* All Sniffspot articles are reviewed by certified trainers for quality, please see bottom of article for details *
If you struggle with depression, panic attacks, or other forms of anxiety, you might have noticed that being around your dog (or even a friend’s canine companion) can make you feel more calm. You’re not alone in this! A wide range of people report the soothing effects of petting, playing, or otherwise interacting with their pets.
Maybe you’ve wondered what it would take to get an official service dog to help treat your anxiety. Here we break down everything you need to know: How to decide if you need a service dog, what to look for in your assistance animal’s temperament, and how to train their specific psychiatric tasks.
According to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), anyone in the United States with a diagnosed disability is eligible for a service dog. The organization defines an individual with a disability as “a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities.”
Training and caring for a service dog can come with a variety of financial, emotional, and other costs. Because of this, not everyone who lives with a psychiatric or physical disability is the right fit for an assistance animal — but many people are! Service dogs have helped more than 80 million American owners manage their medical conditions to achieve greater health, confidence, and freedom in their daily lives.
If you have a psychiatric condition or mental health condition like post traumatic stress disorder or depression — and are able to invest the necessary time and energy into caring for a canine — you might be a great candidate for a task-trained service dog.
A service animal is defined as a dog that has been individually trained to provide services to help their handler navigate the world. They’re part of the treatment plan for some disabled individuals. Psychiatric service dogs are officially considered “medical equipment” — the tasks a service dog performs must be directly related to their handler’s disability.
Because of this, not all dogs who improve their owners’ quality of life by helping with their anxiety symptoms can be considered legal service dogs.
The ADA says “[we] make a distinction between psychiatric service animals and emotional support animals. If the dog has been trained to sense that an anxiety attack is about to happen and take a specific action to help avoid the attack or lessen its impact, that would qualify as a service animal. However, if the dog’s mere presence provides comfort, that would not be considered a service animal under the ADA.”
What this means is that emotional support, therapy, and companion animals are not protected by the Americans with Disabilities Act. That doesn’t mean they’re not wonderful — they absolutely are! They just don’t have public access rights to visit non-pet-friendly places with their owners. (The only exception is housing: Emotional support animals are allowed to live with their handlers regardless of dog or breed restrictions.)
An ESA or therapy dog can become a legal, actual service animal, though, if they go through designated task training to help one specific handler.
This might seem counterintuitive, but it’s actually best if your service dog isn’t naturally worried about your anxiety. While it can be sweet to watch an animal sense your unease and try to make things better, it can also be a sign that they’re uncomfortable!
Your service dog will spend hours each day working for you in a range of environments — you want their tasks to be fun and rewarding, not driven by their own worry.
In short: The best service dog candidates are emotionally stable and nonreactive. They shouldn’t be overwhelmed by your panic attacks but should rather be able to eagerly work through them.
Before training your dog to be an anxiety service animal, you also need to make sure they’ll be able to handle a variety of public environments in your everyday lives while paying attention to you. While this article dives into task training (how to teach your dog the specific services they’ll need to perform to mitigate your disability) it’s important to build strong public access skills, too.
Service dogs need to be able to:
You can train these behaviors on your own as your dog's handler, or reach out to a professional service dog trainer for expert guidance.
You’ve decided you’re a good fit for a service dog. You understand the importance of your working animal having a stable, solid temperament. Now for the details: Let’s take a look at how to choose the tasks you want your dog to perform and what methods you can use to teach them!
It’s important to prioritize the services that will have the greatest impact on your life. Everyone’s disability, surrounding environment, and personal preferences differ.
Some common anxiety service dog tasks include:
If you think of something that isn’t on this list, it can still be a valid service animal task so long as it directly mitigates your psychiatric condition or disability.
Once you’ve decided what tasks you want your service dog to learn, it’s time to start teaching them. You’ll need to put in hours of training to polish their skills (or consider sending them to a designated service dog training program).
In the early stages, this process will look a lot like teaching your pet any other basic cue:
When your dog consistently does their tasks on your visual or verbal cue, it’s time to associate those behaviors with your anxiety symptoms! It’s great for your pet to be able to listen to what you say — simply having a “nudge” or “light switch” verbal cue can be a great help — but in the middle of a panic attack, you won’t be able to give them direction. It’s important your service dog can act on their own when needed to keep you safe.
This all might sound complicated, but don’t worry. It’s essentially the same process as adding a new verbal cue to a behavior your dog already knows! Instead of associating your dog’s task with a specific word, though, you’re now going to associate it with a certain anxiety symptom. These might include:
And so on. Pick the things you struggle with most — that’s how your service dog will have the biggest impact on your life.
