NePoPo 개 훈련에서의 도우미견(Service Dogs)

your medical requirements and how you found a vacuum and there begins your journey so over to you thank you yeah I've always passed out I was diagnosed at 19 with something called dysautonomia and what that means is it's a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system which is the one that controls everything that you don't have to think about breathing you know standing up so with that I've tried all different sorts of meds no meds are able to get rid of it it's something that I'm going to have for life and I looked into dysautonomic service dogs or cardiac alert dogs oh gosh whenever I was in my very late teens when I was first diagnosed and this was 20 years ago and there was nothing out there I could not find anything the few service dog organizations that were out at the time because remember 20 years ago what was the state of the internet at and no one could help me I was told by the one organization that got back to me that it is a $500 deposit, application fee and then they'll tell me if they can help me and I said no I'm not paying that because again 20 some years ago fast forward a few years I find a dog in a park I went there our son was not even two at the time and so we go to one of these playground parks for him to play at and there's a dog wandering so my sister and I were there we caught the dog we brought her home it was a Siberian Husky I never recommend Siberian Huskies as service dogs but she was my first service dog I trained her up with books and VHS tapes because again it was a while ago and her behavior got amazing and I noticed she was alerting to me before I would have an episode and she would block in front of me and if I listened to her and if whenever she blocked if I sat down or if I laid down I wouldn't have that episode so that made me very very happy and I reached out to other trainers and asked them I said hey I've got this dog this is what we're doing this is what she's doing this is where she's at what do I do from here and they weren't able to help me I went to one service dog person and she told me to train the dog to put his head in my lap well her head in my lap and to teach her to come to one side of me and then walk around and go to the other side of me and that's all she told me and I didn't know why I was supposed to do those things, how that was going to help anything so I you know I kind of worked them a bit but having a dog out in public because she went with us everywhere in the United States it is perfectly legal to own or train your own service dog and brought her everywhere with me people started coming up and asking me questions

you know oh tell me about your dog oh I'm having this problem with my dog so you know we talk I'd help them out as much as possible and then I joined, we moved to Florida and I joined one of the AKC groups, there was a local AKC breed group and they did training so that's why I joined is because they did training and pretty quickly not eventually within two or three months I was co-teaching the classes or running them you know if the instructor wasn't out because and when people started referring other people to me that's how I got started with it but it all started because of my service dog because of that Husky that I had found out running free at the park they must be you know because we've heard, I don't, see I've been associated with last three-four years and that's a very limited duration that I've had been exposure to but I understand service dogs don't mean the same as therapy dogs because I know what is therapy dog so that brings us to a question I also came across something called a facility dog I mean would you like to elaborate the differences between them service dog, facility dog and a therapy dog definitely, we'll start with a pet dog right a pet dog is anyone can have a pet dog that's what most people have, a therapy dog loves people and is very people focused so a therapy dog you bring to places where people don't have their dogs with them so this could be schools this could be hospitals, nursing homes whatever but you bring your dog and people get to you know love on your dog and pet them and visit with them we used to do therapy dog visitations with the Siberian Husky and we did them as a group so we would schedule up a time with the nursing home everyone would come downstairs who wanted to greet up with the dogs we'd go, we might perform some tricks or you know do something fun and then you walk the dog around and the people pet the dog so the dog has to have...has to be calm can't be jumping up on people you know can't see a lot of times at the bottom of the walkers that the old people use they have the tennis balls so you know you can't have a dog who's trying to pull the tennis balls off of the walker but you need a dog who loves people and who is calm and good, no scratching you know no biting no barking but that's a therapy dog now they're only welcome where they're invited so you can't bring your therapy dog to the grocery store you know they only go where they're invited, a facility dog is a dog that the facility would have on staff on you know right there and a lot of times they

double as a therapy dog but it gives them for example nursing homes you know which is where old people go you know a lot of times it'll give them that that dog to look forward to, some schools will have you know have the dog on hand to help out everybody not one specific person but that's the big thing with the facility and the therapy dogs is they help out a bunch of people not just one, a service dog in the US the definition is task trained to mitigate the owner's disability and I get a lot of people who tell me you know I want a service dog because I want to take my dog with me everywhere and that's not what a service dog is a service dog first my first question is do you have a disability and a lot of times the answer is no I don't have a disability well then you can't have a service dog you know service dog you must have a disability that alters you know one of more of your life functions and then the service dog has to be task trained to mitigate that which means to help that out so it's better so, okay so what is an example of a service dog? we are going to focus this conversation on service dogs so example that's my niche so service dogs examples a lot of people think when they think service dog they think a leader dog for somebody who's blind so they'll see us out they might see me drive up park get out of the car get my dog out of the car with me geared up as a service dog and say oh are you blind yes he barks once whenever I turn left and twice whenever I should turn right no I'm not blind or someone who can't hear you know they'll have the signal dogs you know and they can come up and help you out if you can't hear we do a lot of mobility dogs which is for people who are unsteady on their feet or need some retrieves because maybe they're in a wheelchair we do medical alert response and recovery dogs and that's what helps out with the dysautonomia that would be like a diabetic alert dog who can detect the owner's blood sugar levels and help them know when they need to take action or for example if you're celiac or if you can't have a certain type of food if you're allergic to shellfish you can't have gluten, you can't eat dairy they can detect that for you if it's in that food so you know not to eat that food but this food is safe so we do a lot of those, there's anxiety dogs, there's PTSD and psychiatric service dogs we'll train up those as well, the only ones I really don't do are the leader dogs for the blind and why is that I think her camera stuck hi are you back online, yes, yeah so I was asking you a question why don't you train dogs for the blind

