The stages of public access training and how to know when your SDiT is ready.

hi guys we are here live today to talk all about public access training what the steps or stages of public access training are and whether or not your your dog is ready for where to wear that vest in to head out into public so Leo is almost to the point where we're getting where we're ready to start public access training not quite we'll kind of talk about that here as we go throughout the video but he's he's almost ready but not quite so I thought that this was the perfect opportunity to kind of talk to you guys about how I make that decision what our public access training looks like and how I make you know I make that decision to say hey all right Leo's ready he's how do I decide when he's ready for that for that next step in his training because rushing public access is absolutely one of the top mistakes that I see owner trainers make so rushing in general is probably the top a mistake but if we're gonna kind of narrow it down even further rushing into public access and then rushing that training really is gonna be kind of the top mistake that I see see owner trainers make when they start this this training journey with their dog now sorry I'm so late today we were supposed to start like a half an hour ago um but I have had like I'm not at home I'm at my parents and I'm using their office and we had kind of some major tech difficulties so we're gonna get into here now and I've got a lot of stuff to share so hopefully things are gonna stay quiet but like I said I'm not in my office and so we'll see hopefully we don't have too many distractions here just a second let me kinda fix this all right there we go so what I want to talk to you guys about today first is you know like I said the stages of public access training so I see a lot of people kind of jump into putting a vest on their service dog and then jumping into public X hold on just a second epic what do you have thank you lay down I've got one of my little personal dogs in here with me and he has found something plastic to chew on he's been sitting in this office for the last thirty minutes while I trying to get ready for this live so Epic's he's getting a little bit bored with me um but anyway so the first thing that I want to talk about is this that public access is not something we should just jump into it's not something want to just throw your vest throw a vest on your dog and head out to the nearest store or bring him on you know to run errands with you it's something that you want to introduce systematically now when I think about public access training I think about how it actually starts way before a dog ever wears a vest and steps into a store so I think about public access training have kind of four main main stages to it so the first one is going to be outdoor pet friendly locations now this is the one that I see owner trainers skip the most often but spending time training in outdoor locations that are pet friendly outdoor locations that are open to to any dog so places like parks places like parking lots some farmers market some places like that are pet friendly and they allow dogs to come um that's where public access training actually starts it doesn't start in the mall or in a movie theater or in a restaurant it starts here taking your dog to different parking lots for training taking your dog to the park down the road places like that where you are going to take your dog step off your property work on focus work on healing work on proofing your basic obedience that starts in these locations and I see owner trainers skip this skip this step completely and jump straight to Walmart very very very often so this is actually the first step in your public access training this first step this starts way before you put a vest on your dog this starts right away and it's it's easy to do and it's something that you should spend a lot of time a lot of time with outdoor pet friendly locations now the next stage kind of public access training in my world is indoor pet friendly locations so once my dog is being successful in these outdoor pet friendly locations he is focused his basic obedience is going really well he's walking nicely on a leash then I can move into indoor pet friendly locations now what I mean by this is an indoor location that is pet-friendly right that other dogs are allowed to be I don't necessarily mean like Petco or Pet Smart because those actually tend to be really challenging locations for service dogs and training to go there's lots of dogs there's lots of smells there's lots of food that kind of I mean places like hardware stores tend to be pet friendly outdoor stores or sporting goods stores tend to be pet friendly farm stores tend to be pet friendly so in my area this stage of training looks like farm and fleet the Gander store and we have a couple of hardware stores in our area that are pet friendly so these are locations that my service dogs don't have to wear a vest to go because dogs are allowed to be there so we start in our outdoor pet friendly locations then we move to indoor pet friendly locations and we don't move on to stage three which is going to be non pet friendly like indoor locations until my dog is successful at the top two there now we're gonna talk about what that looks like and how to make this decision here in a second I just want to go over these stages first so we start with outdoor pet friendly locations then we move to indoor pet friendly locations and then finally we move into non pet friendly locations these are places that only service dogs are allowed to go these are places like Walmart like Target like the mall like the movie theater right you know what I mean by in like non pet friendly locations these are the places that your dog has to be wearing a vest that as a service dog in training you need to check your state laws and see if state laws cover service dogs in training in your area EPIK come he really finds this little piece of plastic fascinating lay down lay down bud so non pet friendly locations are next now once my dog is doing well there I actually split that into