Dogs are meant to ease our life; they are capable of providing good energy, interacting with a dog has been shown to decrease the level of cortisol, a stress hormone. Studies consider dogs to be therapeutic for a person who is lonely, deprived of care and lacks emotional and physical stability. Such special kinds of dog are known as service dogs, these are well-trained dogs for giving special services to people. These services include physical support and mental support, they are able to provide a person with anything as per requirement. All these abilities are a gift of proper training, a dog is further recognized as a service dog when it has enhanced qualities than a usual dog.
The service dogs are trained by a professional trainer and it is expensive; the charges are high up to thousands of dollars. An expensive training of a service dog can be substituted with a personal training of dogs. Hence, it does not mean that a person is doomed to have a service dog due to its high training expenses. As there is no compulsion to train a dog from an agency or professional, the handler has the right to train their dog themselves. Although training a dog is not a simple task, it is challenging and requires a lot of focus and effort. Every dog has potential to be a good fit for a service dog, mostly it depends on the training that they receive. Thus, here are some of the tips to train your dog to be the best fit for a service dog.
1. Get the foundation properly
Foundation is the fundamental of training, to have a strong personality build-up of your dog, strong foundation plays a vital role. Especially, if you have a puppy and you wish to make it a full potential service dog, then you need to start from scratch. However, it is way simpler to train a puppy than training an adult dog, because they do not have priorly formed habits, they are new and can be directed as you want. First training starts with house training, which is also called indoor training. Eliminating pass time from routine and actively teaching them about new things is an important part of house training. Thus, this plays an important part in giving your pet a strong foundation from an early stage, they tend to continue with habits that they learn during young age of their life.
2. Have patience during the process
You must be prepared for the time it will take to train your dog well. As these things don’t happen in days, it takes months and years. Hence, being patient is highly important, as you being the trainer. However, you will unlike to break a regular chain of training your pup at any random day, being consistent is important. There is no fast and easy way to train a service dog; in order to receive the benefits of a service dog later, you need to patiently invest in it today. Hence, after finalizing your training, you can go for register service dog process, which will officially authorize your dog as a service dog, a final step after training.
3. Teaching the right behavior
As a service dog it is necessary to have good habits and proper behavior, which is socially acceptable and no person feels harm. In order to be acceptable in public places, the dog must be socially-friendly. This starts with training your pup to act nicely so that people don’t run away from it. The dog should not be aggressive to people and other pets, must not stare at people while having food and should not beg for it, most importantly they should avoid snatching and urinating in public spaces. These qualities are important to shape a proper service dog who is socially acceptable.
4. Willing to learn
While you teach you expect to be heard and receive responses, the way it goes for humans, similarly it goes for dogs as well. They are living creatures who form habits on the basis of learning. Thus, having a wish to learn forms a wonderful personality, from the initial stage it is important to form a habit of learning as well as responding. Responding is equally important, it is a check of learning and the trainer gets to know whether his words and actions are being grasped or not. This quality will make your dog more active towards learning new things and responding to every activity around them. All service dogs are qualified on the basis of their active learning and responding.
5. Make them socialize
The most important aspect of a service dog is to be social. Taking them out for walking and playing is a good way to make them socialize with other people, pets and animals. Your pups must get accustomed and used to different sights, smells and sounds so that it doesn’t feel something abnormal or unusual to them when they grow up. Take your pets to different locations and expose them to various situations, in this way you will get to know their actions in different situations and how well their concentration works. In this way your pup will eventually become focused and observant, which is an essential quality of a service dog.
Conclusion
Training is the crucial part for a service dog, before starting with the training process, you must collect the proper knowledge on how to give the best training. As it is not easy, training can become challenging and will not give you fruitful results if not done properly. Before beginning, know the breed of your dog as every breed requires different treatment and their demand for everything is also different. In this way you will understand your dog well, and will be able to plan out efficient methods of training, this involves time and techniques of training. Usually, it takes a time span of 6 months to train a service dog, however it all depends on your way of training. Proper information and gathering knowledge will help you fetch quick results.
