Skip to main content

The iT in SDiT

SDIT Patch
We know that the world of Service Dogs is a one that is hard to navigate.  The laws are open to interpretation and there is no education to the general public.  That's one of the reasons I am all for the laws and regulations governing Service Dogs to be changed.  We put so much work into our Service Dogs to have someone that just wants to take their pet dog with them where ever they go and not put any training into it, causes us to have a harder time with our real Service Dogs.

I lost my Service Dog about 4 years ago and I've had to learn to live without him.  I've gradually shifted to needing to be with my husband when living my daily life.  I can't really handle being by myself unless I'm doing training.  I can't really explain that other than that I've been doing training for so long that it just feels so natural and I get more relaxed when I'm training a dog.  Many friends watching me train have often said that I am a different person when I train and I often attribute that to being of of the many masks that I wear to hide how I'm feeling.

I said that to be able to say this, I understand how hard it is to train with your dog when you have stuff going on that just make you want to stay in bed all day, or you have a medical issue where you need to stay in bed all day, but the training has to continue.  It can't stop just because we can't get out and go.
Yadi doing DPT while I was laying down.  
On those days you may work on relaxation techniques to help your dogs learn to calm down and relax on for times when you need to go to the doctors office or just want to sit and have a coffee with a friend.  Relaxation is a key element in a Service Dog's behavior.

The training has to be an ongoing 24/7 thing.  You cannot allow your dog to jump on you some times and correct them other times, you cannot allow them to pull on leash some times and not others.  You have to ask that they follow the rules all the time.  Allowing them to get away something only sets you back in your training.

Think of all of the time that you spend trying to cleaning up after a mess that your dog has made because you didn't work on leave it enough with them. Or how long you spend chasing them in the yard because you didn't reward them enough for coming when you called them, or maybe you even you called them to you and then got onto them for something they did when they came to you.

We have to approach our training with a proactive mindset and teach our dogs what we want them to do from the beginning rather than waiting until they have already reacted and then us responding to that behavior.

Feel free to email me at dog.trainer.girl@gmail.com with any questions you might have.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Positive Changes of Dog Training

In the last century dog training has been under going an evolution of sorts.  It wasn’t so long ago that the lexicon of dog training included words like punishment, compulsion and Intimidation.  The tools of the trade where things designed to inflict pain and cruelty as a way of training dogs to do or not do things the handlers wanted.  Dogs were punished with ear pinches and the like, if they didn’t perform the desired behaviors.  The idea of training a dog was to break the dog of some bad habit it had.   One of the forefathers of scientific study into dog behavior was Edward Thorndike (1874-1949).  He studied the effect of positive reinforcement on dog behavior.  Thorndike called his study the Law of Effect.  His study put forth the idea that the key to understanding how to train dogs was to understand canine behavior.  Behaviors that produce an effect that is desirable are ones that a dog is more likely to repeat, whereas behaviors...
1 comment
Read more

The Kona Diaries - Secondary Fear Stage and Vet Visits

This morning I had a plan.  I was going to take Kona to Hollywood Feed for some social interactions.  Since spending all this time at home with the COVID-19 Shutdown, she has regressed a lot on her social skills.  My intention was to do some filming of her while we were out, however that was quickly abandoned.  At first, she did pretty well, she walked with me and would every now and then forge ahead of me but would come back to heel when I asked.  Not once did she try to take anything off the shelves though.  I was very proud.  As we made a loop around to the front counter she caught sight of this sign spinning in the air and she just lost it.  She never once barked at it but she crouched down and her legs were shaking.  We have definitely had a setback.  After a nap to try and get some relief from a migraine that had started making me feel sick, I went out with the pups and found a huge blood smear on my patio at first I thought Ko...
Post a Comment
Read more

And just like that the wold fell apart

But my dogs still needed training!!! Within a couple weeks everything has ground to a halt and I went from doing 25-30 appointments a week, to not having left the house in two weeks. This time, it was not because of my depression or a mental breakdown it was because of a world wide virus that is spreading across the world like wild fire. So I jumped into to brining my students into online dog training but I failed to realize that this was going to showcase a big fear that I have been hiding. That I couldn’t do it anymore.  This pup right here was my soul pup.  Trainers often talk about that one dog that taught them so much about being a trainer.  Well that was Tazie for me. This little dog put me though the wringer of emotions and taught me everything from how to teach basics to how to care for a dog with a neurological problem.  We had a wild journey that took us from Atlanta, Ga to Rochester, Ny to Birmingham, Al and finally to Jonesboro, Ar.  He ...
1 comment
Read more