People who are training their own service dogs are under an extraordinary amount of pressure from day one.
In addition to the baseline difficulties caused by our disabilities, we have also taken responsibility for the two-year process of painstakingly transforming a tiny infant mammal of another species (who doesn’t understand English and thinks cat poop is a delicacy) into a reliable medical device which we will then depend on to literally save our lives for the next decade.
No sweat, right?
So let’s acknowledge the obvious: That is an incredibly high bar.
And sometimes we get a little bit carried away in our enthusiasm.
Stop Me If You’ve Heard This Story Before.
It’s almost always a first-time owner-trainer.
They have waited months or years to get their prospect.
They’ve done all their research. They’ve watched the videos, they’ve talked to other handlers, they’ve found a corner of the service dog community where they feel comfortable.
After all that learning and waiting, they have counted down the minutes until their prospect will come home. It’s going to be them and their dog against the world, partners for life.
Most of the time, they’re not a professional dog trainer, but they’ve done enough work with the family’s dog that they’re pretty confident in their training skills. And besides, they have resources to reach out to if they run into trouble. They can’t wait to start this new adventure.
Enter Puppy, Stage Right.
The puppy comes home and he is perfect.
Not just a little bit perfect either, but transcendent, sublime, world-shatteringly wonderful in every possible way. He is not a puppy, he is The Puppy, capital letters, the long-awaited partner who will set the world on a better path. He is overflowing with potential. His puppy breath smells like hope.
And the owner-trainer dives into training with a gusto. Finally, time to act on those carefully laid plans! The puppy learns sit, down, stay, shake, roll over, take a bow, spin! He blazes through his obedience classes. He is a wonder. His owner’s confidence blooms with every new success – and at this point, it’s all success. After all, this is the perfect puppy!
A couple weeks into their intensive training, the owner has a medical crisis, because the owner is disabled and that is a thing that happens to us on the regular. That’s why the puppy is here.
And the puppy does a puppy thing before or during the crisis. Was that an alert? A natural alert? By jove, I believe it was! It must have been!
The owner-trainer is equal parts astounded and relieved. They are on the right track! This “training your own service dog” thing might be possible after all with a puppy this perfect.
So they push the puppy a little bit further and a little bit faster – after all, the puppy is succeeding left, right and center. They put him into intensive training. He can handle it. He is a miracle on four legs, a furry Einstein.
The team starts public access early — really early. Puppy knows ten tasks by the time he’s six months old and he naturally alerts to every disability ever. (Did you see his whisker twitch? Are you diabetic? Might want to check your blood sugar, you’re welcome.) The team is doing eight hours of public access training every day without breaking a sweat. Other dogs may need to take it slow and work on their foundations at this age, but this puppy is a prodigy. He can handle anything.
…. Until he can’t.
A Recipe for Perfect Puppy Prodigies
When starting a new service dog prospect, it’s normal to feel a sickening combination of ambitious and terrified. By this point in the journey, we’ve already had it carved into our brain that there are only two possible outcomes: utter perfection or screaming catastrophe.
We know that it is our solemn duty to protect the honor of other SD teams everywhere by being unimpeachably, unquestionably perfect at all hours of the day. We know that anything less than that is grievous injury to the reputation of the service dog community as a whole and a shame upon our people.
Now let that anxiety simmer for months or years in the unfortunate toxic soup of subtle one-upmanship and humble-bragging that absolutely permeates the online service dog community.
It’s no surprise that every new prospect leaves us teetering on the fine line between optimism and sheer panic.
The Tragedy Of The Perfect Puppy Prodigy.
The tragedy of the perfect puppy prodigy is that, despite their early promise, they often fail to live up to their own potential in the end. Many struggle more than they needed to and many others wash out of training entirely.
And they don’t wash out because they have some hidden flaw that doomed them from the start. They wash out because their handler becomes so fixated on getting to the finish line fast that they rush forward on a shaky foundation.
Service dog training involves a lot of pressure on both the handler and the dog. That’s why we have such high criteria for our service dog program eligibility.
And under pressure, shaky foundations collapse.
In Defense Of Slow.
There is an adage in the dog training community that “slow is fast and fast is slow,” meaning that it is often faster in the long run to be thorough with your foundations in the beginning. That holds doubly true for service dog training or any type of intensive working dog training where burnout is a serious risk.
Now read that paragraph again.
And again.
Lock it into your heart as deeply as you’ve internalized all that talk about perfection and upholding the reputation of the service dog community, because it is every bit as important. Slow is fast and fast is slow. Digest the idea. Hold onto it. Write it on the cover of that notebook where you keep the training plans for your perfect future puppy.
If you want perfection when you are training your own service dog, then the best way to achieve that is to earn it by training slowly and building on a solid foundation.
Let the puppy learn puppy things. Focus on quality, not quantity, in your socialization plan. Support your dog’s changing brain through adolescence and expect to hit some temporary setbacks. Evaluate your progress regularly and shore up your weak points instead of exclusively improving on your strengths. Remember that you are building a functional partner, not racing toward a finish line.
