The Cooperative Paws SDC® curriculum is comprehensive and covers all of the foundation knowledge and tasks needed to begin offering service dog training.
Students learn:
- Different types of service dogs (guide, mobility, medical alert, psychiatric and more) and ways they can help.
- Strategies to adapt training for people with various types of disabilities – including mobility, vision, hearing, cognitive and psychiatric disabilities.
- Disability etiquette, language to use when communicating about disabilities and why this is important.
- How to select a dog for service work. Learn how to screen client’s pets effectively and sensitively.
- How to socialize and train service dog candidate puppies and young dogs.
- How to train essential service dog tasks with guidance and feedback from our expert:
- retrieve (also pull, hold, and carry)
- balance/brace
- hearing alert
- Targeting based (push doors, turn lights, access buttons)
- Task training recipes with step-by-step instructions for numerous tasks including commonly requested tasks like anxiety alert and deep pressure therapy
- Behaviors and training needed for public access, how to prepare dogs and owners for challenges and how to assess public access readiness
- How to address challenges specifically encountered in service dog programs such as matching recipients with dogs, providing education to recipients, supporting working teams and more!
- How to support working teams to ensure the dog’s training is maintained
- Strategies to incorporate service dog training into a pet dog training business in a way that is practical, and compliments your existing services.
- How to collaborate with healthcare professionals
- How to handle unique cases such as behavior consultations with working service dogs and “at home only” service dogs
Also students have access to our extensive Learning Library. A growing collection of well over 50 scientific research, news articles and other resources on various service dog specialties including mobility, guide, hearing, psychiatric/PTSD, autism, diabetic, seizure-alert and more. Essential business tools are included as well as access to Veronica, via discussion areas and email for feedback on training videos, projects and questions as needed.