there is a southeastern guide dogs has a place in Florida here which they do it and that's what they concentrate on and since that's not my wheelhouse I can see, I don't know people who are in that community I don't you know I just let that go for them but I have seen I don't know if you guys have seen the pick of the litter is a series that they have up on I think it's the Disney plus channel and so we've watched that and I've watched out and thought you know I could train that up but you know I'm busy enough with what I'm doing so now for people who are logged in we are talking of service dogs what breeds do you recommend that are suitable for the service dog industry this is a fantastic question like I said my first one was a Siberian Husky and it's something that I don't recommend for people I've also had Malinois as service dogs and I don't recommend them for most people because yeah you know how Malinois are but you know it can work for us because this is what I do my top recommendation is always Golden Retrievers i think Golden Retrievers make the best service dogs no matter what it is that you're looking for what do most organizations you know put out there as service dogs what do they use as service dogs is Golden Retrievers and Labrador Retrievers so my top recommendation is always Goldens I like them they're my favorite breed across the board anyway which makes it a lot easier but they're calm, they can work, they do have energy whenever you need them to have that energy to go but I absolutely adore Golden Retrievers next up would be yellow Labs or black Labs and those are the only two, I don't like chocolate Labs as service dogs yes I have trained a few of them but chocolate Labs are the crazy ones yellow Labs are calm, black Labs have a lot more energy so if you're a very active person you might want to look at getting a black Lab and then stay clear of chocolate and stay clear of all the weird colors that they're coming out with like silver and phantom colored ones and everything else just stick yellow preferably or black and then standard Poodles because we do have people who have allergies and so they don't want the dog who will affect them because they're with the dog pretty much 24*7 so for them I tell them just go with a Poodle and they'll tell me well what about a Doodle the problem is a lot of Doodle breeders you know and Doodle is what, you can do golden Doodles, Irish Setter Doodles, Malinois Doodles like you can Doodle anything which means mix it with a Poodle they don't do the health testing

you know they haven't been around long enough and a lot of times they'll breed a Poodle and if you think of how a Poodle looks you know kind of like how a Doberman looks slim and pretty and you breed that with you know Mastiff you know there's going to be stuff going on with the joints there and service dogs shouldn't have service dogs of their own you know they need to be fit, they need to be healthy, they need to be able to do their job so my top three are Golden, yellow Labs and Poodles see what's interesting is this is probably the first time I've been told that there can be a color preference in Labs I always assume that the colors have nothing to do with it it's just a cosmetic color but you seem to have a very very strong opinions on -Black labs and yeah so let's talk about that -okay yeah definitely we've worked with a number of them in like I said yellow or just they're always my favorite they're so calm and they can still have energy right it's not that they're rugs you know we don't want rugged dogs but they have a nice on and off switch they're friendly, they're great, black Labs have a lot more energy to them you know a lot more like they need something to do all the time and then like I said chocolate Labs are just crazy we've seen a few silver Labs they're they're pretty crazy too and it's harder to train them it's harder to get that focus it's harder to teach than that off switch which means right now I have three dogs in here with me I have a Golden at my feet, a Golden right there and I don't know where the Doberman went to but you know I like that when I sit down they know it's time to lie down and a lot of times with those high strung dogs it doesn't happen ah interesting so we spoke of breeds which are suitable for a service dog now how long does it take you to offer a finished service dog what is the duration that we're talking about for fully training up a service dog it's gonna take at least a year if not two and that's depending on when you start so for our programs what we do is we work with owner trainers because there's a big gap missing there you called it a vacuum earlier it's a perfect term for it they don't have help and support a lot of times these owner trainers and like I said my first dog I was an owner trainer you know I didn't know what I was doing or what I needed and a lot of want to start them off as young as possible we start training as young as eight weeks old we've started some dogs at six weeks old because that's whenever the owner brought them home but eight weeks is when they're supposed to be leaving the family and