two separate categories so then we have places that serve food or places that you cannot leave at a moment's notice so these are places like doctor's office offices restaurants errands that it is not easy for you to just leave okay so we start with outdoor pet friendly locations these are training sessions you put your dog in the car specifically to go to the park down the road for training that's where we start then we go to indoor pet friendly locations so these are places like farm and fleet for example you put your dog in the car you drive to farm and fleets specifically for a training session and then you go home then we move to non pet friendly indoor locations where again you these are locations and training sessions where you are capable of just up and leaving so you're taking your dog to Walmart for a training session not necessarily to run errands it's this fourth stage where we actually get into places that serve food places that you cannot leave at a moment's notice now this stage for this is something that I see people make a mistake with a lot they they do something like you know get permission from their doctor's office to bring their service dog in training but just because your dog has permission to be there doesn't necessarily mean he's ready to be there so that's what we're gonna talk about here here next is kind of the steps involved so we're gonna go through these one at a time now I also have a link in the description of this video where you can actually get your hands on these four stages of public access training and the checklists that I use to determine when a dog is ready to move between stages so that is in the in the description of this video for you to get your hands on the summary of what these four stages are why they're important and then the checklists which we're gonna talk about next all right say do have some video coming up here now too so first let's talk about these outdoor pet friendly locations in a little more depth okay so this was that first stage of public access training and I really do consider public access training to start here to start in outdoor pet friendly locations places like the park places like parking lots and places that any dog is allowed to go so this is where we start with a young dog this is where Leo is right now we are practicing in different we are practicing in different parking lots we are practicing in different parks we're working on his focus we're working on his engagement we're starting to proof his public or proof his basic obedience skills things like that I thought I had a video here ready of this step but I maybe don't I mean that's okay because it's the next two videos that are the most important so this step doesn't really have a ton of prerequisites you know you want to always remember that if your dog can't um you want to teach a behavior at home first in a low distraction environment and then begin proofing that just that behavior around distractions and in new locations and that's what outdoor pet friendly environments are really really good for they're good for this kind of in-between I'm getting your dog to be able to focus in new places working on proofing your basic obedience making sure that your dog can easily engage with you in new environments making sure that your dog will accept reinforcement in new environments if your dog isn't accepting treats you're not ready to be moving into pet friendly environments so that's the this is the first kind of stage here right is these outdoor pet friendly environments this looks a lot like any old training session you would do at your house but we're doing them off the property so then we start to talk about indoor pet friendly locations and this is where it starts to look a little bit more like public access training kind of in quotes there now this is where I want to talk a little bit about how do you know when your dog is ready to move into this stage because you don't you don't actually want to just jump into this stage without any preparation so with my dogs and like I said you can get your hands on this checklist in the description of this video so before I want my dogs I bring my dogs into a non pet friendly environment I want to make sure that they can check off all the criteria on this list so I have things on the checklist are simple is the dog house trained is the dog friendly with other people friendly with other dogs readily accepts reinforcement from me and new environment and easily engages in new environments um stuff like that so I want to show you this video this is um Kenzie and her very first make sure I've got the right one yep this is her very first trip into a non pet front or into get into a pet friendly into a pet friendly store excuse me so this is Kenzie and her very first trip into a pet friendly store and I want to show you this because this is what these training sessions should look like okay she already knows how to walk on a leash she already knows how to offer me her attention she already knows how to take food in this environment her and I can walk together on this very loose leash very fluently if she couldn't do these things in this parking lot we wouldn't be ready to go into this store so what I want you guys to see here is this is not totally perfect she's coming out of heel position a little bit you see there she actually hit the end of her leash she's air sniffing a lot you know she's but she's very engaged with me she's very focused with me she's accepting the treats and she said I click and she's instantly looking back at me now what I did there and we'll go back and watch this again is she kind of became distracted by those people off in the distance so I stopped moving and only when I have her attention back on me will I begin to move forward again now this is what public access training in this stage should look like if you are trying to go into her and I are going into farm and fleet if she were pulling on her leash if she was not responding to her name if she was not responding to the clicker so if I clicked and she did not look back at me if she wasn't taking food we would not go in those are