by The Crunchy Canine | Feb 12, 2021 | BLOG
Is your Service Dog in Training (SDiT) ready for public access? Being able to bring your Service Dog into public places is something that is earned not just assumed. In Canada, SDiTs do not have public access until they are fully trained so you will need to practice everything you see below in dog friendly places. It takes a lot of time, patience, and training to get your dog ready to be able to accompany you to all public spaces and should not be rushed.
Below is a list of PAT (Public Access Test) requirements for service dog handlers. . The following commands are for service dogs, which are “On-Leash.” They can be executed through hand commands, voice commands, or a mix of both.
Controlled Unload Out of a Vehicle
Before coming out of a vehicle, the service dog does not immediately exit the vehicle. The service dog waits to be released out of the car.
After release and exiting, the service dog must then await instructions quietly. It cannot ignore any commands, move around, or be off lead. The service dog should be able to unload from a vehicle safely and calmly.
Approaching a Building
After a service dog unloads calmly from a vehicle, the dog should not continue immediately on its own towards a building. It should remain in heel until it receives further directions to proceed.
Upon moving toward the destination, the dog does not become distracted by traffic or noise or show any showing. The service dog must be relaxed and calm. If the trainer stops, the service dog should also stop.
Controlled Entry
When the service dog reaches the building, the dog should remain relaxed and focused. The dog should not be easily distracted or seek attention from others. The dog should not wander away, push forward, or strain against the leash, but instead, calmly walk alongside its trainer.
Heeling Through a Building
Inside the building, the service dog should walk with the trainer in a calm and controlled way. The service dog should always be no more than one foot away from the trainer, and be able to adjust to changes in speed and turns quickly. The service dog should be able to calmly follow its trainer through crowded areas full of obstacles without becoming anxious or seeking attention from others.
Six Foot Recall on Lead
The trainer should be able to sit a service dog and walk away to a distance of six feet, then call the service dog.
The dog should respond immediately, without ignoring the command or being distracted by the public. The dog should return to its handler by approaching in a calm a deliberate manner, without any detours or stalling.
Sits on Command
The service dog must immediately respond to every sit command, needing no more than two prompts.
Downs on Command
First Down: After your service dog follows the down command, food is dropped onto the floor. The service dog should make no effort to go down to the food or sniff at it. Controls may be provided to keep the dog at the down position. But the dog should not need excessive management. Your service dog should not attempt to go for the food or try to smell food.
Second Down: Another down is called, and an adult or child approaches the service dog. The dog should remain in the down position and not seek attention. If the child or adult attempts to pet the dog, the service dog will stay in place. The trainer may provide corrections to the service dog.
Noise Distraction
The service dog should be aware of any noises nearby, but not show any signs of anxiety or aggression towards sounds. Although the dog may be startled, the service dog can recover promptly and continue in the heeled position. The service dog should not begin growling or shaking at the noise.
Inside a Restaurant
When the trainer is eating at a table, the dog should remain under the table or, if too large, should remain near the handler. If the dog is a smaller breed, it can be placed in a seat next to the trainer–but the dog must lie down. Throughout the meal, the dog should remain calm and should not need much correction.
Off Lead
The trainer is asked to drop the lead while walking with the service dog, and the dog should be aware that the lead was dropped. The trainer should be able to keep control of the service dog until the trainer is able to regain the lead. The main purpose of this exercise is to ensure the dogs’ awareness of the lead and the handler’s ability to maintain control of the dog should the lead be dropped.
Controlled Unit
When the trainer exits the building the dog should not display anxiety or aggression at the sound of vehicles or change in scenery.
Safety
The Public Access Test maintains the integrity of the service dog institution by ensuring the safety of the public, the service dog, and the dog trainer. By vetting every service dog through this process, every dog handler understands what the expectations are for a dog to become a service dog.
by The Crunchy Canine | Oct 27, 2020 | BLOG
Leash reactivity…what is it? Does your dog have it? Is it aggression?
