Training your own pet dog as an assistance dog- a concept that was unthinkable in the past but that has gained popularity in the recent years and has changed the lives of many!
Traditionally, assistance dogs are perceived as animals trained by specialized organizations and then provided to individuals with physical and/or mental health conditions who will benefit from these animals’ assistance. In many countries, this is still a requirement anchored in legislation.
However, the number of countries incorporating the concept of self-trained assistance dogs or offering options for such dogs to be recognized by local laws is increasing. While laws are still not unified and regular reviews are needed, the flexibility and accessibility of owner-training make it a preferred training method for many individuals.
It is not an easy decision, though! There are many factors that accompany the process of training your pet dog as an assistance animal, and future handlers are likely to have many questions. Some of these might include: Is my dog suitable for the job? What age is good to start training? How long would training take? Would I be able to visit public places with my dog? How much would it cost?
Today’s article aims to clarify all these questions and help you find the best way to proceed!
What Are Assistance Dogs?
Assistance dogs are highly trained dogs who perform specific tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability. These tasks must be in a direct relation to that disability.
“Assistance dogs” is a term that is primarily used in Europe, while the same type of dogs are known as “service dogs” in other parts of the world.
Unlike companion animals, also known as support animals in Europe, assistance dogs are considered medical equipment and are entitled to public access.
Whether an assistance dog needs to be trained through a professional organization depends on local laws. For example, some countries like the UK and the Netherlands recognize self-trained assistance animals, while others like Spain and Austria require self-trained assistance dogs to be certified by a training facility or school to be recognized.
What Should You Consider Before Embarking on an Owner/Self-Training Journey with Your Dog?
Health
Health- the first and most important prerequisite for assistance dog work.
Ensure your furry friend is in good health, and free from conditions that might impede their ability to work effectively as an assistance dog. In case, you are on way to adopt a dog or buy one from a breeder, inquire about their medical records and their parents’ health certificates.
Also, do your research about breed-related heath conditions and possible treatments. The more extensive information you have, the better!
Dog's Temperament & Suitability for Assistance Dog Work
While we support the statement that dogs are amazing and can become great service dogs when properly trained, just like humans, each dog is different. Some dogs are naturally friendlier than others; more sensitive and empathetic; more attuned to their owners; calmer; pick up on new cues more quickly, etc.
Finding a dog with the right temperament for service dog work ensures the training process will go smoothly or at least with challenges that you will be able to overcome. Dogs who are too independent, have difficulty developing a strong emotional bond with their owners, are overly shy, or reactive might not be the best choice. Of course, how you will raise the dog plays an essential role in how they will develop in the future.
Evaluate Your Needs & the Nature of the Performed Tasks
This truly is an essential part of the process! A dog may have great potential to perform a specific tasks and face many challenges to perform others.
For example, the dog may be unsuitable for mobility support but may have potential to provide tactile stimulation or recognize changes in your emotions, behavior or scent during medical episodes and alert you. There are many tasks an assistance/service dog can be trained to perform.
Consider your daily needs and how the support of an assistance dog can benefit you. What will you be expecting them to do?
Having a clear idea of what an assistance dog will be doing to support you, will help you in several key ways, including to:
- Identify the right training requirements;
- Assess compatibility with the dog;
- Set a plan for their integration in your daily life;
- Set realistic goals;
- Maximize the benefits from your partnership.
Also, it will help you ensure that the dog will be able to perform tasks that will benefit you.
Commitment
You should never forget that training your own assistance dog is a long-term commitment and requires frequent and consistent training sessions. Even after your canine learns the specific tasks you need and starts having impeccable manners around distractions such as other dogs, people or sounds, you should continue maintaining their progress.
Since you and the dog will function as an inseparable team, fully commitment and dedication will be needed.
Lifestyle & Personal Readiness
You will need to honestly evaluate your lifestyle and both, physical and emotional readiness to engage in such a process.
In certain cases, the assistance of a family member or a professional trainer may be required. In other cases, you may need to reschedule your routine and reassess your priorities to have free time to invest into the training process.
Your lifestyle plays an essential role not only in evaluating your ability and readiness to conduct training but also in choosing a dog of the most suitable breed. Characteristics such as a size, energy level, barking tendency, need for physical and mental stimulation and social skills are important to consider. They will help you determine whether a certain breed might be a good match based on your lifestyle.
However, remember that each dog is unique, and their temperament may not always fully match the breed description.
