy and Service Dogs
Any and all therapy and service dogs must be able to consistently demonstrate the proper foundation: exceptional stability, neutrality, and responsiveness.
Core foundational qualities:
STABILITY
Non-reactive:
The dog does not react with fear, excitement, dominance, aggression, barking, lunging, or hypervigilance, and they certainly don’t bark out the window at home or in the car, or bark at guests or delivery persons. The dog is neither fearful nor excessively social. Well trained dogs should generally ignore strangers unless invited otherwise.
Excellent Leash Training:
The dog walks directly at the side of the owner, never pulls, never reacts to passing dogs or people, and never stops to sniff without permission. Walks on a loose leash.
Ability to Relax for Long Periods:
Properly trained therapy and service dogs would never follow their handler around at home—they are taught to rest for extended periods. This carries over into public spaces such as restaurants, classrooms, offices, airplanes, waiting rooms, etc.
NEUTRALITY
Calm Public Behavior:
The dog remains composed around traffic, other dogs and animals, people, busy environments, noises, and stimuli.
Environmental Neutrality:
The dog notices distractions but disengages easily and stays focused on the owner instead of fixating on people, food, smells, or other dogs.
Impulse Control:
The dog can settle, wait, ignore temptations, and regulate excitement even in stimulating environments.
RESPONSIVENESS
The Relationship is Primary:
A properly trained dog feels safe and loyal to their owner such that they would never pull on the leash, run away or bolt, bark in the house, or need punitive devices or treats to demonstrate excellent behavior all day every day.
Owner Engagement:
The dog naturally checks in with their owner, responds promptly to cues, and enjoys cooperative work. There is no negotiating, bribing, punishing, or defiance.
Reliability:
The dog has been conditioned over an extended period of time that these behaviors are automatic, making the dog completely reliable in public and at home.
FOUNDATIONAL TRAINING VS OBEDIENCE TRAINING
Foundational training is bulk of the therapy and service dog training. The addition of specialized tasks depends on the person’s disability and can be taught easily and quickly once the foundation is conditioned into the dog. A therapy or service dog is first trained to be exceptionally stable and unobtrusive in the human world; tasks are secondary.
This is contrary to the obedience training world where tasks and tricks come first. Owners are forever locked into punitive devices and collar or treats.
Be extremely cautious about other trainers who advertise themselves as service dog trainers. In the real service dog training world, these dogs would never be exposed to an e-collar or prong collar, and neither would be used to elicit consistent reliable behavior from the dog. When trainers claim service training and use punitive collars, they are training the dog to be loyal to the collar, not the owner, and that loyalty is connected to fear or pain.
My training program is relationship-based, and therefore trains dogs who always listen to their owner, without bribes, punishment, or gadgets.
Trainers who claim to train service dogs but do so in an indoor facility simply cannot replicate the real world, with ever-changing stimuli, to ensure stability in the dogs. My training is done at your home, at the locations you frequent, and trains the dogs for non-reactivity in all settings. I also bring my four service-trained dogs to each session that not only model right behavior for your dog but create the necessary distraction to train your dog for non-reactiveness.
2nd OPINION, UNBIASED, THIRD-PARTY EVALUATIONS
If you’ve already gone through another trainer, I offer free evaluations to determine if your dog was properly trained for therapy or service or not. If not, my program can correct the bad training and fill in the missing gaps. If your dog needs to master real-world experience after training, owners can contact me for opportunities to be around other dogs with my supervision.
HAVE A “SERVICE DOG” WITHOUT A DISABILITY
Don’t be a fraud. Don’t claim your dog is a trained service dog if they don’t exhibit stable behaviors all day, every day. If someone has a dog who barks in public, uses an e-collar or prong collar, needs constant treats, or pulls on the leash that dog is not a service dog. Many states have laws making it unlawful to falsely claim a dog is a service animal, use fake service dog IDs/vests to gain access, and knowingly misrepresent a disability in this context.
However, you can reap all the joys of having a dog trained as well as a service dog. My training program creates a stable, reliable, and responsive dog. I do this without punitive measures and in extremely simple steps. For years, I taught trainers how to train service dogs, and I’ve been in the field training dogs for 18 years. The greatest proof I have, however, are my own service trained dogs, which I bring to every session.