go into the new home so we start them as young as eight weeks old but it's a fun puppy stuff from eight weeks which is two months to about six months old so those four months your most important job is potty training and socialization so we and socialization isn't everyone gets to pet your dog and take your dog to dog park socialization is environmental exposure so those first four months it's socialization environmental exposure, it's potty training, it's building a bond, it's teaching that puppy teaching that dog how to learn through life at about six months old we can start the real training okay and if they know stuff ahead of time that's great but i don't take them in to me for board and train until they're about six months old that's my that's my preference six months we take them in for a five week board and train because it's hard now that they bonded with the dog for four months to give them to me for five weeks but it helps them out tremendously, it helps those dogs out, it helps that team to push forward to do better, whenever they come home sometimes they're ready then sometimes at that point the owner has a task or two that the dog knows up well the dog's doing really great out in public but they're still puppies, they're still seven and a half, eight month old puppies and for them it's you know short outings you know you don't want to overwhelm them they can go through fear periods but you know if you have to go to the store and buy a gallon of milk and a loaf of bread yeah you could take your dog if you're gonna go sit at starbucks and you know meet up with a friend for an hour go ahead if you want to try to take your dog but you always have to be ready to leave in a moment's notice because they're still cooking that dog isn't fully formed yet and he's still a puppy and you don't want to burn him out and that means you don't want to do more than what he's ready for so he hates the job you know so you want to keep it short and sweet about a year old they mentally mature a little bit more and then by and you keep working it and you keep working and you keep working and by two you think it's so nice to have a trained service dog and whenever the dog's a little bit older and you get that puppy to start all over again and you think oh my goodness I love my trained service dog so much it's so much easier to go out with him than it is to go out with these puppies but it's a slow process, a mobility if they want to do any mobility, any weight bearing stuff we want the vet clearance first so we'll send them to their vet we'll have the vet do shoulder hip

elbow pictures you know look at the whole skeleton look down the back, check everything out, check all the joints and if the dog gets vet clearance then you're good to go but you have to wait for those growth plates to close so for somebody it's about a year sometimes it's about two so how do you...how is there a change in socialization between a service dog versus let's say a police dog or a pet dog that I have, is there something different that you do because I've seen videos of you taking your dogs to Disney world I mean like so we did we were just at universal studios this past Monday so earlier this week and we had brought Fluffy from the Harry Potter that we named him Fluffy because of the three-headed dog that guards the sorcerer's stone, we brought him in a stroller and we did that for a number of reasons one is because we don't have to worry about people touching him yay or making all the comments all the time about look what a cute little puppy he gets to sit up and enjoy so he's not just looking at ankles and feet he is looking you know at more people, he is riding in comfort, we have a frozen water bottle where we have a few of them and we'll sometimes put those in so he can lay on a frozen bottle of water while you know we're out in Florida, he gets to just observe and have fun and not tire himself out or hurt those joints by walking through the park so again if we wanted to if we get there and he is not having a good time we can leave, we live about an hour away it's not that far you know if he's not having a good time if something is wrong, if something happens we can always pack up and go it's not a problem but for service dogs we want to socialize them as much as possible during those first four months and they hit especially when you first take them home at eight weeks now they're not fully vaccinated until they're about 16 weeks old or so so you have some time where the dog isn't fully vaccinated and we're taking the dog out well the cart also, the stroller will help protect so say there's a dog so it protects him that way as well and there's more issues stemming from lack of socialization but parvo is something that's real and it does happen here in Florida so we want to make sure that the dog is as safe as possible whenever we take them out, now sometimes we take them out on their four feet and that's fine he's still young enough to fit in the stroller so that's why we did that as many places as possible so if we go to the store to just you know we're going to go voting most likely today you know it's election

time we're going to try to get early voting in today I'll bring one of the service dogs in training with me and they'll have to sit there in the booth while I fill in the little bubbles but we like to expose them to that, if we're going to go Christmas is coming if we're going to drive around and look at Christmas lights we're going to do that, we have the car washes you know where you drive through with your car and it goes and it cleans your car off when we do those I always try to grab a dog because it's something different and unique that the dog can experience and be exposed to more we can do the better, when my son was in elementary school we walked down to pick him up every day, I always brought one of the dogs with me because they needed to see all those kids playing the more you can do the better so with service dogs it's critical, with pet dogs sometimes people can get lazy, pet dogs they can't go to the places that they're not welcome at which I guess makes sense but you know for example in Florida a service dog in training has the same accessibility as a fully trained service dog so me taking a seven week old puppy to universal which yes I have done and they were in strollers the whole time is perfectly legal because state of Florida says I can do that and we also reached out to universal and yeah they were like that's perfect do that, we love it whenever people do that so we can use universal as our training grounds which where else am I going to find all that chaos but a pet owner cannot do that but they can take the dog to a home improvement stores you know that sell lumber and paint and all that, we do have a number of stores that are pet friendly, there's a number of outside areas that are pet friendly so you can take the pet dog into those pet friendly places even if it's just go to the park and watch the kids play that's huge for a lot of them okay so let's talk of pet parents and then how they can kind of incorporate methods of service dog training that you probably do you know so can you kind of pick some task training and explain to us how would you do it and something hopefully for people who are watching in to be able to evaluate yes definitely task training we like to start with foundation skills and foundation skills for us include things like touch, Gypsy, hey Gypsy wake up, come here I just woke her up she's wandering around what is going on, come on up Gypsy Lucy come on, come on or Candy I don't care one of you come up, so here my Doberman so touch is no we're not going to do it today we'll talk about paws up

