Did you miss out…?
Look what’s been happening at AZ Dog Sports and AZ Dog Smart Academy!
Last month Jessa was in town for a special engagement Service Dog workshop series. More specifically Mobility Assistance, Medical Alert, Medical Response & Anxiety, and Public Access Skills.
Each hands-on workshop focused on one of these very specific type of Service Dog Training.
Mobility Assistance Dogs
Starting with Mobility Assistance, they worked on retrieving items for their companion, tugging open doors and cabinets and removing socks and shoes even! This workshop focused on tasks a service dog needs to know in order to assist someone who has limited mobility.
Medical Alert Dogs
The Medical Alert workshop showed how amazing it is that a dog can be trained to sense differences in a persons blood sugar or anxiety level. One of the cool things that was explained was “intelligent disobedience”. This is when a trained service dog will willfully disobey an order to do something that he knows will put his handler in harms way. Service dogs are not just robots, they can decipher a good situation from a bad one.
Medical Response & Anxiety Dogs
Our Medical Response & Anxiety workshop focused on service dog tasks that aid a handler when something is going wrong. The dog is taught to go get help when their handler is hurt or in trouble. The dog can be taught to wake the handler up from sleeping if need be. Deep pressure therapy is also something Medical Response dogs learn. The most commonly seen form of deep pressure therapy is leaning to hugging. It helps to calm or relieve stress on the handler.
Public Access Skills for Dogs
At the end of the week of workshops, we held several sessions aimed at both beginner and intermediate Public Access skills. These classes focused on training a dog to handle public situations. Service dogs need to know loose leash skills but also need to know what to do if their handler accidentally drops the leash. The dog must be able to ignore distractions and complete long down-stays in many situations.
Fun was had by everyone who attended these workshop sessions!
We love teaching! We continually have classes, seminars and hands-on workshops about all things dog related.
Learn about future workshops by signing up here!
