Let the Buyer Beware Part 1

From Service Dog Training

Let the buyer beware: Questions to ask before you get a medical alert dog

Some time ago, I mentioned that Heaven Scent Paws, a diabetes alert dog school, was being sued by the Missouri Attorney General for failing to provide what it claimed to provide…dogs that had the capability of alerting. The lawsuit is dragging on with no real end in sight. Recently, I heard about another school that is coming under suspicion for the same type of behavior. This school is Betheden Kennels, originally in Amarillo, TX, but now operating in Oklahoma City. More information can be found here and here.

The lawsuit against Heaven Scent Paws and the issues now coming to light with Betheden Kennels do not surprise me. The service dog training field, particularly for dogs that do less well-defined work such as medical alert, provides every opportunity for a fly-by-night scam artist to walk into the field with no real background and start making quite a bit of money. Many of these people will present themselves as knowledgeable, caring, and well informed. It is up to the prospective buyer not only to ask questions, but also to know which questions to ask. This blog post will cover some of those essential questions.

Question #1

What is your background in dog training? What training has your staff had?

To train a functional service dog, a trainer needs experience in these three areas; temperament and selection, obedience (including public access work), and in the service dog specific tasks they are teaching. Temperament and selection is probably the hardest to receive formal training in, learning to evaluate the temperament of a potential working dog takes time and exposure to dogs. For obedience, a trainer may be able to show that he/she has titled a dog in obedience or rally, has apprenticed with and is recommended by another reputable trainer, or who has attended a good dog training school such as the Michael Ellis School. As the alert dog field is currently working on a scent-based methodology, it is critical that trainers be able to teach scent alerts and scent discrimination. These days, trainers are most likely to learn this skill set while training drug or arson dogs, or while attending a formal school for dog training. Beware of trainers who hold up less reputable schools as their training credentials. Schools like the National K-9 Learning Center are well known for “certifying” people as Master Trainers after only 6 weeks of training. Make sure you always research any credentialing body first.

Question #2

Where did you get this dog? Has this dog been placed as a service dog before?

One thing that is coming to light as an increasing problem with some alert dog schools is their tendency to pull dogs from shelters, give them rudimentary obedience training, and sell them to a client. When the dog doesn’t work out, the school retrieves the dog from the client, gives no refund, and sells the dog (with no additional training) to another client. A dog that is being placed for a second time doesn’t have to mean that the dog is poorly trained, but it does mean you should find out why the dog didn’t work out with the first person. Statements like “The previous owner didn’t do the right follow up training” or other similar statements seem to be common ways for these less-reputable schools to dodge the responsibility for placing a poorly trained dog.

Now, it’s not necessarily the mark of a bad trainer to get some or all of their dogs from shelters or rescues, it just means that great care must be taken in selection and temperament testing to make sure the dog has what it takes to be a safe and successful service dog. Likewise, any service dog trainer or school that’s been around for a while has probably had some dogs returned. This isn’t always a red flag. Sometimes service dogs don’t work out because of a bad personality match, changing life circumstances on the handler’s part, or even a dog that simply wasn’t suited for the work and the school didn’t notice that ahead of time. The key though is to find out how many dogs have been returned (over 10% is where I begin to be concerned) and why. If the trainer/school always blames the handler and takes no responsibility for any of the failures, that’s a problem. While there are occasionally terrible handlers that are solely responsible for a service dog’s abject failure, in most cases, the failure of the match is due to issues on both the handler’s end and the trainer’s/school’s end. This doesn’t mean the trainer/school is bad, but they should accept any responsibility for the failed match that is due them.

Question #3

What is your philosophy of dog training?

There are almost as many ways of training dogs as there are trainers, and there is no one right answer to this question (though there are plenty of wrong ones). The two things to check though are these: Can the trainer/school describe, in easy to understand terms, a comprehensive training philosophy. And: Is this a philosophy you are comfortable with?

A comprehensive training philosophy is more than “We use positive training” or “We use motivation.” These statements might be a good part of a training philosophy, but they cannot stand alone. A training philosophy for a service dog school should include at a minimum: how the dogs in training are raised, including house training and crate training, the methods they use for teaching new skills (reinforcement/operant conditioning/marking/clicking/etc.), how they make sure the dog can perform these skills even in the presence of extreme distractions, and the type of corrections they advocate and how they implement those corrections.

Whether or not you are comfortable with a dog training philosophy is a question only the potential dog recipient can answer. If something in the philosophy bothers you or just doesn’t seem quite right, either make sure you get enough clarification that you are comfortable, or find a different trainer.

Part 2 will include information on:

-Examining a potential service dog's training documentation

-When to refuse to take a dog home

-Documenting problems if a service dog is not adequately trained

-Contractual issues, what NOT to sign

To Be Continued

--Tiffany Huggard-Lee 11:58, 2 April 2010 (CDT)

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