How to Map Out a New Task

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. 

Learn to take simple object --> learn to take clothing article --> learn to help with laundry

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 :)

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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 :) 

Mapping Out A Task

1. What is the problem you're trying to solve? This is whatever activity you're trying to do, something you know to be difficult or impossible for you to do without help, or, if you have CRPS, it may be a particular symptom or pain trigger you're trying to be alerted to in order for you to take appropriate management steps. 
2. What's the objective? This is the ideal version of how you imagine a dog helping to solve this problem. This might be a rough mental picture or passing fancy - that's okay. The next steps are designed to help you flesh it out. 
3. What are possible ways I could go about teaching the dog how to do this or helping the dog recognize this is something to interrupt? This is where it gets more tricky if you've never trained an animal before. If your dog only has 1 task, think back through all the little training chunks for how you got them there, and follow a similar thinking pattern. Think of it like trying to build a puzzle or draw a picture. Even if at first you jot down a bunch of random steps/components, the next step would be to put those in a logical order, and that becomes the HOW. 
4. What are ways this could go wrong? When planning out anything with an animal, I always try to game out the possible ways it could go wrong for me or the animal, because animals by nature can be unpredictable in how they respond to new things. We can feel like we know our dogs really well and they will continue to surprise us. For me, I write out the ways Austin might confuse this with another task or another command (all of my commands I try to make sound different for him; eg. Close is to shut a door, Cloth is to hand me a piece of clothing, as opposed to saying Clothes. Clothes and Close would sound the same to him and could confuse him in the moment. Dogs learn by context, and some dogs are better at it than others, but it's still worthwhile to consider when picking command words). I also think out ways he could do something that triggers a pain flare for me if he makes a mistake or chooses the wrong action. 
5. For any potential problems, what are potential solutions? If I think of and write them down now, I don't have to think on the fly during a training session. ​
6. How do I begin? Where do I feel is the starting thread for helping the dog weave together all the pieces of this to the final product I'm looking to create? If you've never done this before, use my example with Austin in the next section to help guide you through this step. 
7. What will I reward, discourage, and ignore? You need to be clear on these 3 points before you jump in. If you aren't, you aren't going to be clear for your dog. I don't subscribe to the theory of not using corrections with service dogs. My disability is extremely sensitive to the world, and I need my dog to know ASAP when he's done something I'd prefer he didn't do again. If I'm working with Nose Nudges, and he does a Paw Strike, he is going to get an AHH-AHH marker that he's previously been taught means "don't do that," and if he continues with the paw strikes, we'll end the session and try again later. Paw strikes are very painful for me and I can't allow them or ignore them along the way to him figuring out I want a nose nudge instead because they trigger pain, muscle spasms, intense bruising, and can lead to a fall later on. I also explicitly teach both paw strikes and nose nudges on a board first, and me once they solidly understand "Touch" vs "Nose." I rarely ignore things, but when I do it is usually to help the dog understand that it's time to settle. When teaching with treats, sometimes the dog can get locked into "how do I get the treat" and have trouble turning off even when they've completed the action. This is one area where I might ignore something. Another area may be if the dog is doing something incorrect, but not directly harmful to me. Ignoring has its place, but it is a much narrower place than when I would correct. 
8. What words will I use; do I need to start with no words and actions only? If your dog already knows components of this task, you might include those words in the training to help them understand what you want. Other times, you may need to rely on actions alone, if you have no words yet or are teaching a brand new thing. 
9. What will be the order of steps for training? This ties into "how do I begin" but is the part where you put all the pieces in a logical order. 
10. Jump into training it and be prepared to tweak the approach as you go based on what responses your dog gives, or drop the task altogether if it becomes clear that either your dog doesn't want to do this or literally or physically can't do this. There are tasks which would be greatly appreciated that dogs simply cannot do, and ones certain dogs cannot physically do, and more yet that an individual dog will refuse to do or has no interest in doing. When you run into this issue, part of being an owner-trainer means accepting when your dog can't or won't do a task, determining how much of a deal breaker it is, and considering if you can make do or if this dog maybe isn't cut out for the job at all.  

Examples of #10

Activities Dogs Cannot Do, In General

- Drive a car
- Put the sheets back on the bed all the way
- Help you with the actual showering/bathing process 
- Make you meals
​- Clean your house

Tasks a Dog May Not Physically Be Able to Do

- Small dogs may struggle to push a door open/close
- Small dogs may struggle to pick up bulky items
- Large dogs may struggle to give gentle alerts
​- Large dogs may not fit all the way on a lap for pressure therapy

Tasks an Individual Dog May Refuse/Lack Drive

- Some dogs have low to zero interest in fetch, making it very hard to teach retrieve
- Some dogs aren't confident enough with using their nose or paws to touch things, making it hard to teach target-based tasks

