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Identifying Stress in Service Dogs – When to Say When

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stress in service dogsStress in Service Dogs – When to Say When – Identifying Stress Responses in Service Dogs, Indications for Early Retirement of Working Dogs or Dropping Young Dogs from Candidacy to Become Service Dogs. Join us in this webinar where we take a hard look at stress in service dogs.

Description:
Deciding that a service dog candidate is not going to make it into the canine work force, or that a seasoned working dog is suffering from cumulative stress or body aches are among the most challenging issues service dog trainers and partners must face for the team’s well-being.

“But I don’t want to be a nurse.”  “I can’t do this anymore. It is just too stressful a job.” “My knees really hurt. I think it is time I retire after all I am old enough.”  These statements are ones I have heard people say all the time. Humans are able to pick the job we want to do. We can change jobs if we decide that our original choice wasn’t the right one and we all look forward to the day we get to retire. Yet in the service dog world making these same decisions for the service dog candidate or the working service dog seems to be so much more difficult.

In this lecture we will explore the behaviors that dog’s exhibit that should be the keys to help trainers and handlers know “when to say when” a service dog needs to career change or retire.

Speaker: Jeanne Hampl, R.N. (and Barbara Handelman, M.Ed., LCMHC, CDBC, Moderator)

Access to the recording is for 32 days.

Participants will become familiar with the following:

  • Stress in service dogs, fear, and reactivity all may be situation specific reactions to conditions in the working environment, but they may also be cumulative responses for a dog who is in the wrong job, tired, in pain, or partnered with the wrong person.
  • Signs of stress and fear show up in the dogs’ body language, posture, and attitude. We will discuss many of these signs so that the participant can recognize them.
  • A change in a dog’s attitude, whether it be fearfulness or aggression may signal that the dog is having physical problems.
    • Always have a veterinarian fully evaluate the dog before deciding to treat changes with behavioral interventions.
  • Understand a range of career change options.
  • Rehoming, or retiring a working dog to pet status in his own home.

Cost: $25.00 USD

CEU’s Available:
2 IAABC CEU’s
2 CCPDT CEU’s
KPA 1.5 CEU’s

Soundwork 101 – Training dogs in basic sound alerting skills

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Training dogs in basic sound alerting skillsFoundations in sound alerting: Training dogs in basic sound alerting skills

Instructor: Martha Hoffman, BA 
and Barbara Handelman, M.Ed., LCMHC, CDBC

Purpose: This course teaches students techniques for training dogs in basic sound alerting skills. This course offers the essential foundation skills necessary for a dog to alert to sounds. Completions of the course will not certify that a dog or person or person/dog team is eligible, under the ADA, for access to places of public accommodation.

Course Information: This course, SW 101: Foundations in Sound Alerts, teaches basic sound alerting skills and builds a foundation for your dog to eagerly communicate with you about what it perceives. Social motivation, food treats, toys and games are used to give the dog an intensely positive association with an alarm sound, door knock, verbal or signed name call, and an alert behavior of your choice. The dog also learns to move toward the trainer or toward the sound. This course does not result in finished alerts to sounds, although many students are satisfied with the basic level of excited response that they achieve at this level.

The basic skills taught in this training dogs in basic sound alerting skills course are the building blocks used in further courses to train many different types of alerts in real life situations. The motivation level created in this course allows the trainer to channel the dogs’ energy into many different future directions. The techniques achieve fast results, are simple, and have been successful in making training easy and rewarding for both amateurs and professional trainers. Clients with even minimal ability have been able to maintain training with our methods. We only teach positive training techniques in our Soundwork training. Aversive equipment or other forms of punishment are discouraged.

Prerequisites: Access to a dog that is not fearful of sounds.

Course Length: This course runs 6-8 weeks (dependent on the student and dog progress). It consists of 8 lessons.

