Service Dog Fundamentals is a terrific entry point for trainers considering expanding their services to offering service dog training. This course is for anyone interested in learning about service dogs, including career changers, professional dog trainers as well as people with disabilities considering acquiring a service dog from a program or selecting and training a service dog themselves.
“This thoughtfully constructed course provides much-needed clarity on the subject of service dogs. The information is presented in short sections–making it easy for professionals to fit into their busy schedules. I also love that the written materials are available for download so I can read and refer back to them when I’m not online.”
Arlington, VA
What You Will Learn
Understand the landscape of service dogs. Learn about service dog industry vocabulary and how service dogs are being trained to help people with disabilities. Learn about the benefits and challenges involved in getting a service dog from a program versus owner-training, selecting and training a dog for service work. Review learning theory and understand how it is applied to service dog training. See demonstrations of service dog task training including targeting and behavior chains. Additionally, learn about career options in service dog training and how to begin pursuing a career in service dog training.
Content overview:
- Essential legal information including the ADA’s definition of a service dog, different types of service dogs and sort out confusing terminology including ESA and Therapy Dog.
- An overview of the service dog training process, understand common misconceptions about service dog training.
- Review learning theory and learn how it is applied to service dog training including the quadrants of learning, behavior chains and why they are important for service dog training.
- Service dog careers, challenges in the service dog industry, and different types of service dog careers. Learn about educational paths for pursuing a career in service dog training.
“The Cooperative Paws Service Dog Fundamentals course is a fantastic overview of this increasingly complex topic. It clearly and concisely covers all of the essentials for understanding the landscape of service dog training. This course is a great jumping-off point for trainers, volunteers, potential owner-trainers, healthcare workers, or anyone with an interest in working with service dogs.”
How You Will Learn
This is an online course set up on a user-friendly platform and includes a combination of video presentations, demonstrations, informative links in addition to short articles. This course takes about 4 hours to complete. However, students have access to the course for 90 days so they can review material at their leisure.
“I really learned so much from your course. Your presentation was extremely informative, relevant and user friendly. I appreciated that you included both video and text when covering the content.”
Therapy Dog Trainer & Evaluator
The Details
- Tuition $95
- Course length – Approximately 4 hours. Students have access to the course for 90 days.
- CEUs
- CPDT-KA and CBCC-KA – 3.5
“Thank you so much for this class. It was very informative!”