The Cooperative Paws SDC® curriculum is comprehensive and covers the foundation knowledge and tasks needed to begin offering service dog training including:
- Different types of service dogs (guide, mobility, medical alert, psychiatric and more) and ways they can help.
- Strategies to adapt training for people with disabilities – including mobility, vision, hearing, cognitive and psychiatric disabilities.
- Disability etiquette – the language to use when communicating about disabilities and why this is important.
- Temperament characteristics needed for service work, how to screen client’s pets effectively and sensitively.
- Basic training and socialization needs for service dog candidates
- How to train essential service dog tasks
- retrieve (also pull, hold, and carry)
- balance/brace
- hearing alert
- Targeting based (push doors, turn lights, access buttons)
- Task training step-by-step instructions for numerous tasks including commonly requested tasks like anxiety alert, deep pressure therapy and more.
- Behaviors and training needed for public access, how to prepare dogs and owners for challenges and how to assess public access readiness
- Service dog program challenges 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 training requests such as behavior consultations with working service dogs and “at home only” service dogs
Also students have access to our extensive Learning Library of 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 in the course (such as a contract addendum and medical release developed in consultation with an attorney) and students can ask questions via discussion areas and email.