Fix Leash Reactivity
Let’s unpack what leash reactivity is. When a dog is on leash, and has a reaction to certain triggers/distractions. These reactions can be minor like change in posture or panting, to something more severe like lunging and barking. Luckily, for most dogs reactivity does not equal aggression (though sometimes it does).
Why does my dog have leash reactivity? There are a few different possibilities to this question. First, many overly friendly dogs who are leash reactive are excited when they see another dog. They may end up barking, jumping around, hitting the end of the leash and carrying on. Often these dogs are dogs who attend dog daycares, dog parks, or are allowed to go up and say hi to most dogs they see on a walk. While this type of dog is not aggressive it is often embarrassing for the humans and often stressful for the other dogs. Another reason your dog might be leash reactive is barrier frustration. Think of a dog who is barking when it is behind a fence or in the house behind the window.
A leash acts as a barrier, and when it is tight dogs can become frustrated. This type of dog is usually fine to see dogs when there are no barriers present. The next type of reactivity is fear based. When a fearful dog sees another dog and he reacts, in his mind he made the scary thing go away. Often this dog has had one or more negative experiences with another dog or is due to lack of exposure to dogs (though usually it is caused by a bad experience). These dogs usually can warm up to other dogs once a proper introduction has been made.
The last type of leash reactivity is true aggression. This is uncommon but does exist. This is a dog who definitely wants to hurt another dog. It is rare this type of dog can be fully trained out of this and may need management for the rest of it’s life. Luckily it is rare to see true aggression.
How do I fix reactivity? While the reason your dog is reactive plays a small role in the training plan to resolve the behaviour, in the end the recipe will remain similar if not the same regardless of the reason.
The core foundation of working on reactivity will revolve around 5 key factors.
Distance – When it comes to addressing reactivity, we want to meet the dog where they’re at instead of trying to muscle through the situation. What we mean by this is if your dog is in the grade school equivalent of Kindergarten, then don’t put your dog in a grade school level above their skill set, like say grade 6. In order to stay within their skill set we need to find out what our dog’s threshold is for success.
Say your dog can see another dog at 40′ but at 35′ your dog starts to pant, and their tail goes up, you need to start working with your dog at 40′. When you push the dog past their threshold you are in essence muscling through it. In this scenario 40′ is the dog’s threshold and would be what we consider to be where the dog is able to learn. If you push the dog too far (or too close) then your dog will no longer be in a learning state of mind. If your dog is freaking out, lunging, barking, and carrying on, they cannot learn.
Movement – Part of working through reactivity is to use movement to help keep our dogs calm. If you consider your dog like a pressure cooker when you ask him to sit still, it is far more likely they will explode. If you keep them moving (with some strategy as movement alone will not necessarily fix the issue), you can help them feel more calm. Another reason to use movement is because if say when we see a dog, we panic, we pull our dog off to the side, and we either distract them or we let them stare the other dog down, we are also ourselves being reactive.
Our goal is always to achieve a neutral response to things around the dog. If when we see another dog, we either a) rely on distraction or b) pull our dogs off to the side and let them stare, our dog is not neutral at all. A neutral response to seeing another dog or trigger would be to see it, look at it for 1-3 seconds, look away and carry on.
Correction – In order to disagree with reactivity we need to be able to correct the unwanted behaviour. However, we do not rely on correction alone. So many people have tried correction alone and it rarely works out for them. Why? There are a few reasons so let’s discuss. First is timing. Most of the time we see people waiting for their dog to be reactive in order to want to correct them. If your dog is blowing up it is too late, very few dogs will respond to a correction when they are already losing their mind. Second is how firm of a correction is given.
We are not saying you need to do a double handed yank on the leash, but if your correction is too soft it will have no meaning to the dog. Lastly, the type of training tool used. Tools are not all equal and a correction given on a harness will not yield the same results as a remote collar, head collar or prong collar. Tools do matter and it will take you a VERY long time to work through reactivity on a harness.