The best service dog programs in the country very consistently wait to place dogs until they are 18-24 months old. This is not an accident or a coincidence. It is hubris, plain and simple, to think that a first-time owner-trainer is going to have a reliable, proofed, stable, public-access-ready dog in half the time it takes someone who literally does this for a living, working with the best resources available, etc.
When clients contact me with stories about their perfect puppy, I am cautious. When friends assure me that their adolescent dogs have a dozen tasks under their belt already, I don’t get excited — I get worried.
Because perfect puppies tend to burn out.
Training Your Own Service Dog? Choose Slow, Not Perfect.
We all want to believe we have the perfect prodigy puppy who was literally born for this job. We need as much help as we can get — if we didn’t need help, we wouldn’t be owner-training a service dog in the first place. And with the amount of pressure that we’re under to be perfect in every circumstance, it sometimes feels like a magical puppy is what it would take to succeed at all.
The uncomfortable reality is that the perfect puppy does not exist.
There are, however, many adequate puppies who can be shaped into service dogs with effort, skill and patience.
The critical ingredient is time.
Yes, yes, yes. Three cheers for this post. As a former service dog owner-trainer who is now a professional trainer working with owner-trainers, I couldn’t agree more. I even have a handout that I give clients at the first consult that just says SLOW IS FAST in 78-point font. I am going to direct all my new clients to this post. Thank you!
Thank you for writing this excellent article. I’ve written similar things in multiple contexts, but I’ve never said it better than you have. You are someone I would like to know. You already have my respect.
This post rocks. Thank you!!!
One argument I hear again and again for slapping a vest on a 10 week old puppy is to be able to take it to stores and restaurants that pets can’t go, under the belief there is less of a chance the puppy will catch something. Do you know of any scientific evidence regarding rates of infection or adverse events from taking puppies to pet-friendly places for socialization?
Elizabeth, I suggest you do your research on vaccines and when particular things take hold and developmental stages of puppies. The diseases and the common ways of transmission.
Where many dogs go there is definitely a high risk of infection. There is still risk in stores where pet dogs aren’t allowed (and those places are increasingly dangerous with the fake service dogs), there are ways one can minimize risk (never totally eliminate it but then again puppies are at risk in their own backyard so there is always some risk). Exposing them early takes advantage of a developmental stage in a pup….unfortunately that stage ends shortly before or about the time the shot series ends…so one has to make a choice.
I have no experience with service dogs at this moment but that might change.
I wonder if when you train your own service dog you have to focus on your bond as much as focusing on tasks. That doesn’t seem much fun. You should let your puppy be a puppy. When they are adults, they are better equipped to take on responsibility to care for you. And caring for you should be a rewarding experience to the dog.
So if you overwork the puppy it will become an aversive and you create a dog that will either refuse to work or works poorly because he’s constantly stressed.
My ideal would be like doing agility. Your dog knows exactly what you are going to do so he’s clear about his task. And you know exactly what your dog is going to do. You are an indivisible pair.
For feedback please
YES YES YES. you nailed it. I learned the hard way, it was rather painful for all concerned.
I too agree.
I have no issues with taking pups out at 8 weeks…..2 or 3 days a week, 1 or 2 hours at a time….
Do your obedience.
But for dogs sake, let the puppy be a puppy.
Raye I’m with you…I start them on public access immediately, but we’re talking a 5 minute trip into a store and back out once or twice a week for exposure purposes held in my arms or otherwise kept off of the floor. Or a place like my kids school meeting room where there is only us and the teacher and it is close to being at home where the puppy can sleep, play and so forth. I start training obedience right away but then again I do it in the form of games when the pup is alert and wanting to play…they really don’t know they’re learning…and that is how it should be. I also teach some tasks through those games. And I think it is very important to let them run around and be a puppy and explore the world, that too is part of making a solid service dog.
Everything needs to be in balance and it takes time…
I raised my own service dog from a 9 wk old pup. When she was about 2, I was going to attend my first service dog meet up with the group I had only spoken to on line for the last year and a half. I was very nervous. Everyone I was sure would have immaculately behaving service dogs, perfectly trained! I knew they would because they pretty much said so. All that time telling me how my dog should do this and should not do that… when I arrived at the gathering, I was actually shocked at the behavior of some of the service dogs in attendance. It was after this trip that I decided my dog should be officially switched over to full service dog status. Our trainer gave her our PAT and she/we passed. We were the first owner/trainer team to go through their program to actually get certified, and I know that piece of paper doesn’t mean much to others, but to me it meant a lot. Would I do it different the next time? Certainly!! I have learned so much in my dog’s 13 years of life with me. I have learned about puppy rearing, training and service dog training and even dog’s health and breeding. I plan on using that new information when I get my next young prospect. I will always take my dog to different levels of obedience classes depending on age and level, but I have so much more of a clue. I won’t have a group of peers bringing me down though. Not this time.
