I live a very tightly managed life. I have to, on account of living with full body Complex Regional Pain Syndrome. Managing as many details about how a room is set up, how easy it is to make meals, how many steps I need to take to accomplish a task, having different clothing options for different sensitivity level days, how much noise or stimulation I'm exposed to, and so on are only a few of the multitude of measures we've taken in our lives to minimize flares and maximize my service dog's ability to help me. 

It's easy to forget how particular we have been about building our life sandbox for me, because by now, it's not "accommodation" by our metrics, it's life. 

Recently, we stepped outside our sandbox to go on vacation to see my family on the East Coast, and got an extremely jarring shocks to our systems as a result. 1,800 miles driven, there & back, 2 days each way, and days of being without our system of structure, mitigation, and the added complication of something we usually have the luxury to avoid... The Untrained Pet Dog. It was a disaster and an absolute mistake to go at all. Me being me, I began writing this blog post on the drive home to offer suggestions to fellow and future service dog teams on handling this situation better than we did. ​

Teaching tasks is not always as simple as teaching Sit. Unlike your basic commands, you may or may not be able to find clear instructions online or in a book. Even if you can find instructions online, those instructions may not fit with what you need for your disability or what you're capable of doing with your disability. I often find this to be true when mapping out tasks for CRPS - many tasks are similar to other mobility tasks, but the way they're taught for the average mobility-impaired individual often lends the dog to accidentally triggering pain flares if I taught it the same way. 

Part of my job as a service dog trainer is thinking through how to map out various tasks.

​I think through every part of the task, see it in my mind, work through variables of what I know a dog can do, what I know my dog can do, what I need, and options for how we might get there. I've done this process for every single task I already offer in my training program for service dogs, and I repeat it anytime I need to add a task for my own service dog, or for adding a specific task for a client.

​My service dog training program is broken into separate courses, to better enable me to jump in wherever your team is currently, and to help clients start (getting a dog) to finish (working coherently in public). I offer a task training course for teaching all of the tasks you need and public access knowledge, and the option for teaching tasks one at a time, if you're on a tight budget. Learn more about these options by booking a free consult with the button below :)

If you're not currently in a position to afford working one on one with me or another trainer, though, I encourage you to use the following outline to help yourself learn how to map out tasks or teach this exact task for your own team :) 

Yesterday was a recovery day for me. For the CRPS, my Saturday added up to Intense Walking + Intense Standing + Intense Sitting = haha, good luck walking later... I know, it sounds dumb. With CRPS, though, this is life. 

Anyway, I was supposed to be resting. Resting is difficult for me, because I like being active. As I scrolled through NPR looking for interesting reads, I saw this headline, "Dogs attacked more than 5,300 mail carriers last year, Postal Service Says." 

Oh good grief...

All the colorful metaphors bounced around in my mind, and watching tv quickly got pushed aside as my brain jumped into action. I have a theory about dogs and dog bites, and this headline pushed into focus a topic I've been wanting to write about for a while, and didn't quite know where to start. Until yesterday. 

In this post, you’ll learn about why its okay to be picky about what dogs your service dog socializes with, how to choose those friends, how playtime can aid in training overall, and a quick bit about dog parks, though that topic will be discussed in more detail in another post. ​

My wish for every client I work with, is for you to come out of training knowing what you're capable of with your dog. I want your dog to be calm and responsive to you. I want you to feel like You've Got This, whether you have CRPS/RSD and need a service dog, or you simply want a gentle, calm, and reliable companion by your side. 

Maybe you already have a dog who's a bit rough around the edges or you're looking for a new dog to bring into your life. You don't know what's possible with training until you try. Book a free, 30-minute consultation with me to learn what I can offer you!

I am lots of things. 

Did you know that when you commit to training your dog, you're also signing up to learn a brand new language with that dog?

​A language that will be the basis of your relationship, will create a reliable connection for listening & learning between the two of you, and that will make it possible for your team to do other activities together such as going on relaxing walks, competing in agility, working a job, and more. It's a language that may look very similar to other dog-owner teams, but every teams has their own unique aspects that make it like a secret language between BFFs. After all, haven't you always wanted to be able to talk to your dog, have them understand, & be able to understand them as well?

My current in-training dog, Austin, is high energy. Not in the bounce off the walls kind of way, but more of the "I want to move all day" sort. 

​Part of Austin's integration into our household includes free time. These are time periods where he practices being off-leash in the house, respecting our rules, listening to us without a leash to reinforce, co-existing calmly with Robbie, and just being a dog. 

It may surprise you to know that free time is something he struggles with. Not because he's getting into trouble, but rather because he tends to get unsettled and restless without direction. It illuminates how overwhelming freedom to make their own choices and determine their own activities can be for some dogs. 

In his active training sessions, Austin is learning Place (go to a specific spot and settle), Down, and public access Down (lying a certain way, in a certain spot). He hasn't quite put two and tow together to use those skills in his own time, though. 

I'm helping him learn how to settle and how to choose to settle with the following approaches:

1. Keeping free time as a reward after a training session, and keeping it short
2. Putting him on a leash tether that I'm holding and asking him to actively settle. I either wait for him to lay down and praise him, or actively tell him to lay down. He can lay how he likes, have a treat, take a nap, or watch the birds, but the tether keeps him from pacing. 

Pacing or changing positions often can be a sign of restlessness. The more you let your dog practice pacing by doing it, you're inadvertently teaching them, "Yes, please do this with your time and energy."

It's amazing how fast a leash and me settling down encourages him to settle down, too. 

You may be thinking, oh that will never work on my dog, they're too hyper. Any dog can learn to settle. How you do it may change, but the concept remains the same. All dogs need to learn how to settle because it helps them learn to relax and learn what to do with themselves when they are unsure or overwhelmed about something. 

Using a leash helps set a energy level of calm, along with you yourself settling down to read a book, watch tv, or another activity. It's easy to want to use treats, but throwing treats at your dog can accidentally infuse more energy into the exercise, which defeats your overall goal of "please calm down now." Not every approach works the same for every dog or team. For more help, send me an email and let's get you started training with Disabled Advantage. 

As a service dog, Austin will need to have a mix of "go all day" and "settle down here for a bit." He needs to channel his energy into either avenue equally as well. 

If your dog sounds like Austin, try this tip to improve their day - and yours! For more help, schedule a training consult today!

Socialization and building a reliable dog doesn't have a perfect rule book of instructions for the simple reason that every dog is different. There are guidelines, but no "one-size-fits-all" approach. What one dog finds distracting, another dog can work around without issue. What one dog is afraid of, another dog barely notices. What one dog is confident around, another dog can barely take the first step.

​The key to overcoming this training challenge is learning what your dog considers to be of little distraction, moderate distraction, and high distraction. The level of distraction directly affects how much your dog has to overcome in order to pay attention to you and be responsive when you ask them to do things. In this post, I want to delve specifically into how distractions change when you take a country dog into the city for a training session, and vice versa if you're wanting to take a city dog out into the countryside for a fun weekend or longer vacation. Thought and time should be given to any dog - working or companion - to allow them chances to be exposed to various differences between city/town and country/wide open spaces.