Reward – We use a lot of food rewards in our training, and working through reactivity is no different. You might see other trainers trying to use food to distract, desensitize or counter condition the dog, but they we we use food is to reward the dog for every good choice they make. That might mean we reward them for less than perfect choices so long as it is better than the alternative choice they would have made before. You will often hear us talking about naming and explaining as well which is a type of perception modification used to help the dog feel better about their surroundings.
The way we use N&E is when our dog notices something (anything not just their main triggers), we will tell them what it is. For example “that is a car, yes” and then feed. Your tone should be neutral like you are saying to them it is just a car. You can use multiple rewards for one trigger which can be super helpful in stressful situations. The idea is that not only are we helping the dog feel better but also creating what we call a cut off cue.
Dog looks at the trigger, then looks at you for the reward. This is creating muscle memory in the brain that the dog is not to hard stare at the trigger, and can relieve stress by simply looking away. We also want to remember that improvement should be rewarded even if it is not perfect. If your dog is better than they were even 1 minute ago, you can reward that despite the fact that they may not yet be perfect.
Repetition – An important element to resolving reactivity is repetition and practice. Reactivity does not go away over night and will require plenty of practice before they get to neutral. We recommend setting up as many practice sessions as possible. This may mean driving outside of your neighbourhood to say a dog park to practice outside the park. When do you stop practicing? When your dog no longer needs the practice. Simple as that. That could be a couple of weeks, that could be two months. The better you follow the plan the sooner you will no longer need to practice!
by The Crunchy Canine | Oct 11, 2020 | BLOG
Obedience is not the answer to your problems?
Obedience…such a commonly used word when we talk about the way we train our dogs. We have been brainwashed to think that obedience is the only thing we need to worry about. The end all be all to training. They must obey, they must sit, they must lay down, they must do what we say. They must do so willingly and with positive reinforcement only, but also without an expectation of reward. However, dogs are sentient beings with emotions, thoughts, and feelings. Why as humans do we think we are superior and need to control our dogs? Because that is what obedience is all about, control. If I say sit you must do as I say and sit because I feel the need to control you and make decisions for you despite how you are feeling about the situation.
Lets unpack why an obedience based training mentality is not ideal and actually not needed.
1. Obedience does not change the way the dog feels about the situation. Take for example if your dog is reactive on leash and it stems from fear, so you ask for eye contact from your dog and you enforce the rule that when we pass a dog you must give me eye contact on demand, in no way does this change the way the dog feels about passing dogs while on a walk.
All it does it put blinders on your dog. Your dog is still afraid of and would still react if it was allowed to look at that other dog. In the training world this is called teaching an “incompatible” behaviour. So that means you teach the dog to do something else so that it can’t do the behaviour you don’t like. This does not change the emotional state of the dog and rather only suppresses the behaviour. As trainers and owners, we should be looking for ways to help support our dogs, lift them up, help them feel better in their own skin. Instead of focusing on obedience alone to solve all our problems.
2. The second reason being that we should not feel the need to control another living being. I am not saying you can’t teach your dog to sit when you ask them to. It is more about the mindset behind the WHY you need your dog to sit. When someone wants to focus on obedience, I often as why? Why does your dog NEED to sit before crossing the street? Why does your dog NEED to sit before you give him a treat? Most people cannot answer this without a “because I said so” type answer.
Of course there are a couple of life saving commands that all dogs should know and respond to like “come” and a solid “wait” for safety around doorways that lead to the outdoors. However, this need to command our dogs “because we said so” is pointless and unnecessary. What it comes down to is that we are using control and commands based on our desire to be in charge and need to have our dogs listen to what we say.
3. The third being that when a dog is performing obedience commands they are not in free behaviour. What does that mean? If I have to tell my dog to go to “place’ because that is the only way he can handle certain situations then my dog is not making the choice on their own but rather only behaving because I have told them what to do. I don’t see the need to micromanage our dogs.