not things to teach and address inside the store those are things to teach and address in stage 1 which is outdoor pet friendly environments ok so she's getting a lot of treats here see she's still earning a lot of treats she's trying to sniff the ground you know she's gonna you're gonna see her kind of pull towards people a little bit that's all fine at this stage I don't expect her to be perfect what I do expect is for her to be easily engaged with me I expect for her to be easily food motivated and I expect her to be responding to known cues if she can't do those things she is not ready for this step in training so what I see people do a lot is try to teach their dog to walk nicely on a leash in Farman fleet or teach their dog to focus in farm and fleet or teach their dog to be able to ignore distractions in farming fleet those are things that need to be addressed in pet friendly outdoor locations or places like your vet office places like your vet office are great places for training and working your dog into public access so in our Academy we actually have members regularly utilizing their vet office for public public access training well before their dog is actually ready for this step and like I said I have that checklist available for use though the checklist I made sure Kenzie could do before we walked into into this training session for the first time that is available for you in the description of this video and it's the same one that I give to my academy members it's the same one Leo and I will be going through to make sure he's ready to go into some place like farm and fleet for the first time so here you're gonna see this part of this this training session here you're gonna see Kenzie's getting a little distracted you know we're kind of seeing some people in the Isles and and it's a little bit harder for her um this whole training session you guys is five minutes we are three and a half minutes into a five-minute training session this is a very short training session but if you want to see notice here as we walk through this aisle that yes she becomes a little distracted by these people she wants to go say hi she's getting a lot of treats to be a good girl but notice how she can in fact ignore these people like I said ignoring people is not something she's learning here for the first time this is something we practiced in parking lots we practiced in so you know here you can see she became quite distracted by that other dog she really wanted to go say hi there she tried to eat something off the floor um but these skills we teach these skills at home we practice them in outdoor pet friendly locations and then we to endure pet-friendly locations so that was it this was her entire first trip to a pet-friendly location we're at four minutes were heading outside the last minute here is us walking to the car and as you can see or as you saw there were no fireworks she never barked she never tried to drag me to another to see somebody she never ignored me completely because we worked on all of that before we ever stepped foot into this store okay so she's very ready in that video she was very ready to be at this stage and and are not all of our training sessions at this stage went this smoothly one time somebody came around a corner too quickly and she barked you know one time she did she tried to pull towards some food that had been spilled on the floor here so not always did our pet friendly public you know our pet friendly training sessions go that that smoothly we did have our hiccups my point is I taught her the skills and the behaviors that she needed in order to be successful in those environments before we went to that environment okay so then we this is where leo is about to go Leo and I are about to work through that checklist I'm gonna make sure he meets all the criteria and then him and I are gonna go to farming food for the first time and then if that goes well we'll go to the hardware store for the first time and then if that goes well we'll go to Gander for the first time you know and we will spend a few weeks just going to pet friendly stores to prepare him for public access training okay so then the next step in that in our public access stages right and like I said this summary is all available for you guys at the link in the description once the dogs are being successful in pet friendly locations the next place is non pet friendly locations these are places like Walmart these are places like Target these are places where your dog has to wear that vest and in order to be allowed to go so non pet friendly locations are next and this is again something I see people rush just just jump in the deep end - they really rush into this training so what I want to say again you know is now before okay so I'm gonna show you again I'm gonna show you Kenzie's very first ever or the first half of her berry freakish that's all I had on video I'm her very first ever vested trip into Walmart and before we went into Walmart for the first time again I worked her through this checklist she's house-trained she is pet friendly she is people friendly she was capable of passing her cgc and this checklist that is in available for you in the description here also includes the assessment that we went through we actually went to a pet friendly location and we did this assessment which has things like could she heal through the parking lot can she perform behaviors with a clean with a clean loop inside the pet friendly environment before we ever stepped into these non pet friendly places that only service dogs are allowed to go all right so let me show you this was her very first let me just make sure I've got the right um the right video pulled up yep okay so this is gonna be her first vested trip we went to Walmart this was her very first ever vested trip to no no no back up ah sorry hold on I'm having trouble getting the button there it is alright so notice here I let her have some time to get you know see where she is in in the parking lot and I want to make sure that I do in fact have her attention before I move towards the store so we're doing a little bit of what we would