What you can expect to learn from this Course (Course Objectives):

  • Fast, positive techniques and games to motivate a dog to eagerly respond to sounds.
  • Innovative techniques for coaching human clients and family members.
  • Teach your dog a positive response to an alarm sound, door knock/bell, and Name Call.
  • Teach an alert behavior of your choice (for example, a nose-nudge.)
  • Teach your dog to go towards a trained sound source.
  • Teach your dog to come towards you when a trained sound happens.
  • Combine social motivation, life rewards, food treats, and toys for great teamwork with you.

For Credit option also includes:

  • Weekly one-hour online group chats (Messenger) with the instructor.
  • Group chat participants get instructor advice on training strategies for their specific dog, homework discussions, and problem solving.
  • Group chats are in written format in order to benefit different communication preferences.
  • Secret-level Facebook (FB) group, set up only for the current participants in each course, intensively moderated by the instructors.
  • The FB group is a safe and kind space to socialize, share your experiences, and help each other.
  • The FB group gives you access to bonus lessons, tips on supplies and training, and posting questions for the instructor

Text and Required Supplies:

  • Required reading: Book, “Lend Me An Ear” by Martha Hoffman (also available as an Ebook). This book is very informative, but is not a textbook.
  • Digital electronic timer that can be set to one second
  • 2 additional timers are useful.
  • Small step stool
  • Cake pan
  • Soup ladle
  • tape, Velcro, thumbtacks
  • several treat containers the dog cannot open easily
  • treats: low-value to very high value
  • plastic yogurt lids
  • treat pouch
  • A “Treat’n’Train/Manners Minder” or “Pet Tutor” remote control treat dispenser is not needed to succeed, and the Pet Tutor is very expensive and more difficult to use. However, trainers will progress faster with one.
  • Two identical remote wireless doorbells if the student wishes to train doorbell response as well as a knock.

CEUs:
CCPDT – 16.5 Total (7.5 CPDT-KSA) CEUs
IAABC – 16 CEUs
IACP – 8 CEUs

Course Cost –

For Credit:  $250.00 USD

 

 

For Audit: $125.00  (Same content as the “For Credit” except there are no CEUs, Certificate, no Instructor contact, or homework to be turned into Instructor)

 

Payment plan available (For Credit only) – 2 monthly payments of $130.00 each. Use the “Subscribe” button below. 




Student Information:

You must also read and agree to the E-Training for Dogs, Inc. Standard Terms and Conditions prior to taking a course: Click HERE to read these. You will be asked when you register if you have read them and will not be allowed to take the course if you do not agree to the terms.

Please read our policy on refunds. Click HERE

Selecting and Training Service Dogs for Mental Illness Part I

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Selecting and Training Service Dogs for Mental IllnessService Dog Training Lecture Series – Selecting and Training Service Dogs for Mental Illness
– Part I

This webinar on selecting and training service dogs for mental illness will review the definitions and laws relevant to Service Dogs and Emotional Support Dogs. All definitions will use federal regulations including the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA) 1990, Titles II and III of the Americans With Disabilities Amendments Act (ADAA), 2008, commonly called the ADA for Public Access; the Fair Housing Act (FHA) for housing; and the Air Carriers Access Act (ACAA) for airlines.

The lecture will offer an overview of the most salient temperament qualities of successful service dogs for people with PTSD, anxiety, depression and other mental illnesses; offer suggestions about how and where to locate canine candidates; and who should evaluate and train puppies and older dogs under consideration to become service dogs. We will also discuss how dog breeds influence choices of canine candidates.

The lecture will address how to prevent and how to handle Public Access Challenges when they occur; the outcry for mandatory service dog certification; and why the presenters agree that such proposed certification requirements would not benefit the service dog community.

The lecture will include information about mental health symptoms potentially mitigated by trained service dogs, and some caveats about situations in which service dogs may be a liability.

Speakers: Cissy Stamm and Barbara Handelman, M.Ed., LCMHC, CDBC

Available as a recording for purchase below.