Ways we take what they can't do and tweak it...
- Can't drive a car, but can help us get in/out of car, alert to medical issues before they happen while we're driving, can be ready to help us at our destination
- Can't put sheets all the way on the bed, but can pull the sheets off the bed, help get them to the washer, out of dryer, and put the pile on the bed for us or a helper to put on
​- Can't help you shower/bathe, but can help you get in/out shower or tub safely, can hand you your phone or the towel, if/when needed
- Can't make meals, but can bring you a packaged drink or snack
- Can't clean your house, but can help you declutter by picking things up to drop in bins or hand to you
- Can't push a door, but maybe they can be taught to pull a door or push a button
​- Can't drag heavy things, but maybe they can pick up pieces of something or carry a pack to move it in smaller loads

***With tasks your individual dog refuses to do, is proving difficult to teach, or lacks the drive to do it reliably & easily, you judge it on a case by case basis. Getting the outside opinion and assistance from a Service Dog Trainer can be helpful. I say a Service Dog Trainer, because pet dog trainers may not understand the importance or the complexities of teaching a task, and other types of working dog trainers, such as Police, Military, or Hunting, may adopt a training approach that's too strict or outside your own physical limitations. We worked with a hunting dog trainer initially, to help guide us with Robbie, and while his expertise was invaluable to us in most areas, his approach for teaching retrieve to Robbie actually impeded progress, made Robbie more discouraged, and was extremely difficult for me to physically do it because it required range of motion & dexterity I simply did not have. 

Example of a Task Map with Austin

Problem I’m Trying to Solve: Under normal day to day life, I can only stand 5 – 45 minutes, and usually end up absent-mindedly moving around to break up the pain a bit. This is fine. In 2022, Disabled Advantage started attending events. We tried to keep me sitting, and focus on having Austin interrupt to get me to move around every hour to minimize sitting flares.

However, we noticed more and more than people who approached my booth often mistook my husband or my friend as the business owner if they were standing and I was sitting. Even if we were all sitting, they still overlooked me, we suspect because my human helpers looked more ready to get up and talk to people, whereas I was usually under a blanket. This year, 2023, I tried standing at an event, and people more readily accepted me as the one in charge, and gave me more attention, respect, and time.
 
This is exceptionally disheartening and unfortunate because I am a disabled woman, and really should not be standing for more than 5 – 45 minutes at a time. At one event in September, I accidentally tricked my brain into letting me Stand still for 3 hours because I focused more on teaching and talking to people than how my legs felt. We suspect my brain turned off my perception of the pain, as it often does when I go into “soldier mode.” The problem, is, once the event ended and I stopped focusing outward, the pain was immediately in the extremes, so much so I could barely form sentences, walk, or even tolerate sitting. It took a few days to recover from and reconvince my brain I was capable of walking, standing, and using those leg muscles in general. At another event a month later, I accidentally stood for 2 hours, and while it wasn’t as extreme of a response, it was still very painful later in the day and the next day.
 
One solution could be to sit and stand every time someone approaches. The issues here are that the flow of people is often unpredictable and not consistent. Austin would easily end up doing 50 – 100 braces in a few hours. A better idea is to see if I can teach Austin to interrupt me when he sees me struggling to remain standing and encourage me to sit. It won't help people's initial judgement of me, but it will prevent me pushing past my limits to making dangerous choices. 

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Objective: Austin interrupts when I sit for too long by cuing off a particular phone alarm. He is to shove his head in my lap, be very persistent, and continue until I move my laptop, give a treat, and then brace to stand up and move around a bit. There, he has the cue of the alarm, a nose nudge/head nudge, and links it with he then helps me stand up.
 
I would like to try to teach Austin how to alert me somehow when I’ve been standing for too long, and pair it with my sitting down. 

How Could I Go About This?
Option 1: Set alarms – not the best option, because I’m likely to forget to set one. When I sit in a chair, it’s easier to set alarms because I’m already setting work limit alarms. Even so, there are days when I forget. Sometimes he does it on his own, but more for attention than a task I suspect, because it’s often accompanied by a husky warble, stretch, and light bouncy behaviors that signal he needs to exercise or play.

Option 2: Figure out a “tell” I tend to do when my legs are getting fatigued. Teach him to recognize that “tell,” reward for interrupting it, follow with guiding me to a chair, and another reward once I’ve sat down.

1. Potential problem: I often do my “tells” in stores with concrete flooring or when I cook dinner. I’d have to balance it with either “I’m okay” and/or letting him guide me to the floor of a store to sit for a bit. *Why? If I ignore his alerts, we run the risk of them being extinguished. I’ve seen this when I sit on the floor; he is more hit or miss about interrupting why ever I’m on the floor, often because I have taken to teaching lessons on the floor. If I do this, I need to be clear on using “I’m Okay” when I can’t sit down, but still rewarding him for letting me know I need to sit down.
2. **Alternatively, if we’re in a store, I could redirect the alert into us moving and doing drills instead of me standing still, as standing still is the primary issue. 