paws up is one that's the fun of going live with your dogs who are snoozing because -they know that it's not time to work right now - they will embarrass you, they will embarrass you touch is basically they touch their nose to your hand right it's very easy, you don't bop them on the nose they do that and then you can use that to guide so if I'm training for example I'm training a block which is the dog is at my side and I want him to stand in front of me with his head at one side and his tail at the other I can use that touch command to get the dog to block okay I can also use this and why I like this for every dog is say my dog is playing outside and hurts himself and I have to look at the wound or I have to you know bandage up his leg or I have to trim a nail, his nails you know I have to do something I can use that touch your nose here so I can have access to this side of your body now touch your nose here so I can have access to the other side of your body, you know in Florida it gets very hot we put booties on the dogs you know if they're going to go, even if you have a pet dog and you want to go hiking you can still get booties for your dogs so you need to be able to put them on so that touch works out really nicely and it's easy, it's very easy to teach them, like look at me the fetch and retrieve who wouldn't want a dog who can pick up things and bring them to you, I do want to call it my oops command and what happens anytime I drop something I say oops I can't say it too loud because it's her signal that pick it up and bring it to me so much so that my mom was visiting me a couple years ago and she dropped her glasses onto the ground and her glasses fell and what does she and Gypsy came over picked up the glasses and brought them to me because that's what she does you know oops is pick up and bring to me nose touch is very versatile, yes nose definitely, it's really it's a great beginner you can use it for the getting up onto your lap and again that comes in handy they pick up something I can't really sometimes always bend over to pick it up so I can have them put the paws up on my leg and then hand it to me that way and you could do that you could do a lot of positioning of your dog by touch you can do if you're teaching heel and side and center you can do that with touch as well, it's a great first step I can't hear you -I can't hear, yes I can -can you hear me now? you can hear me now okay I was saying your gold buddies Patrick and Michael Miller are saying hello to you hi guys okay so I know we're just jumping a little ahead but you know they're saying there's a question

that I think we must address it immediately so because today's episode is titled as NePoPo in service dogs now there are certain misnomers Mia Misa says I heard there's no extra food for training in NePoPo so how is it working, is it a e-collar effect, just take this question and we'll move back right, I think that's a great question and so no extra food whenever I train puppies I do sometimes use treats because they're puppies and they're growing and I want it to be fun for them so those first four months I will use treats, I'll sometimes give my treats, my dog's treats for everyone sitting nicely or whatever I like giving treats everyone does and you know Bart and Michael aren't gonna have a problem with that I don't think at least in my version of NePoPo I don't have a problem, the problem comes whenever you're not using the existential food so there's no extra food but they still have that food that they're going to eat today anyway that food that they need to live, existential right what I need to survive on so for that I have that whole bowl and for sometimes it's a big bowl I have that whole bowl of training, that whole bowl of kibbles that I can use in training for that whole day so that makes it great for service dogs and one of the nice things with NePoPo is you do have that framework if you want your dog flashy if you want your dog calm here's what you do for flashy, here's what you do for calm where's your dog at and where do you want him to be and that is a big thing and yes I do use e-collars on my service dogs, I love it because for me service dogs have to be the best trained dogs out there and I know everyone's going to say no my type of dog has to be the best trained dog out there but the service dogs work pretty much 24x7 which is, it's a misnomer they don't work that much but a lot of times they're on a lot during the day and they go everywhere, they go to doctor's offices they're on airplanes you know they come with me on vacation, every time I go someplace I have a dog with me so they have to be good, they have to be super awesome and it has to be a lifestyle for them so for that you know we really want training to be a lifestyle as well instead of just this is what you do on the field here, this is what you do whenever you're in the police car and you catch a bad guy and this is what you can do at home it's this is what you have to do all the time a lot of people ask me well yeah but they know when they're off duty right because you take the vest off of them, we put the vest on more