Learning Objectives:

Participants will become familiar with the following:

  • First and foremost, service dogs for people diagnosed with a disabling mental illness, are just that – service dogs – as defined by the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA).
    • Service dogs for people with mental illness require no other descriptive designation.
    • Attaching a mental health description to the service dog’s job title increases the risk of stigma being attached to a person with a mental illness.
  • Liability risks for physicians and therapists prescribing or writing letters in support of working dogs for mentally ill patients.
  • Which physical and temperament qualities are most important in dogs working with a person with a mental health disability?
    • Who should select the service dog candidate?
      • Where might the best candidates be found? Shelters, breeders or service dog training programs.
    • Who should train the dog
      • Owner trainers
      • Private professional trainers
      • Program trained dogs
    • The differences between a service dog and an emotional support dog.
      • Which laws determine the degree and type of public access in each category.
    • How to prevent and diffuse public access challenges
    • Disabling mental health symptoms potentially mitigated by trained service dogs.

Cost: $25.00 USD

CEU’s Available:
2 IAABC CEU’s
2 CCPDT CEU’s
2 ABCDT-L2 CEU’s
2 NADOI CEU’s
2 PPAB/PPG

****Due to the nature of these webinars being recorded live, at the speakers home or office, there will/may be some technical issues that can not be helped or edited without losing important portions of the lecture.

Selecting and Training Diabetes Alert Dogs

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Service Dog Training Lecture Series – Selecting and Training Diabetes Alert Dogs (DAD)

A good Diabetes Alert Dog (DAD) comes from the delicate balance of certain temperament traits coupled with sound training methods. But even with the best of training, unless the dog already possesses certain qualities, she/he may not perform as needed. We’ll discuss the different sources of dogs, from breeding programs to working with shelter and rescue dogs, and how to identify those with the required personality traits. We’ll also explore the pros and cons of working with owner dogs.

DADs have gained increased attention over the past few years and more and more trainers have become interested in training such dogs. With different backgrounds, we also see differences in training approaches, in sample collection or in types of alerts. Many questions are still unanswered, as we are working with substances that we can’t control or detect.  What we do know is that there is a smell associated with the changes in glucose levels and that we can train the dog to let us know when a change occurs.

We’ll describe how and what DADs are trained for. We’ll also discuss the importance of establishing standards of training in this growing field. The information I’ll share in this lecture comes from my years of experience working with Diabetes Alert Dogs. These methods are the same that my team applies every day at our facility.

Speaker: Jennifer Cattet, PhD

Learning Objectives:

We’ll answer all these questions and then some:

  • What dogs make the best Diabetes Alert Dogs (DADs)?
  • How do we select them?
  • How do we train them?
  • Besides alerting, what other behaviors do they need to know?
  • What factors influence the success of a DAD?
  • Can a dog be trained for more than one purpose?

Cost: $25.00 USD

CEU’s Available:
2 IAABC CEU’s
2 CCPDT CEU’s
2 ABCDT-L2 CEU’s
2 NADOI CEU’s
2 PPAB/PPG

Self-Control Exercises for Service Dog Candidates

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Service Dog Training Lecture Series –

Self-Control Exercises for Service Dog Candidates

Speakers: Dee Ganley, and Barbara Handelman

Description: Self-control for service dogs goes above and beyond that which is required of a well-trained unobtrusive pet dog.  Service dogs doing public access work require self-control that exceeds the imagination of most pet dog people, and beyond the natural capacity of the average pet dog.  In his day to day life, a service dog must rest quietly and out of the way in restaurants where food and food smells surround them.  They must remain calm in a wide range of circumstances including rowdy crowds; encounters with small, impulsive children; tolerate petting by adult strangers and hugs from unsupervised toddlers; be searched by security personnel; wait for long periods while their handler receives medical attention; remain non-reactive to pet dogs barking, growling and lunging nearby; be unperplexed by loud sounds, such as sirens, arriving subway trains, balloons popping, planes taking off, MRI machines, etc.; tolerate feet in close proximity to their bodies while riding crowded public transportation; and remain calm at rallies, concerts, movies, and sports events.  People rarely think how the average dog would react to such situations.  Fewer still imagine the amount of specialized training required before we can rest assured that our service dogs are “bomb proof” in each and all of such situations.