Financial Considerations
Conducting training yourself including with the support of training programs, is way more affordable than getting a trained service dog (unless you contact a charity, where you will likely be put on a waiting list). Acquiring a trained assistance animal may cost you up €30,000 based on the country and organization.
However, if you embark on a self-training journey, you will need to cover the ongoing costs for the dog, including food, bedding, toys, vet check-ups, vaccinations, and equipment. Make sure you are financially stable and able to properly care for a dog, especially an assistance dog.
Legal & Certification Requirements
As mentioned in the beginning of the article, legal frameworks are different on a local level, including among EU members. It is advisable to get familiar with regulations in your country/province/region and determine whether a specific certification process is required or not.
In most cases, it is about the public access rights of the dog and any requirements for a completed public access test. Many European countries encourage assistance dog handlers to have their dogs certified through local schools as proof of their skills to behave appropriately in environments with intensive distractions.
Regulations constantly change, so be sure to stay up-to-date.
What Does Owner-Training an Assistance Dog Include?
Basic Obedience Training
Before starting to learn specific tasks as an assistance/service dog, a canine needs to undergo basic obedience training.
It includes the fundamental commands like “sit”, “come”, “heel” and calmly walking on a leash. Basic obedience commands help establish control and a calm demeanor and ensure the dog remains in a specific position or come to you, which is crucial for safety and control.
Basic obedience commands are usually easy to learn, especially by food-motivated dogs. Typically, two methods are used to teach a dog basic commands- the luring method, which suggests the use of a treat as a “lure” and the capturing method that relies on a dog’s natural behavior- if a dog shows a desired behavior on their own, it should be marked with a clicker (some owners use vocal commands directly) and the dog should be rewarded.
Basic obedience training usually starts in a non-distraction environment and distractions are added gradually as the dog progresses.
You might be interested in our article “Dog Training Commands Every Dog Should Know”.
Advanced Obedience Training
Once a dog has learned the basics, it’s time for more advanced obedience training. Some essential aspects include performing commands at a distance, walking on a loose leash or off-leash and learning to remain focused (eye contact).
During advanced training, your goal will be to generalize the learned tasks, start adding distractions and teaching your dog to remain focused on you. These skills are crucial for future assistance/service dogs, as they ensure the dog can perform reliably in various situations. This stage of training also includes reinforcing impulse control, such as waiting patiently before receiving a treat or a toy.
To achieve these goals, you should gradually introduce different environments, sounds, and objects as distractions during training sessions.
Remember that consistency is key! Ensure that you give clear, simple and consistent commands (do not change the cue words over time once you pair with specific behaviors). Treats, praises and petting, are crucial part of the training process to keep your dog motivated and engaged.
Positive Reinforcement
While positive reinforcement is not a type of training but a training method, it is an integral part of the training process and deserves special attention!
It involves encouraging and reinforcing desired behaviors by providing rewards (treats, praises, petting, toys) when the behavior is exhibited. This technique is based on the principle that behaviors followed by positive outcomes are more likely to be repeated in the future.
While treats are primarily used as a positive reinforcement tool, secondary tools like pets and praising should not be neglected. They can be particularly useful in training picky dogs; dogs who are not food-driven or dogs who are on a special diet, prescribed by a vet, for example due to gastrointestinal issues.
At the beginning of the training process, high-valued treats are favored as rewards, as they help the dog be motivated. High-value treats usually include chicken bits, liver, string cheese or other delicious treats that will help your paw friend eagerly show the wanted behavior. These should be phased out step-by-step.
If you are wondering whether or not you can continue rewarding your dog after they have mastered a command, we will gladly help clarify this question! An assistance dog must be able to perform the given commands reliably even without receiving treats, however, randomly rewarding them with their kibble is absolutely permissible and will help you keep them motivated.
Specific Assistance Dog Tasks Training
Task-specific training is very individual and can vary from a person to person. As you may remember from the first portion of the article, evaluating your needs and the nature of the tasks is a crucial part of the process!
Some common assistance dog tasks are:
Mobility Assistance
Mobility assistance can include:
-Providing balance support;
-Retrieving objects;
-Opening/Closing Doors;
-Pulling and dragging objects such as a wheelchair;
-Turning lights on/off, etc.
Guide Tasks
Guide dog training is very demanding and in most cases, professional training organizations provide trained guide dogs. Owner-training a guide dog can be a challenging and very complex process.
Guide dogs need to navigate around obstacles, stop at curbs, and guide their owners through doorways. They also learn to follow specific routes and lead their owners along known routes or to specific locations like home or a favorite store.