for the public than for us, at home for example if I'm diabetic and my sugar's low my dog has to alert I can't call my dog over, put the vest on the dog and say smell me how am I doing you have to have that dog have that initiative to come over even if I'm doing a webinar even if I am you know talking to friends, I'm teaching a class dog has to have that initiative and be trained for that initiative to come over tap me and say hey you need to go do this I'm not diabetic but it's a great example to use you know in a vest, out of a vest while they're playing in the yard with their friends you know they have to be able to switch that at a moment's notice okay so we've covered this but I just want to go back to this question again because because there are people asking you know disability specific service dogs and best suitable breeds, Meera wants to know I guess that's probably because she saw a Doberman in your background so what's a Doberman doing in a service dog training right this is...I'll try to make it a short story so my first Malinois was era and we had got him because we had a German shepherd and a border collie that I had trained up you know they were my dogs, they listened to me so when Rich got into training, my husband we would go and he would try to demo with them you know like you're mom do I have to listen to dad so we said he needed to get his own dog and I didn't want to do another German shepherd because I hadn't met Patrick yet and seen how awesome his German shepherds were so we talked about it and decided a Malinois so he got Arrow and that was our first Mal and after about a year of of training because it wasn't just his you know I can't help myself and I trained him some too but I thought you know he would make a fantastic service dog and he did so we had him he was doing awesome and then we got Gypsy who's my Golden and she's kind of on the shorter sorry, what was your Mali, which part of service dog was he a part of, was he he did some mobility for me and then he would also do the alerts, he was very good at alerting me for the cardiac issues before they became a big deal you know see I understand exactly what you say and I'm sure a lot of viewers also understand but how does it work, a dog that sniffs that you're about to have a cardiac arrest and he alerts you for me it is that problem with the autonomic nervous system it's the, I don't know what it is if it's a high heart rate, if it's a low blood pressure, if it's a hormone coming out if you ask me and say well what is it that he's alerting on I don't know

but with Django our new one I brought him to gold school with me when he was three months old and we did scent games and we did scent games where he found coffee you know coffee birch anise clove you know nothing that he's gonna need to alert on you know for realsie and he is my best not natural alerter because he found out early on that scent means something, for diabetics what we'll do is we do spit, we do whenever they're low sugar, under 70 is usually what we start with under 70 we get cotton swabs and we'll well dental cotton so it's not like you know ear swabs it's they're big but we'll get samples from them and if I have a under 70 sample and you have an under 70 sample we can train the dog and the dog will alert for both of us even if I've never used your sample on him because it's that chemical change and then we'll do highs and then the highs are you know the doctor tells us what the patient needs to be critical of so for us I've had a lot of natural alerters one of the things that I do is teach them early that scent means something and whenever I feel, I call it wonky, when I feel wonky I'll have them come over if they want to lick me, if they want to smell my breath, if they want to put their head by me, if they want to go on top of me I don't care just understand that this scent means something and because of that I've been able to train up multiple dogs for clients with dysautonomia as well which is I think we're the only ones out there right now who are training dogs for this condition okay so I've got two follow-up questions when a dog alerts you, is he alerting you -on a command or is it a self-generated action -eventually I wanted to get to be self-generated I want him to understand it and come over and do it, Gypsy is...we're still tweaking it she's not as I guess aggressive as I want her to be with it so if I'm not feeling great you know like she comes over she works with me with it but I want her to be a little bit more like I said assertive with it Django whenever it's time he will come over if I'm sitting down he just jumps right on top of me which you know he's hitting about 80 pounds now it's not always fun for that to happen if we're out walking, he will nose bump I like a nose bump more than a paw for an alert so he will come over and he will nose bump me which tells me I need to sit down, I need to sit down I need to get my legs up or I need to lie down before I end up on the ground anyway so I'm going to ask you a very rudimentary question and it may sound a little funny

so go with the flow now if dogs do a particular exercise in anticipation of a reward, how does a man having a heart attack and a dog indicating on the heart attack ultimately reward the dog so the nice thing to is, right, so I don't train for heart attack alert but, what, for any of this sort of alerts so we'll go back to diabetics as a great example because people understand that so if your dog is alerting you and you say okay let me check my sugar, you could check your sugar and it can come back as my sugar's normal because the dog's going to alert faster than it's going to show up at your fingertip and that's where most people do the testing so then maybe they'll wait five minutes and they'll test again and they'll say yep I am dropping, my blood sugar is dropping so a lot of times in their glucose tabs, I mean glucose tabs they'll have some of that so they'll take it and they'll they'll work on getting themselves back to normal and then they'll reward the dog you know and for a lot of the dogs we will you know give them the food, give them extra treats you know NePoPo right, NePoPo but we'll give them some extra rewards for doing it but a lot of times what happens when you train it right is that work becomes the reward and that's what we want is the work to become the reward so they're not relying on the food reward and that's a big thing whenever you're dealing with only positive reinforcement versus NePoPo or the negative, the negative reinforcement training is what is rewarding to the dog if you're sticking just positive reinforcement training that food, that reward is always that's what the reward is right ideally we hope that the behavior becomes the reward but it's not it's the food that's the reward whereas in NePoPo in NePo training the work becomes the reward and that's really what we want with the service dogs is that they love their job so much that they're not saying hey you know give me some food they're saying I go to work maybe I'll get to do it again so before you ultimately, finally qualify a dog as a service dog what is the criteria that you look at is there like a minimum passing mark some kind of a qualification round right, in the beginning since we do work with owner trainers I want to look for what I call my big red flags you know like nope this isn't going to work out how is the dog, is the dog aggressive, is the dog fearful nervous, what is it that you need if you need a dog, diabetic alert dog and you bring me a smush-faced dog who can't smell that dog I'm not gonna train it up to be a service dog you know

