Service Dog: Working Outdoors

Hello Everyone


Where I am, the weather is beautiful and the dog that I am working with loves to fixate on items he is interested in. This includes, dogs, bikes, kids, and skateboards. To him, these items are associated with having fun, but in his new role, they are to be ignored, and this is a very hard transition to make. One thing that didn't happen for him, is a casual walk in the park. Most dogs you see walking in the park are used to these items and they are more of an every day thing that is to be ignored. For this dog, the only time he really had fun and bonding time was interacting with these items. With the nice weather, it has been the perfect time to just take off the vest and work on walking in a park.


A well travelled walking park not only helps your dog start to ignore the activities around him but also the smells. Getting used to walking past places where other dogs marked, can be a big challenge, especially for males who want to be in on the marking chain. Working on keeping their head up, not pulling to go smell something or see something and staying at heal, makes a casual walk in the park into a training session.


My motto for all of this is just keep walking. This doesn't necessarily mean walking in a straight line, you can move backwards, change direction or even your speed, but the moment the dog is distracted, you need to do something to get their attention back. This will help assure them, that whatever got their attention is not worth it because you may do something unexpected and their focus needs to be on you.


When people start out training a puppy as a service dog, it is like they start to focus on the "public access" part of it. Inside a mall or department store, there are less smells that they are interested in and learning discipline around food in the home helps when going to a restaurant and a supermarket. What these dogs then lack is social interactions and learning how to behave appropriately outside with all the activities going on around them. Why people are so eager to just start taking a puppy out in public has never made sense to me, when learning to ignore and behave around items that get them excited makes the transition into public a lot easier. Taking a puppy into pet stores to do some training also has a lot of the same effects, getting used to listening and obeying commands surrounded by treats, toys, other animals, and dog smells. Rushing into getting a vest and pushing a puppy into public means less focus on this aspect. Teaching them inside a mall and applying it in a park setting is a lot harder than teaching them in a park and applying it to a mall setting.