Not only is it exhausting for the human, can create conflict for the dog, but also we have to think about what our dogs would choose to do if we didn’t tell them what to do. Meaning if the human isn’t there to tell the dog to go to place, what would the dog do? What if someone else is watching your dog and they don’t know how to enforce the command? We want to teach the dog how to be well behaved and make good choices so they can live in our human world without having to be micromanaged all the time. Not only will you enjoy your dog more, but we will remove unnecessary conflict from your relationship.
When it comes to training, we should focus on relationship, teaching our dogs how to make good choices without being told what to do, work on how to be calm when they don’t necessarily want to be, and how to feel better about situations that make them uncomfortable. Let’s worry less about being in control and more about the animal in front of us that we consider family!
by The Crunchy Canine | Oct 8, 2018 | BLOG
I can’t even keep up with the number of “Dog Daycares” popping up all over the place nowadays. From state of the art facilities, to someone’s backyard turned dog daycare…they are everywhere. Surely, sending Fido to a dog daycare where he can run and play with other dogs all day sounds like a great idea right? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news but not only is “doggy daycare” not ideal for many dogs, but not all daycares are created equal and it may be doing more harm than good.
So, how can a doggy daycare possibly be bad for your dog? There are a few myths about dog daycares that I want to look at…
Myth #1 – Dog Daycare will make my under socialized or non social dog more social
Sending your dog who is not overly keen on playing with other dogs to daycare may help them come out of their shell, but this is not guaranteed. In fact, many dogs who don’t love playing with other dogs in the wrong environment will become overwhelmed and over stimulated resulting in some “aggressive” type behaviours. Dogs who were once neutral or even timid towards dogs have become defensive and short fused, resulting in them snapping or biting. However, this can in fact be prevented by well trained staff who understand dog body language, have a basic understanding of training and how to manage and advocate for the dogs. Unfortunately many dog daycares are staffed by people who just love hanging out with dogs and know nothing about this type of thing. So, if your dog is not super social then you will need to assess if your dog would actually even enjoy going or at the very minimum find a daycare that has a training philosophy to prevent this. Many well intentioned dog owners think “If we send him to daycare, then he will be better socialized” and this is not always the case.
Myth #2 – I have a high energy dog who NEEDS to play ALL day in order to be happy
For those who know me and know my training style, they will know that while I am all for giving dogs exercise, providing them with outlets, and assigning them “jobs”, I am also equally all for teaching dogs to relax and chill out. Many daycares simply allow a large group of dogs to play ALL day. There are no structured breaks, there is no calming overly aroused dogs, and there are very few rules (if those are even enforced, who knows?). Some dogs will come home tired from daycare, this is true. But I often hear about dogs who spend all day at daycare who come home just as wound up as when they arrived. See the problem is that not only do dogs build stamina and endurance to all that high energy play, but also they are overflowing with adrenaline all day right up until you pick them up. A good daycare will have scheduled downtime for all dogs, and will know when and how to calm an overly adrenalized dog.
Myth #3 – Sending my dog to daycare will help with the training issues we are having
There is a saying that “A tired dog is a happy dog”, and many people will use this philosophy in hopes to address any issues they are having with their dog. Unless you are sending your dog to a trainer who provides “Day School” your dog is most likely (almost definitely) not learning to behave any better. Many staff not only don’t know how to stop your dog’s unwanted behaviours, but they are most likely unintentionally encouraging and rewarding the behaviours. The most common complaint I hear from dog owners is that their dog’s jumping or barking is progressively getting worse with daycare, so if you want to resolve training issues, you may need to take a break from daycare.
Now that we have debunked the top 3 myths about dog daycares, I should also mention that I am not totally opposed to them (like I am dog parks)! I also don’t want to paint all daycares with the same brush. There are actually some good daycares out there that I would have no problem recommending (Dogs Reformed being one of them), but “buyer beware” as for every good daycare there are probably five that I would recommend not sending your dog to! Unfortunately, when you send your dog to a poorly run daycare, you will likely be undoing a lot of the hard work you put into training him. So, if you are going to send your dog to doggy daycare, do your research, make sure it is a good fit and that it is actually benefiting you and your dog by sending them!
by The Crunchy Canine | Aug 14, 2018 | BLOG
Just don’t let your dog do that.