Medical Alert & Response
Medica lalert tasks involve training a dog to recognize the onset of medical episodes and alert you by performing a specific behavior. Medical episodes can be related to cardiac issues, epileptic episodes, increased / decreased blood sugar levels, etc.
Medical response tasks, on the other hand, include teaching a dog to exhibit a specific behavior after an episode has occurred. For instance, a dog can retrieve medication or dial 911 after an episode has occurred.
Medical training relies on the amazing sense of smell dogs are known for. It typically involves collecting scent samples during medical episodes and using them in the training sessions.
Hearing Tasks
Assistance dogs can be trained to alert their owners to important sounds, such as doorbells, alarms, or ringtones. This usually involves the dog making physical contact with their owners (nose-nudging, kissing, pawing) when they hear a specific sound.
Psychiatric Tasks
Psychiatric dogs can perform a wide variety of tasks to support a person with mental health conditions. These can include providing Deep Pressure Therapy, tactile stimulation, interrupting self-harming behaviors, reminding the owner to take medication, crowd control, recognizing ongoing anxiety episodes and helping the owner calm down, bringing the owner back to reality (grounding), etc.
Psychiatric Assistance Dogs are not Emotional Support Animals as they are trained to perform specific tasks. They do not provide comfort only, as ESAs do.
Public Access Training
Let’s move to the next essential aspect of training a dog as an assistance dog- public manners!
It is simply imperative for assistance animals to have good manners in public places such as stores, restaurants, public transportation, airports, etc. Assistance dogs not only represent yourself as their handler but also the assistance/service dog community in general!
If an assistance dog does not behave appropriately, they can be excluded from premises, whether they have certification and wear identification gear or not. Also, excellent manners around distractions and the skill to remain focused on their owners regardless of the situation, ensure a reliable task performance.
To make sure your dog can navigate through various situations, you need to expose them to different environments, generalize the learned behaviors and socialize them properly. Meet them with well-behaved dogs and different people to help them overcome any potential triggers and learn to remain calm. Variety in age, sex, race, and physical features is important.
Desensitization and counter-conditioning are two training methods that you are very likely to use at some point of the training process. They involve gradual exposing the dog to triggers by starting at a very low intensity and increasing it step-by-step. If the dog is composed and well-behaved, you should reward them. If not, you need to make adjustments such as increasing the distance to the stimuli or reducing the volume of certain sounds until your canine calms down.
Continuous Training & Socialization
As we have already explained training an assistance dog is a long-term goal and progress should be maintained. You should remain consistent and practice regularly, while following structured and short training sessions (about 10-15 minutes) and reinforcing the wanted behaviors.
Additionally, your paw friend will benefit from regularly introducing them to new environments, stimuli and people as they will become more adaptable and comfortable in different settings. However, it is essential to gradually increase the complexity and variety of experiences. This approach will prevent overwhelming the assistance dog.
Furthermore, you should regularly evaluate the effectiveness of the used training methods and make adjustments as necessary. This will help ensure that the training remains relevant and effective. Making adjustments could include revisiting goals, assessing progress, and modifying techniques based on the dog’s responses.
Benefits of Owner-Trained Assistance Dogs
The decision to train an assistance dog yourself or with the help of a training program offers many advantages!
Personalization
Owner-training allows you to tailor the training approach and adapt the process to fit your specific needs and preferences. This customization ensures that the assistance dog is trained to perform tasks that are most beneficial for you, considering your health condition, needs and lifestyle.
Strong Bond
The process of training your own paw friend as an assistance dog will deepen the emotional connection between you. This strong bond will enhance the dog's responsiveness and effectiveness in providing assistance.
Flexibility
Owner-training an assistance dog offers flexibility of the training progress. You can make your own training plan and stick to a schedule and training methodology that best suit you!
Own Pace
Another great advantage of self-training your own assistance dog is the opportunity to practice at your own pace. You will be able to adjust the training based on your particular needs and requirements and your paw friend’s response.
Costs
Training a dog independently is more cost-effective than professional training. Although ongoing expenses are always involved, you won’t face the financial burden of paying for a trainer or training organization.
Confidence
Last but not least, training your dog as an assistance dog will foster a sense of accomplishment and increase your confidence as a handler! The will help you become more self-reliant, as you will take an active role in the training process and in managing your canine’s assistance.
We advise you to consider all the factors involved in owner-training an assistance dog. If you think this is for you, do not be afraid to take a leap of faith and embark on an amazing training journey with your beloved paw friend!
