Training Methods

Basic protection training

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The following are foundation skills taught prior to our basic and advanced handler protection skills: Bite Development Drive Development Advanced Biting Skills Basic Fighting Skills Advanced Fighting Skills Muzzle Attacks Integrating Skills

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Basic Handler Protection

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Once foundational training (imprinting and development of drives; biting skills, etc.) within the protection program has been completed handler protection skills are taught. These handler protection skills determine how the dog protects you.

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Advanced Handler Protection

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These advanced skills provide a variety of useful options as to “how” the dog protects you. Naturally, if faced with a serious threat the more options available to you the better.

In situations where someone only suspects a potential threat, advanced exercises like the Covert Secure are extremely useful.

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Manners

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As most of our clients do have children the exercises below are designed to protect their hands from accidentally being hurt when playing with the dog (ie the dog taking a toy out of their hand, etc.). There are numerous ways in which we customize each dog’s training based on each clients specific lifestyle and personal preferences.

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Begin with an Intention

Before you begin training a service dog, think about the goals for the training.

What do you want your dog to be like?

How do you want it to behave?

What do you want your dog to be able to do?

And remember that the best strategy is to inspire behaviors with motivation, not fear. Train your dog through conditioning and repetition to ensure that the tasks are performed correctly, reliably, and with as much motivation as possible.

Consider Natural Instincts

The program for training a service dog should include traditional exercises, such as sit, down, handshake, and gradually come to advanced exercises (such as Secure, Protect, Rest). All exercises need to be broken into daily, natural behaviors. For instance, “Sit” and “Down” are common, everyday things the dog does naturally. They lie down to sleep and sat from an early age, and it is the first behavior Malinois or any other service dog learns after crawling.

After these simple exercises, the dog is ready to start learning less common behaviors such as walking backward, which is required for performing “Secure” and “Protective Escape” exercises. You don’t usually see dogs walking backward down the street so you have to think of what circumstance can stimulate this behavior. When we look at nature, we see dogs, like humans, instinctively walking backward in a tight, restricted area when it’s not possible to turn around to change direction. And so with every situation, you should think of circumstances that would cause the desired behaviors helpful for training a service dog.

The challenge of training a service dog is finding out how to inspire such natural but less common behaviors creatively. Hiring a company for training a service dog is a good idea for the purpose because they usually know about the best methods and techniques to inspire such behaviors.

The power of positive versus negative reinforcement is often a challenge even for professional trainers. The use of positive reinforcement is simple: motivate with something positive such as praise, affection, toys, or food. If this motivation is connected repeatedly to the desired behavior, it becomes a habit.

After, you can slowly begin to add distractions to make the skill more reliable. The controversial point is that a dog naturally will choose to do what is most pleasurable. What would your dog choose between coming to you when you call it and chasing the cat, rabbit, or squirrel your future service dog had noticed during the training? Your beloved dog will most likely ignore your command to come and instead chase after the sources of greater pleasure every time! Hence, there are limitations to purely positive motivational training.

Negative reinforcement gives an opportunity to create reliability. A “do it or else” brings results if the consequences are serious enough. However, in addition to reliability, negative reinforcement alone also when used exhaustedly can create an oppressive mentality at best, and a fearful dog at worst. It’s effective in securing control of your dog but should be used wisely.

The best approach for training a service dog is balance. Inspire with motivation to create or induce behavior. Then you could condition through both positive and negative reinforcement.

The key proportion is as much motivation as possible and as much negative reinforcement as needed and therefore, as little as possible.

The Four Basic Phases for Training a Service Dog

1) The first is foundational training.

2) The second phase is specific skills training.

3) The third phase is functionality.

4) The fourth phase is integration.

The first is foundational training.

Foundational training is essential regardless of whether a service dog has just begun its training or already has earned advanced working titles such as in the French Ring or Belgian Ring Sports.

This preparational, behind-the-scenes training, is time-consuming, meticulous, and requires effort but is important to establish mutual enjoyment between the dog and the owner to further proceed with the training. Moreover, the owner’s safety and well-being depend on it.

The second phase is specific skills training.

A service dog needs to learn both obedience and protection. Training a service dog includes all of the advanced exercises needed for complete off-leash control and advanced handler protection skills.

The third phase is functionality.

This phase of training a service dog expands the dog’s understanding of the advanced exercises from a training room to a functional understanding.

This is basically learning a dog how to apply the learned set of skills. The point here is to have a dog understand where and how to apply a specific skill in defined circumstances or against a specific strike.

The fourth phase is integration.

The task is to teach a dog to create as many different mindsets (playful, affectionate, tired, just waking up, etc.), physiology (laying down, standing, etc.), and environments (inside a house, car, staircase, etc.) as possible and require whatever exercises the dog would least likely expect.

This will teach your service dog to reliably perform a wide range of exercises in a variety of situations.

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