if you bring me an English bulldog who doesn't have a nose either, I'm not gonna train that dog up to be you know the dog can't walk without breathing I can't train him up to be a service dog I had a person years ago who wanted me to train up there I think it was a Frenchie or something with the little tiny short nose and I'm like I don't feel comfortable doing this for you, I had a woman who had a daughter who was blind and I told her I said I don't do guide dogs and she said well I want you to train up a dog for us and I said but I don't train that, well what do you train and I was telling you know pick things up and this and that, she says well she's always dropping things because she's blind can't you train her you know just train the dog for that and I said no that that's not gonna happen you know so we want to make sure that the dog is right for what is needed now we've done smaller mobility dogs because what they needed more was that pick up and retrieve and bring it to me so mobility like I can't walk over there and get my bag of meds that I left over there and my phone that I left over there but my dog can go and get that and they don't need to be you know a great Dane to be able to do mobility so that's what we have Candy for is after the first dog, the first Malinois died I got the Doberman because I needed something with a little more height because Gypsy wasn't tall so we got the Doberman we brought her over from Serbia and put the training on her you know she was already grown so what age we got her I think she was two and a half so we got her over here and we started her training right away she's been with me all over, we've traveled with her, we've done workshop stuff with her she goes everywhere but we tag team between the service dogs that I have so Doberman's one I don't recommend for service dogs because, yay -because they do have a lot of health issues -Victoria, can you hear me okay so Victoria is gonna log back in yeah we are back yeah so Dobermans I don't recommend because they have a lot of health issues she's fully clear, we found a baby daddy for her, he was fully clear and then she lost the litter so we'll try again in six months let's jump right into the topic now, incorporation of the NePoPo method in service dog training shoot right I've trained service dogs for years for years and NePoPo is the best framework not only for training pet dogs and sport dogs but also for those service dogs if I have a dog for example I had Thete and I had him with me at the NePoPo gold premium school and for the silver

before and the gold after so I was over there for two months and Michael knew that we were training him up for a woman who has mobility issues so because of that we did not use click release with him, we did not use a lot of PoPo training a lot of positive reinforcement training because it will create that happy, flashy, excited dog instead we use more NePo with the verbal marker for his owner so the nice thing is you get to look at the dog you get to look at your goal and where the dog is and you get to play it up every now and then so for example he would get communistic rewards he would get you know you did good here's one kibble yeah well he didn't get kibble he was on raw but it was like here you get you know one raw nugget and then here you get another raw nugget and he was very happy for that, he didn't need to have that extra little flash and pizzazz of you know look at what I did, I'm so awesome he got the you know this is boring but it works so I can last off the whole day so when you say you don't use NePoPo but you use NePo you want to talk a little more about that yeah yes, yeah so PoPo, NePo, NePoPo right we have a whole song with that in it but PoPo is positive reinforcement training so that's what you think of with the clicker and the food but you have to do it the right way, NePo is negative reinforcement or avoidance training and that's more tool-based right so you can use your slip lead, you can use your prong or your pinch collar, you use your e-collar but you get it where the behavior becomes the reward and then you have NePoPo which combines both the PoPo and the NePo and it takes the best from both of them because there's cons and there's pros to both of them and when you can put it into NePoPo it's the best and eventually do you want to get all the dogs to working NePoPo but you have to like I said you have to understand what your goal is and there are some dogs who are more NePo dogs because you don't want to give them that extra Po to get that extra bit of flash up for them so you already mentioned about the dogs that you prefer, the breeds that you prefer to work with, Arindam wants to know what are the things for which a Rottweiler is suitable, now Arindam she's already said the dogs that she prefers but I'm going to twist your question around now if a Rottweiler is brought to you Victoria why would you say no because a lot of times when they hit two they become terrible, we've had a lot so we do pet training too it's not just service dogs and even the greatest Rotty pup, whenever he hits two he is a lot of dog for people right and