call engagement exercises let me turn that volume down a little bit more we're doing a little bit of the attention loop which you guys may have heard me talk about before these are her barometer behaviors and these are really important and this is something we are going to be covering we are going to be doing a free adolescence kind of surviving and thriving during your service dog in training at a lesson phase we're gonna be doing a free workshop all on that here in a couple of weeks and we are gonna cover barometer behaviors in depth because barometer behaviors are super important for your adolescent service dogs they're also super important for these public access trips so if I don't have those barometer behaviors those days slang behaviors which are things like her ability to respond to the marker and her ability to offer me eye contact she is not ready for a store a a non pet friendly store until she has those skills under her belt so again I'm not necessarily looking for perfection here she is still in training this is her very first ever vested trip to pop into public but again notice how responsive she is to me she's responding to the clicker she's taking her treats she's offering me her attention she's staying in heel position a good 80 to 90 percent of the time and when she does step out of heel position she goes right back into heel position if she weren't capable of passing a CGC and doing these things then she would not be ready for public access training and that is just kind of the hard truth here that I want you guys understand is that if your dog can't pass a CGC test or you are not under the guidance of a professional service dog trainer your service dog should not be wearing a vest and going into these public environments he should be only training in pet friendly stores until he's capable of passing that sheet set that CGC and of course the checklist that I have available for you in the description of this video it does have CGC on there but that's only one of the things that I look for when I'm determining if a dog is ready for bested trips into public it's not the only thing so you see here you guys as we're walking through these aisles and we're walking through these you know we're passing people she's ignoring the merchandise she's ignoring the people she's healing nicely because we worked all of that out in pet friendly environments before I ever put a vest on her and walked into Walmart for the first time and then this is about yeah so right there as me we're about to the end because this is where somebody my phone rang and my helper answered and that's all of the video I have of her very first ever trip to public a vested trip to public but again this whole training session we went into Walmart for about five minutes and then we left Walmart and we went home and her very first trip to Walmart was only about five minutes long and then slowly over time we extended those trips we decreased the rate of reinforcement so how many tweets per minute she was getting we decreased all of that you know we we cleaned things up you know she's still very much in training in the video you just saw because it's her very first ever vested trip to public and how I determine when they're ready for that for that that vested trip is because they already have the skills that make it possible to do that training okay Walmart is not the place to teach your dog to ignore other dogs or to teach your dog to ignore other people or to teach your dog to walk nicely on a leash okay you have to start all of that much sooner public access training starts here in outdoor pet friendly locations it starts at in a parking lot it starts at the park down the road it starts by going to your vet office and practicing healing and practicing your basic obedience then we move to endure but pet friendly locations places like Farm and fleet places like hardware stores places that dogs are simply allowed to go and it is not until your dog is being successful in those locations is your dog ready for non pet friendly locations places like the mall places like Walmart places like Target these are that's that's what we think about with public access training like I said but public access training starts well before you ever put that vest on your dog and you bring them into public so there are things to think about as you begin public access training or of course gonna be your state laws so I'm federal laws you know the a DA talks about fully trained service dogs it does not talk about service dogs in training that's something you have to look at your own state laws for some state laws I'll you know allow service dogs in training to go into public other other states don't and then you have to train in just those pet friendly locations do you want to look at your laws whether or not your dog is ready to move between the stages that's what I think like I said I have this checklist available for you in the description I'm so actually what I out sometimes I forget I can do is let me share my screen with you here for a second and so this is what you guys can get your hands on at the link in the description the public access training readiness ebook this is something that we do have in our Academy for our Academy members this is something that I provide for them and these are this is something like I said I work through man and move myself up there I do work through these same checklist with my own dogs with Leo so here we have the you know public access stages outdoor pet friendly locations indoor pet friendly locations non pet friendly locations all of those things and then these are the checklists so the pet friendly readiness assessment and the public access training readiness assessment these are in the you can get your hands on this by clicking the link in the description of this video so we do have a couple of minutes here I see we've had some questions if anybody else has any questions about what we talked about today go ahead and throw them into the comments here and I have just about five minutes before this office is going to be taken over so we have a couple questions um we have you mentioned