When owner training a service dog it is often a challenge to decide what beyond obedience that you want your future service dog to know. Since the purpose purpose of a service dog, under the ADA, is to mitigate the affects of a disability, it is important that you as the training engage in some reflection on how your disability limits you in daily life. Some questions to consider are:
- What are the primary affects of my disability currently?
- What are the secondary affect of my disability?
- Does the level of my disability fluctuate?
- What tasks do I currently depend on others to do? Could a dog be trained to take over any of these duties?
Dogs can be trained to perform a lot of tasks that will make your life easier; however, a good portion of your dogs tasks should relate to your your primary affects of your disability. A good trainer is both creative and fair about the the tasks they ask of their dog.
Examples:
Myself, my primary disability is Cerebral Palsy. I use a manual wheelchair, and forearm crutches. The affects of my disability include a lack of a sense of balance, muscle spacsticity, etreme fatigue, shoulder damage, and overuse syndrome in my hands. I focused on tasks that would save my shoulders, prevent falling and save me vauable energy.
Standard tasks Bastien was trained for:
-wheelchair pulling (*note of caution: dogs with long spines or that are under 50lbs are not considered physically appropriate for the task of wheelchair pulling.)
- Tugging open doors
-Turn on and off lights
-Retrieving dropped items
-Retreiving items by name
-Getting help
-Back packing (*note A dog should never be asked to carry more than 10 percent of their weight)
Non-stand tasks Bastien was trained for (Many of these tasks capitlized on his natural talents and focused on reducing my fatigue or helping when I was fatigued):
-Unscrewing the caps off of plastic bottles (this was something he figured out on his own. I though it would be use full when my hands at I kept bottles hurt. It did require that I kept bottles with dangerous things out of his reach.)
-Flushing toilets
-Finding people in a crowd. I discovered that Bastien was very good at learning words and names and I so used that skill as much as I could.
Example 2: My friend with a hearing dog
Beyond the hearing dog tasks he has trained his dog to alert him when things fall out of his pockets.
Training Resources:
BOW WOW ! FUN AND FUNCTIONAL DOG TRICKS
TEAMWORK II: DOG TRAINING FOR PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES (SERVICE EXERCISES) DVD
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