a lot of times they have snarky issues so it's something that if you came to me and you said you know Vicki I really want this Rottweiler, look how great he is, he has this great pedigree all his family members are service dogs and therapy dogs, he is you know fantastic you just have to understand that there's something called washout which means you wash the dog out of the program, he is no longer going to be a service dog for you and you're putting all that time, money, energy and hope into a dog that might not make it as a service dog so if you said I want a Rotty, I've got this dog and the dog passed the test which means the dog doesn't try to you know kill or eat me or my other dogs, good out in public, doesn't solicit unwanted attention, doesn't solicit wanted attention and and it's great you know we might be able to do it you know like I said I've got a Doberman, I've got Malinois that I use as service dogs, it's not that it must only be a golden but that's what's going to give you the highest success rate but it's not any golden you know you have to do one with the breeder who knows what they're doing and who does it well and does it right so if you said I have a Rotty and I want him to do mobility that would probably be perfect, if you want him to do medical alert, what medical alert are we talking about because say you have a...you're diabetic everyone's going to be diabetic today right you're diabetic you're out in public and you ignore your dog and you go really bad right and you start your sugar's so low that they call the paramedics the emergency medical team comes over and now your Rottweiler is like no you're not getting close to my person, oh you can't have that, that's one of the reasons I like Goldens, Goldens are like a person I love you so you know you need to have a dog who is okay if something like that happens or you're at your home and something bad happens right you do something stupid you fall in the shower and you break your arm and you can't do anything and they have to come and take you to the hospital, the EMTs have to be able to come in no matter what and your dog can't say like hey you're coming into my house, I did not invite you into my house, my dad is injured and now we've got it game on you know we can't have that with any dog pet dog or service dog but like I said we see just a lot of Rotty where they start out really good at you know two months old three months old, four months old now so then they don't get to be that super flashy super you know super happy flashy you know able to make the decisions and do great it's gonna be more I say

you know you do with a little bit of heart and soul okay so there's another thing that I've been wanting to ask you for a very long time you're not happy with one goal you keep going back to gold school so yeah just talk to me about that and why do people A) keep repeating the gold school and you also did the gold premium so just talk to the people about it yep so it's funny because the last silver school was in August and we went up for that, Karen and I went up and we're sitting at breakfast one morning talking with one of the first time silvers and said something about this being I think this was my fourth silver school and she kind of looked at me like I was stupid she's like why have you needed to come four times and I'm like oh honey you know it's not because I'm stupid it's because you get more and more every time, it's kind of like a parfait or an onion right there's layers and the first time Bart explains it very well you know the first time you hear a song on the radio that you like you think that's a pretty catchy song but you missed most of the words, you didn't hear you know the guitar riffs in the background or the drum medleys being so awesome but the more you listen to it the more you understand it, the more you hear different aspects of it you know there's a reason you listen to the same song multiple times you watch the same movie or the same shows multiple times is because you like it and you get more out of it each and every time and that's what I do with silver so it's been four silvers, five golds and then the three week gold premium course and yeah yeah so I've spent a lot of time out there now the silver is the book learning part of it you know we don't work dogs, it is the book learning and the nice thing with that is I do get new stuff every time and it's funny, here's a story from my very first silver is I take pretty extensive notes so on Wednesday which is the third day because it started Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday Bart had said something and I thought that's a genius he never mentioned this before and I wrote it down and that night when I was in the hotel room I was looking back on my notes guess what he said it Monday and he said it Tuesday but it didn't click with me until he said it on Wednesday and I think that happens a lot with people in general is they don't hear it the first time it said and they need that to be repeated and repeated and repeated for them to get it so I do pick up new stuff every time they'll add some different things you know it'll be a little bit different every time that

we do it because it's not a movie that I know what the characters are going to say before they say it you know it's an organic living thing that does evolve and change a little bit over time why I do multiple golds well first so silvers I did on my own, I did it with Karen who's our Gainesville trainer, I did it with Rich who's my husband and then Karen and I went back and we did it with Shane and Lauren who are friends of ours so you know I've done those four, for golds I did my gold and then Karen and I went and we did a double week of gold and then she went up with Rich cause then they had another double gold so her and Rich went up for the first week and then Rich and I flew back and forth so I got to be there for the second week and then we just had a week in October in those five weeks that we've done it five different things have happened you know one time we do more this type of stuff, another time we do maybe more tracking or more man trailing or more you know come when called stuff but it's always a little bit different based on the dogs that are there and that's where it's truly that organic thing because it depends on who's there, what their goals are what they're doing, what dogs they brought and it's really nice to see the differences and because once you graduate you know we've got the invitation that we can repeat it as we want to, I have Rich and Luke here to take care of things and it's great because that means I can go up there and I can learn and then I can help impart that information on to everyone who didn't get to go now I've also been reading about your scholarships is it still on, is it a virtual scholarship? so we did, so heart and soul dog training is our training and it was dream dogs but we changed the name to heart and soul, we got the name last November but we didn't really do anything with it until July, August because we wanted something that really fit what we are now so that's heart and soul and that's who I'm putting on the service dog school in the beginning of November through heart and soul dog training but because I'm always am an we are starting with breeding, Golden retrievers for service dogs right why because how much did I tell you I love Golden retrievers in service dogs and it is really hard to find a good dog from a good breeder who does all the health testing who does you know all the temperament stuff who does all the early scent imprint, early neurological stimulation, the early socialization aspect of it, it is pretty much impossible to find somebody who does what we do