at these indoor pet friendly locations that your dogs don't have to wear a vest but do you choose to have your dog vested so that they can get used to it in public so this is a good question so should your dog be wearing a vest when you're kind of at that like if you're going to farm in fleet where your dog is allowed to be um should he be wearing a vest this is kind of a loaded question um I it's not necessary so you don't have to and actually I think somebody did ask here it was a question a question here service dogs are not required to wear a vest or any form of ID so that's something that you want to look at the state laws in your area I think that it is good etiquette I think that you will get less issues with public access with um oh I can't think of the word I'm looking for oh just access issues in general you'll have less access issues in general if your dog is wearing a vest so all of my students and all of the fully trained service dogs I wear they do wear vests when they're in public all the time in a pet friendly location though they're you know all dog are allowed to be so in the video that I just showed you at farm in fleet Kenzie was not wearing a vest before you have a vest on your dog you want to make sure that he is in fact comfortable in those pet friendly environments because if he's not happy and comfortable in those pet friendly environments you can kind of poison your vest your dog can when you put the vest on if your dog associates that with with scary experiences in public then he can actually become you know have negative associations with his vest so I actually I personally don't put a vest on a dog in those pet friendly locations very often because I want the vest to be a cue that helps my dog know that we're working that you need to stay in heel position all of that stuff and so just as with any other training we teach the behavior first and then put it on cue so I like to only put the vest on my dog's not in the very beginning of going to these pet friendly stores they always wear a vest if they are in stores that are only open to service dogs but we don't always wear vests if we go to farm and fleet for like for training like Kenzie's very first trip to farm and flea she was not vested Leo's very first trip to farm and fleet he won't be vested but he will always be vested when we go to Walmart or Target or the movies or anything like that um okay and then we've got some comments that it's just nice to see what these training sessions should look like um some lie asks when Kenzie had her first outing oh I can do this we can put these on the screen when Kenzie had her first outing so it was that first video we watched of her going to farm and fleet was that the only place you brought her that day or did you do a few different stores in the same day no we just went to that one place public access along with being introduced systematically like we talked about today starting with outdoor pet friendly locations and indoor pet friendly located all of that stuff um it should also be introduced slowly so that five minutes at Farm and fleet that wore her out she slept for the rest of the day because it took so much effort for her to focus during that five minute training session um and then as she got more and more experienced in public it became less exhausting our trips were be able were able to become longer you know until she was capable of going multiple places in a row but absolutely like in the beginning of her her public-access training in pet friendly locations and then again in non pet friendly locations we're gonna keep those training sessions very very short five to ten minutes at most and it will be that only outing and again there's something we talked about last week you guys we were talking about you know working with adolescent dogs in public access is that when you signed up to owner train you this is what you signed up for for putting your dog in the car and driving all the way to farm and fleet for a five minute training session and then driving all the way home that is what service dog training looks like ok it looks like you we had to dot he we had to drive thirty minutes to that farm and fleet so we put Kenzie in the car we drove thirty minutes to farm in fleet we were in the store for five minutes and then we went home okay that's what service dog training looks like and then as they become more successful as they're able to check off all the things on the checklist we will slowly lengthen the amount of time we're in public and all of that stuff okay and then so then here's a question what do you do when kids are the biggest distraction and shiny things I try to work with him around grandkids he does fine overly friendly with the kids and scared of shiny things or reactions okay so again you know that's something that we need to address first not like that's not something we're going to address in farm and fleet for the first time we're going to address that we know working around kids in general that's one of those things you want to introduce at that very first stage of public-access training that very first stage of outdoor pet friendly locations that's where we introduce distractions like this now how to work through distractions like this is a tie like that is a topic for a different live and so we can talk about some of that here and we'll also be talking about some of that in our upcoming adolescent service dog training free workshop that we got coming up here in a couple of weeks so if you when you follow the link to get the the checklist we talked about today if you fill out that form you'll get the checklist and you'll also get all the updates on the on that workshop so that you'll know you'll get all the as we've we finalized them and everything like that okay so yeah so working around kids is kind of a topic for a separate live but if your if your dog is easily distracted by kids and is not you know if he's easily distracted by kids and he's pulling towards them or something like that then he's not ready to wear a vest and go out into public he's only ready to be working in pet friendly locations until after