Diabetic Alert Dog

The following post is written by Liz Norris, Pawsibilities Unleashed in Frankfort, KY. Liz has helped so many diabetic alert dog teams! Liz helped Abi select Mr Darcy when he was a 7 week old pup and she held our hand and guided us down a LONG road from puppyhood to a mature, consistently alerting diabetic alert dog. She promotes positive reinforcement training methods, is an AKC-CGC Instructor / Evaluator , a member of IAADP and APDT, as well as being a certified clicker trainer instructor.  

Any trainer or organization that tells you they can take your dog and train it can, but  …..they can not guarantee the dog will work for you when you get it. One reason : whoever trains the dog gets the dogs respect. In order to have a dog that works for you on any level, you must learn how to become the trainer of that dog. People who do not train, think they do not have to learn anything to work the dog when it comes home. They are looking for the dog to come with a, “remote control”. Some people can simply not be trained to work with animals and have no natural talent for it.

Other reasons trainers can not guarantee the dog will work for you :
They do not live with you and can not control how you work the dog.
They have no control over your environment.
They have no control over the socialization you give the dog.
They have no control over the stress level in your home and how it effects the personality of the dog you are living with. (arguments, fights, verbal abuse, physical abuse of spouse or children, alcoholism or drug use in the home, etc. all contribute to how the dog holds its training and works).
They have no control over whether you use the, “correct” commands.
They have no control over how consistent you are with your commands and task work.
They have no control over whether you keep up the use of the, “correct” equipment.
They have no control over how well you take care of the dog, keep it vetted and what quality of feed you give it.
They have no control over whether you frontline the dog or give it heartguard and have its physical every year.
They have no control over whether you exercise your dog enough.
They have no control over whether you groom the dog and keep its cleanliness up to par (that means toenails trimmed too folks).
All  of these contribute to how the dog works for the owner and whether it respects the hand that feeds it. None of these are things that a trainer can control and therefore they can not guarantee that any dog will work for you, the handler, unless you learn to become the trainer.

Learn how and why commands are given and when to use them appropriately. IF you Learn all you can about training the dog and how to teach it the scent work ,  then  you can take the dog over and keep up the level of work it has. This will  insure a higher percentage of dogs that can save lives.

This entry was posted on Saturday, October 17th, 2009 at 12:50 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.