it is really a unique situation that we're able to do coming from our background of training you know like I know what I want I know what they need to have and then I can help match up, Karen and I we match up the puppies to the right people and our goal with hope is to be able to fully train up and place a service dog for people and with people but we're just starting so I know that's not gonna happen now or really you know anytime super soon because first we need to build up, we need to start so we can have the best dogs for our program but what we figured was since we were already doing the service dog school in November that one of the things that hope can do even though we cannot fully train up a service dog at this point in time we could provide a scholarship and we actually decided on two scholarships we were gonna do a hardship scholarship for somebody who just financially they can't do it and we were gonna do one for I don't know what the PC word is, minorities or people of color right because a lot of times dog training at least here in America is kind of a whitewashed industry which you know it happens so we thought to try to be inclusive because disabilities don't care, that we would be able to offer both of those scholarships in lieu of a fully trained service dog at this point because we can't do it so we had opened it up and we had put it out there and we have two amazing people who are going to be able to come for the school under those two scholarships and we're very excited for that and as things in the US get back to normal after Covid we're hoping that hope can keep doing the scholarships for people and as more people do more workshops you know maybe we can vet them and maybe we can offer a scholarship for that because there are I think I know there's at least one other person who does service dog workshops so we would like to possibly be able to send somebody to one of their workshops as well and then for the virtual aspect it's...I really wanted to and you know I don't think it's gonna happen because we're kind of cutting low on time in two weeks I'll be teaching but our thought was to open up a brand new Facebook group and just live stream everything into that group so first we would have it for as long as we would need it but then you need somebody to you know man the phone, make sure it's plugged in you know pan it so we get what we need to have and right now I don't know if we're gonna be able to do that so we haven't sold it because I don't like to promise what I can't deliver

great technology makes it so amazing but I'm gonna write it down here, virtual school now we do have our online school so we have a whole online school, we have the companion dog with the NePoPo, we have service dog with the NePoPo, we have all sorts of stuff and that is you can get that through our website but it's through teachable, we have it so we do have people from all over who do that, we have people who want more info on the NePoPo school to do that or who just want to train up their service dogs so it's fantastic I like having it because remember what I just said too when we were talking about repeating the schools you know you go you hear it once, you hear it another time, you hear it another time so people can do the online school they can work with me in person, we can do video sessions kind of like this except I'm actually up working dogs and so are they and you can do all of that but the more you hear it -the more it's gonna stick in your head -I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying this because in India we don't have a concept of service dog industry and we all I think at some point of time we all want our pet dogs to behave like service dogs, they have to be able to to be able to do things that they do and yeah but you know it will take some time for us to kind of wrap this around okay we can't have flashy dogs and be a part of a service dog behavioral programming so I might end up following you just to see what to do with the Doberman because yeah we don't see, one, we don't see too many working line Doberman and two service dogs yeah I think it's going to be something to watch out for you know it is, I think it's up and coming for a lot of different places you know the US, we've been doing it for a while but if you look back you know dogs have always helped people that's how they got domesticated right was helping people, they might not be helping them with the specific disabilities but you always have the soldiers who you know had that dog whenever they returned home from war who would help them out you know and you do have that and it's fantastic and you can look back Candy actually has her own Instagram, it's @candy_service_dog so @candy_service_dog, she's on there she's been to universal, she's been to Disney like I said I've flown with her, we've done stuff, she is petite, she's a European Doberman right Americans like to breed everything huge Europeans don't they stay within breed standard so she is under 60 pounds she actually weighs less than my golden weighs but she you know she's taller she's got some more that height there

and then we're going to breed her at least one more time and hopefully this one will stick and we'll have puppies so we can help because I know, I know that goldens aren't for everybody I think that they should be for everybody because they're perfect but they're not and then the Malinois Django is oh he's over a year and a half now so we're we're playing around with him, he, where did we go the other day, we went somewhere he came with us I think I don't know where grocery store something like that and I had him out and about and that's the first time I've worked him since August when I left you know Rich didn't work him out in public while I was gone so he did better than expected and for him and why I want a little bit of flash in my service dogs is that first one I had Arrow he had what I called his working ears so he's a Malinois, he had the Malinois ears except every time he worked the ears would be backing down because he was concentrating because he was concentrating ears and so many people would see him and say oh look at that dog he's so sad, he hates his job, why do you make him do this he hates this and I'm thinking are you crazy like he loves this he is just he's concentrating so hard to do the right thing out in public not that he's like I want to go bite people but just he's like okay she needs me, my job is very important so I want some of that flash but I want to be able to give it just what I need and pull back a little bit fantastic you know I've had a lovely time talking to Victoria and you know this is since this is a new concept and this is going to be opening up a lot of floodgates, people are gonna I'm gonna immediately after the session is over I'm gonna be putting up links to your Facebook page please open up to the Indian public and I hope Sunday you open up the virtual scholarships, there are a lot of people here who would like to learn and on that count thank you so much for your time -I really enjoyed talking to you -thank you so much for having me I hope you guys have a fantastic weekend and a great Halloween because Halloween is tomorrow yeah we don't have Halloween but yeah we have Diwali then just eat extra candy and then it'll feel like you have Halloween -all right, bye bye -see you, bye bye that was nice