The Alert and Response Tasks course covers the process for training service dogs to perform hearing alerts, scent alerts and response tasks including getting help from a caregiver, bringing medication and retrieving medication and an emergency phone.
Course outline:
- Introduction to alert and response tasks
- Alert and response overview
- Selecting an appropriate alert
- Training the alert behavior
- Hearing alert training
- Training a one-way hearing alert
- Training a hearing dog to alert to the handler’s name
- Training a two-way hearing alert
- First method to teach a two-way alert
- Second method to teach a hearing dog to lead the handler to the sound source
- Training a one-way hearing alert
- Scent alert training
- Review the research on scent alert training
- How to read and interpret research
- Seizure alert research
- Diabetic alert research
- Train a dog to search for the target odor
- Training supplies needed
- Getting the scent sample
- Preventing contamination
- Teaching the dog to search for the target odor using clicker training
- Identifying body language indicating that the dog is sniffing and has found the target odor
- Using a scent wheel
- How to make a scent wheel
- How to train the dog to work on a scent wheel
- Using the scent wheel to build fluency and reliability
- Pairing the alert behavior with finding the target odor
- Generalizing the skill
- Incorporating associative learning
- Review the research on scent alert training
- Response task training
- Response task overview
- Training a service dog to retrieve a medication bag
- Training a service dog to retrieve a cell phone
- Training a service dog to automatically lie down next to the handler if the handler has a seizure or falls
- Training a service dog to get help from a caregiver