Sounds simple right? Maybe too simple?
I am often met with a frustrated client who feels like they have tried everything in their power to stop their dog from doing certain unwanted behaviours. What they don’t realize is that often (not always), but often, we can change a dog’s behaviour simply by interrupting the pattern or the habit. In more simple terms, just don’t let the dog do it, and they will stop doing “it”. When I work with owners of puppies, I show them how to stop unwanted behaviours from starting in the first place. The goal is to never allow the puppy to rehearse unwanted, self-reinforcing behaviours (such as barking, chasing, counter surfing, etc). By never letting the puppy practice the behaviour, t
hey will never create bad habit or pattern. While, this is part of our training for preventing unwanted behaviours in puppies, we can use the same concept for adult dogs. By simply not letting your dog practice a behaviour any more (we will get to the how), they will eventually stop trying or stop practicing that behaviour.
So, how do you not let your dog do that? Management! Management will allow you to stop the cycle of the behaviour. For example, if your dog runs to the front window barking every time someone walks by, have a leash on and simply don’t let him run to the window. When you are not home, close the blinds or restrict access so the dog can’t practice while you are not there to manage. If your dog begs at the table (first, don’t feed him from the table), but put your dog
on place so they cannot beg. If your dog jumps on people, have him on leash and step on the leash just enough so that when he goes to jump he will not be able to. Once your dog is no longer practicing the
se behaviours daily (sometimes several times a day), most often they will simply just stop doing them.
As mentioned, often it is as simple as not letting them do that…but there are times where training will get more complicated. I will always suggest first that if your dog is displa
ying some unwanted behaviours, try not letting them practice the behaviour through management and communication and see where that takes you. I will bet that within 2-4 weeks your dog will most likely stop that behaviour completely.
If you need help with not letting your dog practice unwanted behaviours, please contact us today! Email us at [email protected]
by The Crunchy Canine | Aug 12, 2018 | BLOG
What does leadership mean to you? Lately, the term leadership has gotten a bit of a bad rap from the “purely positive” crowd. Somehow it has developed a connotation of dominance and harsh discipline.
However, if you look up the definition of leadership this is what you will find;
lead·er·ship
ˈlēdərˌSHip/
noun
the action of leading a group of people or an organization.
“different styles of leadership”
| synonyms: |
guidance, direction, control, management, superintendence, supervision |
Nowhere in that definition does it talk about anything unpleasant. Even the words dominance and discipline don’t need to be negative, but that is for another post.
So how does being a leader translate into your relationship with your dog? It is simple. Be someone who you yourself would want to follow. So lets break it down given that definition above…
Give your dog guidance. Your dog is an animal, a predatory animal. He is not born knowing how to navigate this human world as a pet. Guide him, teach him, and show him how to behave as a pet dog. Give your dog direction. This means teach him right from wrong. Communicate to him when he is doing something right, and when he is doing something wrong. This does not mean physical corrections (though sometimes it can), but simply disagreeing with a behaviour will often be enough. Control and manage your dog. Put him on a leash until he can be trusted without it and crate train your dog until he no longer requires it. You don’t need to control every tiny aspect of your dog’s life, but through control and management you will be able to stop them from practicing unwanted behaviours. Supervise your dog. If you cannot supervise, then crate him. Supervision means that you can guide, give direction, control, and manage your dog. When there is no supervision your dog is left to make his own choices (which with young dogs is often a choice we do not like).
All of that combined with being calm, clear and confident is what makes a good leader.
If you are struggling with your dog’s behaviour, sit down and honestly evaluate your role in your dog’s life and whether your provide them with calm, and clear leadership!
We can help you become the leader your dog needs! Contact us today [email protected]