Follow these steps to pair your new learned behavior stimulus (whatever anxiety symptom you’ve chosen) with your dog’s already-known hand or verbal signal.
Dogs often struggle to generalize behaviors. This means they might be able to follow cues in a familiar environment but still struggle to perform out and about.
Since your service dog needs to work in every environment you visit, however, it’s imperative that you spend time proofing their tasks. Here are some tips:
Service dog training can be overwhelming, especially if you’re trying to do it all on your own. Feeling stuck? Not sure how to troubleshoot new issues that are cropping up? Don’t worry: A professional trainer can make a world of difference!
Some canine professionals even specialize in assistance animals (and many have service dogs of their own, so they understand things from both a trainer and handler perspective). That means they can provide feedback on everything from public access behavior to specific tasks.
Professional dog training lessons can get expensive — but it’s a worthy investment to make sure your service dog is ready to act as medical equipment out in the world. If the cost of in-person private training is prohibitive, you might consider group classes, virtual sessions, or online content as well.
There is so much misinformation out there, we want to make sure we only provide the highest quality information to our community. We have all of our articles reviewed by qualified, positive-only trainers.
This is the trainer that reviewed this article:
Brittany L. Fulton, CTC
Founder and Trainer, Dances with Dogs, Silver Spring, MD, www.dancesdogs.com - Certified in Training and Counseling (CTC), The Academy for Dog Trainers
Does your dog ever growl when you walk by their food dish? Maybe they get possessive of treats, carrying them far away and giving you side-eye when you start to approach — or snarling at your other pets or children if they get too close.
As almost every dog owner is aware, the nose of a dog is an amazing thing. Just as they can pick up sounds we can’t hear, their sense of smell and ability to pick up scents is well beyond ours. In fact, dogs have 40 times the number of olfactory receptors as humans.
All Sniffspot articles are reviewed by certified trainers for quality, please see bottom of article for details *
* All Sniffspot articles are reviewed by certified trainers for quality, please see bottom of article for details *
Ah, poop. We humans think it’s disgusting… but many of our dogs seem to love the stuff. If you’re wondering why your canine companion tries to eat feces (either his own or that of other animals) you’re not alone!
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* All Sniffspot articles are reviewed by certified trainers for quality, please see bottom of article for details *
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* All Sniffspot articles are reviewed by certified trainers for quality, please see bottom of article for details *
Many dog breeds have gotten a bad reputation over the years for being dangerous. Rottweilers are among them — as a large working breed, they’re often thought of as aggressive.
Your dog is reactive. They’ll see another dog, person, or other stimulus in the environment (like a car or bike) while out on a walk and suddenly go crazy at the end of their leash. The barking, lunging, and growling feels embarrassing for you — and it’s clear that your pup isn’t having a great time either.
* All Sniffspot articles are reviewed by certified trainers for quality, please see bottom of article for details *
Do you have a reactive dog or suspect you may have one? You’re not alone!
Does your dog ever growl when you walk by their food dish? Maybe they get possessive of treats, carrying them far away and giving you side-eye when you start to approach — or snarling at your other pets or children if they get too close.
From 2009 to 2020, there was a 40 percent increase in the development of public dog parks. Designated spots for canine exercise have become commonplace in every major city in North America — many pet owners won’t even consider renting an apartment that doesn’t have its own fenced-in pet area for their canine companions.
Thousand Oaks, California has been a safe haven for Sniffspot host, Jen, since childhood. Having grown up in busy Santa Barbara, Jen, an introvert from an early age, would seek out solitude and serenity away from tourists attractions and droves of people visiting from elsewhere. “My grandparents own 60 acres about a 30 minute drive from here, and I grew up spending every summer and every holiday visiting them on the ranch,” Jen explained. “In Santa Barbara, we wouldn't go to the beach on the weekend because that's where everybody was, so you'd find places off the beaten path where the tourists weren't. For me, the ranch was just my happy place.”
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Welcome to the Washington Sniffspot top dog trainer list for 2023. This is a list of the top dog trainers in Washington based on votes from the Sniffspot community and the general public. Over 55,000 votes were used in compiling this list. We have only included the top trainers with sufficient votes and the trainers are ordered in terms of the number of votes received. Trainers that tied are ranked in reverse alphabetical order based on first name. All dog trainers on this list are positive reinforcement only, as defined by no force, fear, intimidation, or aversive methods used. To learn more about our dog trainer contest, feel free to view the dog trainer contest post.
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