Therapy dog training - Part I

In May, Link and I attended the first 2,5 days (out of 5) of training to become a therapy dog team. It was very educational and extremely much fun. Both of us learned a lot of useful things, both as a future therapy dog team and for everyday life.

The Newfoundland dog "Odin" being trained to greet people by putting his head in their lap.

 The terminology is somewhat confusing when it comes to "therapy dogs". "Terapihund" directly translates to "Therapy dog", but from what I've understood the meaning is not the same. For a dog to be called "terapihund" the owner has to be using the dog in a professional setting. Like if you are a psychologist and use your dog as part of therapy sessions with patients, then the dog is a "terapihund". You should get paid for the work you do with a "terapihund" and the time spend educating yourself and the dog is about 450 hours.
What Link will become if he passes the test is not a "terapihund", he will become a "besøkshund" which roughly translates to "visitation dog". The "education" only takes 38 hours and we are volunteers, i.e. we don't get paid for our work. However in the book I've read about therapy dog work and the information I've found on wikipedia tells med that the correct term in English for what Link will become is a "therapy dog", so I'll just stick to that term here on the blog.

The border collie "Biff" learning to work with a "patient" in a wheelchair.

A therapy dog has one job, and that is to make the person you are visiting feel good. A dog that looks unhappy and acts hesitant is not going to make anybody feel good. So when training a therapy dog it is important to get the dog used to things like wheelchairs and walkers. The dog should also be trained to jump up in an unknown persons bed to cuddle with this person, without feeling uncomfortable and wanting to jump down all the time. The dog must be enjoying itself to be a good therapy dog, nobody wants a visit from a therapy dog that looks like it would rather be any place else but next to you.

Varg and his owner Julie are also training to become a therapy dog team.

 One of the more useful things I learned is how to teach Link to walk past things, like dogs that you meet or whatever it is that he normally has a problem passing. You teach your dog that on a cue, like "forward", the dog will find something good if it continues walking. That good thing can be a toy or a treat that you either have already put there or throw in front of the dog when it walks forward. When we practiced this at the course, the instructor first showed Link that she put something really interesting on a chair (she made a big fuss about it) and then took him with her some meters away from the chair. Link was of course intrigued over what that thing she had put on the chair was and was really focusing on it. She stood next to him, facing in the same direction as him, and told him to "go forward", and he of course immediately ran over to the chair and ate the pieces of hotdog she had left there. This training can then be generalized in many situations like having the dog having to walk through a door to get to the treat/toy or telling the dog to walk forward when on a walk.

Link learning to "go forward" on cue.

One of the biggest gains for me personally was that during these 2,5 days Link went from hyper and excited every time he was let out of the car (for his turn to do some training), to paying attention to me and being able to relax even though other dogs were training nearby. Link has become increasingly hormonal during the past 6 months, so this was really a challenge for us. I am so very grateful for how much the instructor and the other participants helped us with this, and so extremely happy that we were able to do this using positive methods.

Link focusing on some treats on the ground and taking it easy at the dog club.

In September all the dogs attending this course will go through a test to show how suitable they are for therapy dog work. One of the things that will be in the test is how they react when meeting a dog while going through a doorway. That is the one I think is going to be toughest for us.
Other things they will test is if the dog will eat any edible item they find and how they react to people behaving strangely and how they react to sudden noises. The best reaction to any unanticipated, possibly scary, situation, is that the dog react to it with surprise, realize that it wasn't dangerous and then let go of the incident and continue working. They might experience even painful things when visiting people, like some diseases causes the hands of a patient to grab things and not being able to let go. The dog should never react with aggression or strong fear in situations like that, but rather view it as a mistake by the human and wait for a treat. You should teach your dog that if something out of the ordinary happens, you give it something good. That way you will have a dog that if it feels uncertain about a situation, it will come to you. Hence you will know if your dog needs a break from the work, before the dog gets overwhelmed.

Training relaxation.

 Another exercise we did was the so called "rucksack". In this exercise you have your dog in front of you (as seen in the picture above), holds the dog's head and strokes it's chest. You put some treats in front of the dog on the floor, and wait until the dog is totally relaxed in your hands before you pick up a treat and give it to the dog. In the beginning you just wait for the dog to relax it's head in your hand, and you increase the level of relaxation that is needed for the dog to get the treat gradually. When you have practiced this for a while, you (if everything goes according to plan) have a dog that will just lay down and relax when you sit it if front of you and stroke it's chest. This is very useful in situations when you just need your dog to relax.

Another dog attending the course was this beautiful female Rottweiler.

I'm looking forward to the test in September, but I know that Link and I have a long way to go before we are ready.
Here is a link to the post about the second weekend: http://dogtelligent.blogspot.no/2014/10/therapy-dog-training-part-ii.html