you solve that training problem um okay somebody said Kenzie's tail can it wag any faster she's so excited and happy yeah Kennedy's very excited and happy and what I want you guys to you know and I can pull that video up again here really quick that isn't actually a really important not that one this one is a really important takeaway as well is that look at her body language so in these videos um you can see her tail is wagging her ears are forward this dog is showing very happy and relaxed body language and public access we absolutely one of our goals is to create a dog who is not only well-behaved and easily focused and responds to all their cues and everything like that but is confident and happy so I see a lot of videos from well-meaning owner trainers who just don't know what they're looking at yet um who you know just like I didn't know when I first started um of dogs who are very nervous to be in public you are looking for not this exact body language because every dog's body language is a little bit different um so not all dogs you know some dogs have a curly tail some dogs have you know pointy ears things like that but if you notice Kenzie's body language here is very happy and very confident so she's she's got her ears nice and and happy her tail is nice and happy her whole body wags she is not nervous about being in this environment and if she were nervous about being in this environment that's something that we would want to work through again before she ever wears that vest and goes into non pet friendly locations so along with obedience and focus and all of those things we need to address confidence and that kind of mental state that goes along with being a service dog that needs to be address in these locations as well and so if she were nervous here you know we would hand if she had been fearful which every now and then you know I do have service dogs who get who become nervous of things like this automatic door or they we get inside and they go a little bit like oh I'm a little bit unsure here you know that's a topic for a separate live on how to work through some of those nerves and build confidence actually we have a whole on free 90-minute web class on building confidence in service dogs I will put the link in the description of this video as well when we get off here the link to that but that what that 90-minute web class will talk to all about confidence building and confidence boosting and stuff like that but confidence building again is one of those things we address in this stage of public access training we want to address confidence in this stage in these pet friendly environments before she ever puts on a vest and goes to Walmart by the time she puts on a vest and goes to Walmart her obedience should be pretty well ironed out her confidence should be pretty well ironed out like I said you know I don't expect her to be perfect perfect she's gonna need to spend you know six to twelve months on public access training but we need to have a lot of those kinks ironed out before she puts on a vest and she goes into these these non pet friendly locations we need to work at this level before we get to that okay and then we've got somebody here who says Adriana says my service dog hates getting his vest on so again that's something that you want to then address that's something we want to teach before we're bringing our dogs into public and a lot of dogs don't actually enjoy putting their vest on that's something again that we teach in the Academy that's something that I teach Leo you know I teach all my service dogs to enjoy enjoy putting their vest on and to do that easily for me and that's just again a topic for another video excuse me there is teaching our dogs to put their vests on but again all of that stuff all of that stuff confidence obedience distractions wearing the vest all of that stuff needs to be ironed out before we ever put the vest on and move into public training or into non pet friendly public environments that kind of only service dogs are allowed to all right well I think that that's it for today I think I covered everything that I wanted to cover we will be live again next week so we're gonna keep doing these lives I'm gonna be putting out some more videos so come I know you guys have questions and we'll get to those in other videos and things like that but this one again this was all about kind of what the stages of public access are and how to know when your dog is ready to move between them so in the link of the link at the link in the description of this video you can get the checklist you can find the web class on confidence-building and all of that stuff we'll put those links in the description of this video for you so if you guys have any other questions at all of course ask them inside our free service dog training group train your service dog with confidence that's gonna be the best place to get your questions answered and then I will see you next week when we do our next next live and then stay tuned because very shortly we're gonna have details on that on adolescents kind of surviving and thriving during your dog's adolescence face we're gonna do a whole free workshop on that so I have taught some webinars on the topic in the past and this time around we're gonna do a whole two-week free workshop up on that we're gonna really kind of fill it out I know a lot of people struggle with adolescents and you are not alone you know you guys as you guys know if you're following this page or you know instead of our free Facebook group there that Leo also has days you know he'll be absolutely an angel one day and then the next day it's kind of like oh there's that adolescent lab coming back out that kind of dr. Jekyll mr. mister Hyde thing and really mostly leo is a fantastic attend test a fantastic dog but he is still a teenager so anyway stay tuned for details on all of that stuff and I will see you guys later have a great day

Channel: My Service Dog and Me

Views: 51,040

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Id: ff2KdBn2iNc

Length: 37min 19sec (2239 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 01 2020