Recommended Text: Changing People, Changing Dogs: Positive solutions for difficult dogs: Click here for a hardcopy and for the ebook – Click here

Learning Objectives:  This lecture will introduce you to just some of the self-control behaviors that are taught to service dog candidates. All the skills we illustrate were taught in a step-by-step sequence. Using Duration, Distance, Distraction, and adding all together for the Difficulty of the self control behaviors.  We will remind you how desensitization and skill practice is required in high stimulus situations, and introduce you to some of the specific self-control skills that must be taught during the preparation of a dog for public access service work.

  • All the skills to be illustrated in this webinar are taught in a step-by-step sequence.
    • Using Duration, Distance, Distraction, and adding all together for the Difficulty of the self control behaviors, using the principles of operant conditioning.
  • How desensitization and skill practice is utilized in high stimulus environments
  • Specific self-control skills that are essential for service dogs including:
    • Focus Exercises Involving Food and Eye Contact
    • Loose Lead Walking In High Stimulus Environments
    • Permission Games For Honing “Leave It” And Waiting To Receive Treats Or Meals
    • Leslie McDevitt’s 1, 2, 3 Treat Game for focused work on lead
    • Go to a Mat
    • Exercises in Preparation for Long Down Stays
    • Long Down Stays with Distractions
    • Wait For Permission to Exit Buildings and Vehicles
    • Working with a Longe/Lunge Whip for High Drive Activity and Self Control
    • Polite Greetings
    • Self Control at the Vet’s Office
    • Self Control Around Other Animals and Novel Stimuli
    • Positions and Obstacles
    • On, Under, Around, Down on the Move

Cost: $25.00 USD   

Click on the ADD TO CART to register.

Speaker: Dee Ganley, CPDT-KSA, CBCC-KA, CABC, CAP2, Master WAG IT instructor, Dognition Evaluator, CGC Evaluator Dee is one of those people who find joy and solace being with dogs. She is happiest in their company and proud to have earned their trust. She has experienced the deeply civilized “conversations” that happen between well trained dogs and their handlers. She knows that she is a better person – more just, more open-minded, much kinder and certainly happier – because of the friendship of her four-footed friends.
The training and behavioral work Dee does with the public and shelter community is about how to achieve two goals:  getting behavior we want and getting rid of behavior we don’t want, humanely and while having fun! Dee teaches positive reinforcement, and she places a very strong emphasis on managing a dog’s environment for safety.
Over the years, the dogs and people Dee has helped have returned the favor 100 fold.  They have taught her that learning and teaching is about “calm attentiveness.” Fixing problems starts with paying attention – quietly, openly and always positively.  Learning this, Dee has become much more relaxed, calm and decisive in my interactions with dogs. You get attention when you give attention. Working effectively with dogs means communication starts with the calm, attentive watcher.  Wonderfully, this way of listening with your eyes as well as your ears, becomes a way of life and spills over into everything.
Teaching agility for fun and using games to keep classes light and fun for all is what Dee is best known for. Come join in one of Dee’s classes! She has helped numerous service dog teams train and achieve their public access privileges through the years.
Dee has titled many dogs in many different venues and today still competes with her current dogs in NOSE WORK, and WAG IT GAMES when she has the time.
Check out Dee’s book, Changing People, Changing Dogs: Positive Solutions for Difficult Dogs, where she is described as a “skilled dog trainer, handler, behaviorist and author, [who] shares her 35+ years’ experience working with service dog prospects and their people and modifying aggressive dog behavior.”
For more info on Dee, please go to her web site at: www.deesdogs.com

****Due to the nature of these webinars being recorded live – at the speakers home or office – there will/may be some technical issues that can not be helped or edited without losing important portions of the lecture.

CEU’s Available:
2 IAABC CEU’s
2 CCPDT CEU’s
2 ABCDT-L2 CEU’s
2 NADOI CEU’s
2 PPAB/PPG

***Note on CEUs-All participants of the Live webinar will receive CEUs on request. Those who view the recorded version only, will need to take and pass a 5 question quiz after viewing the recording.

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