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How Do I Begin?
The easiest way to begin is to pick 1 tell, pick the type of alert, and pick 1 solution. I know I can let the task evolve over time, because he has shown an aptitude for adapting tasks to work better. Task training is part handler/trainer making choices, and part letting the dog read the situation and solve the problem in a way that makes sense to them based on what they’ve been taught and know to be true about their surroundings (context).
 
Tell Options I Know I Do:

• Sway Side to Side, similar to side lunges
• Lift up my legs, one at a time, like a quad stretch
• Shifting my weight from one foot to another
• Rocking up into calf stretches

 
I should try to pick the tell that I know (or believe) happens the most regularly, is not subtle, and can be distinguished as more serious to interrupt than the others.
 
How should I pick? Two options and I will try each.

1. Get Austin’s focus, then do each of these actions. See which one he seems to notice the most – direct focus, ears up, moving towards me, looking restless himself – and pick that one.
2. I pick one that I feel is most likely to happen and go from there. If he doesn’t react to any singular action, this is what I’ll do.

 
What’s next? Picking an alert type. Options:

1. Nose Nudge – it’s the gentlest, he already uses it for alerting on my legs
2. Paw Strike – it’s roughest, but most visceral and would be good for breaking through the soldier mode.
   1. On the downside, he is often corrected for confusing a nose nudge with a paw strike or paw striking my legs/person in general
   2. The only time he is allowed to put his paws on me are for cold or adrenaline into my lap, or when my hand shakes, he holds it still with his paw. That one evolved because the nose nudging wasn’t strong enough and he adapted to use more of himself to hold me still.
3. Barking – we have worked diligently to eradicate barking because it triggers vertigo for me
4. Body Pressure – could easily knock me off balance
5. Stand up and touch with paws – Could also easily knock me off balance

 
How Do I Choose? I will try nose nudges and paw touches, and see which he leans towards doing.
 
*When I am first training a dog, I take most of the control over how tasks are learned. The more my dog & I work together, the more chances I will give them where I offer them several different responses and let them choose how to follow through, because often I have found the dog may have a better idea. I’ve learned to trust that learning with me gives the dog a deeper chance to take the reins on certain tasks based on what they know about me and our life working together. 

What Will Be the Order of Training?
 If Austin was younger, I would likely move slower, teaching each component separately before weaving them together. As it is, he already knows all of the components, roughly, and I would like to try to weave them together from the beginning – sort of.

1. I’ll do the tell and reward for interrupting it 5x.
2. On the 5th time, I will pair it with holding onto him, and asking him to guide me to a chair, then reward once I sit down.
3. I’ll reset.
4. Tell, encourage or wait for interrupt, YES, follow with guide to chair, sit down, YES.
5. I’ll do that 3-5x, and then that format will become our new task exercise to practice a few times each day.

 
As I train, I’ll be on the look out for weak points, points where he is offering a different solution and determine if it’s a better idea or if I need to encourage him to follow my lead this time, and I will also need to be VERY aware of any attempts to interrupt outside of formal training if he notices during normal life. 

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How did the 1st attempt go?
I started with a few reps of the alert and tell combo, then did guiding me to the chair separately. I chose shifting my weight, because I know it's what I do most often. He didn't give a natural reaction to any of my tells on his own. Austin had a difficult time. I only got 1 automatic nose nudge and chest nudge on the last rep. I’m a little worried that because he’s watched me shift my weight SO MANY TIMES that it is “normal” behavior for me. I feel we’re going to need to stay on 1 & 2 for a while to help solidify it for me. I realized I need to be sure to say,  “Austin – Where’s Chair," after he does the alert. Just saying “Chair” lends him to getting into my chair, whereas, “Where’s Chair” helped him understand more to guide me to it, then move off to the side so I could sit down. Also, even after he got me to my chair, he kept trying to look for the next treat and/or offer more behaviors to get a treat, so I need to make it really clear that getting me TO the chair was the end result we needed. Perhaps I need to pair the end stage of me sitting down with him also laying down by my chair, to help put a clearer “cap” on the task.

I'll keep practicing this and tweaking as needed. It may turn out that since I so regularly have pain coping reactions to standing that this is not a realistic task to ask of him. The reason that would be the case is because it could lend him to always alerting me to sit down and me often having to dismiss him, which would discourage its continuance. I already suspect neither of my dogs have ever alerted to flares starting because my CRPS is full body, and more severe to where there are usually always 1-2 flares happening, that whatever a dog normally senses is just constantly flooding my boys and they learn to dismiss it as background noise. My adapting to leg pain from standing may just be something he has learned to ignore. I won't know until I work with it more and see if it is indeed a realistic task or if I need to adjust my own expectations.  

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