This is such a needed message! Our SD was a rescue puppy who went through certification by an organization but I completely felt that pressure of omg he needs to get this bc my son’s life depended upon it. Was he perfect? No. I (thankfully) kept my emotions in check and knew the trainer well enough and trusted their org that I could keep my anxiety in check about it. He struggled with some tasks and then others that he seemed to breeze through he would stumble with as he got a little older. What I found most interesting is when he has his vest on he is always spot on…take that vest off and he is pure pup (even though he isn’t a puppy any longer) pushing those boundaries and being mischievous. (and people in town make comments about how he couldn’t possibly be an SD he is PLAYING…really people?) The work SDs do is *HARD* as adults we grumble about working full time then needing to go home and make dinner some nights. I can’t even imagine having to be “on” 27/7 365 days a year and be “perfect” every moment…I shouldn’t expect that from my son’s SD either. He needs down time just like everyone else and if that means he wants to roughhouse a bit on his walk or not move on from something that smells REALLY interesting or bark at another dog when he is with just me on a walk and “off” so be it. If that’s what he needs for his mental health that’s a small price to pay for the important work he does every single day.
There are no perfect puppys but there are tons of amazing pups who can do the job so long as they get the respect they deserve and the downtime and patience to get them there.
There is a lot of wisdom in this post. I am a trainer and have spent some time volunteering for a service dog organization. I was surprised at the many differences in training there are. We have to remember we are not training a therapy dog who’s job is to serve many, we are training a dog to do tasks for one person.
Fantastic!
All great info and I’m sharing it far and wide….
This reminded me starkly of a book I read about underachieving students. They are so bright that the fundamentals are boring—so they tune out. Miss something small, but being talented enough make up for it. A few years later, and it all adds up, and that thing you’re missing made you miss a few more things… Maybe algebra is hard because you didn’t catch those “you can never divide by zero” or “Never divide a negative number” rules that for all the world must have only been mentioned in passing.
Now I’m thinking about how similar towers or pyramids can get holes in dog’s education.
It also got me thinking about socializing my (not even a service dog) puppy. We are going on vacation, and many places “welcome well mannered pets.” I THINK he’s well mannered, and has a calm demeanor that can translate to a hotel room, but what about outside dining areas, or a boat? If it’s a very novel stimulus, I shouldn’t write behavior checks bigger than his little heart can pay. It’s on me to engineer degrees of safety, to provide safe space for him to respond in several ways, so that he can learn and become more confident, without projecting my own social pressure for him to behave perfectly. “How could you???” “Huh?”
THANK YOU! I was worried because I choose not to push my Rotti. I truly believe her brain is not mature until age 2. I do take her and we do classes, but above all, I try to remember she is still a puppy despite her 93 pounds and she needs time to play.
Service dogs burn out long before they hit their prime. All those hours of practise and practise they miss one critical imprinting period after another. Allow dogs to be dogs. They are not working machines. Solid service dogs come from solid breeding lines. Even then mishandled and the dogs fall flat through no fault of their own. They need to be dogs first! Build deference, confidence and skills. People just push too hard too fast or move too slow and miss the boat completely. Get the dogs loving what they do as you build them up to where you want them to be.
Having been an owner trainer, I can attest to the well written article. I was fortunate to be a member of an assistance club that had an excellent trainer and much support from the members. The outside training to fire station, the picnic where YES, service dogs in training had fun and then after many many months of training, the Public Access Test. The worry you will wash out or the elation that you passed. You have a partner that you work with carefully and try to prepare them with hrs upon hrs of trading. But remember, he is your friend, your support and it is the owner trainers responsibility to also support your dog. You are a team. Your dog is your lifeline in times of need. This process cannot be rushed.
Thanks for writing this article…..
It is so accurate…
I am training with the help of a professional my own service dog. As smart as she is we made sure she has a great cornerstone for that solid foundation to grow upon. Yes she makes mistakes and so do I.
She is 13 months old and “knows” almost everything i need. DOing them every single time correctly not yet. Some days are better than others. BEing in the present with her and guiding her by creating “WIN” opportunities seems to be the best way for her success. Just like anything practice, practice, practice reinforces the lessons… We get better every single time.
We will get there slowly and persistently.
I got my pup and did not expect it to get it qll like a perfect pup. I know training any pup takes time. I qm qlways amazed when people say there pup is so perfect they do not need a leash. And it is just 5 months old my first thought is get a leash on that dog. And thos isa accident waiting to happen. A pup is still a young pup. And then many times the next thing you here in a week or more is the pup died after being hit by a car. Why because it is still a puppy. And all it takes is one second of distraction and this perfect pup took off to see something. Training takes time to get it right.
Outstanding article. As others have said, “yes, yes ,yes!” We have a phenomenal trainer in my service dog group with 40 years of experience who follows this principle and this has been a huge contributor to my dog’s success. And I say this as someone who had a dog that blazed through obedience training. But he needed time to be a puppy and to take things at a pace that would lead to a dog that actually enjoys being a service dog. Respect the process as the process itself has immense value, not just the end result.
I am referring this article to others as I think it really sets the right tone.