Training your own service dog

What the law requires

That the dog is individually trained to do work or perform tasks for the benefit of a person with a disability. That is the whole requirement. There is no required number of hours, no required curriculum, no required trainer and no required assessment, and the ADA explicitly contemplates handlers training their own dogs.

The absence of a standard is frequently read as the absence of a bar. It is not. A dog that cannot behave in public will be lawfully removed from every public place its handler takes it, and the handler will have the legal right to be there and no practical ability to use it.

The real standard, which is behaviour

No law sets a public access standard, but assistance dog organisations converge on roughly the same list, and it is what a business is actually reacting to:

• No soliciting attention, food or contact from anyone, ever.
• No barking, whining or vocalising except as a trained alert.
• Reliably housebroken, with no accidents indoors under any circumstances.
• Settles quietly for extended periods under a table or chair without fidgeting.
• Loose-lead walking through crowds, past food, past other dogs.
• Recovers from a startle within seconds and without reacting.
• No aggression or reactivity of any kind, toward people or other animals.

How long it takes

Programme-trained dogs typically take eighteen months to two years. Owner-trained dogs usually take longer, because the handler is learning at the same time as the dog. Anyone promising a trained psychiatric service dog in a few weeks is describing something else.

The order that works is foundation obedience first, then public access work until behaviour is genuinely reliable, and only then task training. Teaching the task first is the common mistake: a dog with a brilliant deep pressure response and no settle is not usable anywhere.

When the dog is not a candidate