Service Dog For Migraines

hey guys! i'm liz and i am linc and mac's handler. that was linc who just wentbehind me. and i just wanted to talk to you guys about you know how i've been training linc ummto become a service dog

Service Dog For Migraines, linc will be eleven months old thisfriday which means he has been in training foreight months and he still has 15, 16 to 18 more months left in training.

for a service dog takes between twoyears and two and a half years to fully trained them depending on what tasks they need tolearn on and what disabilities therefore onlincoln will be for autism. i have aspergers and have stimuli issues and on i disassociate at times and medical response for my severe aura migraines that are very debilitating. mac,

my service dog, is medical response i mean medical alert because he naturally alerts to my migraines. which by the waycan not be trained. okay. you cannot train a migraine alert i don't care what some trainers say. itis not possible scientifically they don't even know howthey figure it out to alert. seizures also mac naturally alerts and he is autism response i guess you could call it on so with lincoln i got him one day

before he turned eleven weeks. so around you know almost three months and it actually has been in training by more than eight months but by weekon so i started by going to my local kennelclub and signing him up star puppy, whichis through akc. and speaking to the trainers andtelling them what i needed on what lincoln is for what behaviors ineed and they were really awesome about it

and and linc has link obviously passed starpuppy. he then went to obedience 2 itnstead ofobedience one because obedience one would just be a kinda for repeat out star puppy and thenhe went into intermediates cgc and he passed canine good citizens exam which you knowisn't that challenging. and then we went into advance/ cgc a which is the

canine good citizen advanced testwhich is now known as community canine and linc passed that at the end of january. and that to my knowledge, don't quote me on this, but to my knowledge it is be highestobedience title a dog can get without being incompetition now linc is in novice obedience, which is a competition class. it is to help prepare handlers and their dogs forcompetition

obedience competition. i will not be but on competing with linc because i need him to perform obedience behaviors in differentways. he does not do a stand. instead thestand is a block in front, you know, standing infront to be blocking putting space between other individuals and myself. i am not caring if his finishedsit

right next to me is hugging my leg. if heis sitting with in six inches of me i'm happy withit. if he's a little turned i'm ok as long as he is in an a sit heel, well he you know what i mean, a sit right nextto my left leg i'm fine if you know as he is notwandering off you know doing whatever, i'm happy i also recently change from a prong collar to a

halti which linc technically made into a halti/gentle leader recently because he happened tochew the part that attached to the collar so i just used the head halter part not that link to the collar it's fine still works, it's okay i wasn't getting the results that iwanted with the prong and i don't like popping him

with the prong it's just there is alimit to how might how many times you can popa dog and i was not using the prong improperly. i was using it as it should have beenused. i'm not against problems obviously soplease no negative no negative comments about prongs so i'm using a whole halti. i'm gettingmore if the results the tight heel that i need i think i feel like i've better controlof him even though he is very proficient

in most of his obedience. i feel better with the head halter. it'slike in horses they say if you have or in cows i guess, if youhave controlled the head of the animal you have control of the animal and i believe the same is you know with dogs, cats good luck withthat so, recently i started training linc, in about a month ago, in more intense task training. how did i startthat? now if you look in my videos, way, way down, you can see

linc working on touch and that wasjust a basic hand touch. target my hand. and slowly i worked with him on touchingother things ands with that i trained him to grab it and first i started in my hands. this is a dog dumbbell for obedience competitions. but i had him start touching it and then i had him start

mouthing it and every time that he would mouth it. i clicked and treated. yes, i use a clicker i use karen pryor style training because i find it more efficient and so he would start mouthing things. then i went from touch to grab it and grab it became when he grabbed it and then when we went into retrieving

he's a natural retriever. he likes theball to be thrown and i'm he just destroyed a tennisball yeah, okay here's another tennis ball, linc we have million of them for himokay when it came into retrieving i would take a toy like a ball or soft toy which this is a softball but he is a natural retriever. he loves toretrieve. if you throw ball or a toy

he will go and bring it back and be like "throw it!" "throw it!" so i took that and i started using grabit when he would grab his toy and slowly we put the two together. and when hewould bring it back to me i would tell him give. i started with dropit but it was an efficient it was uses too much in various things so i started using give which means he gives it to me in handand

so then i started using with grab it. istarted having him grab the object and he would and i would say bring it which isanother command i use with his toys and he would bring theobject to my feet and drop it over two feet away from me and even though it wasn't totally me i would click and treat because he did what i wanted him to do not as you know he didn't completely doit

but he did enough in the beginning where i clicked in treated now actually way in the beginning i wassitting on the floor in front of him and i woulddrop drop it and tell him you know bringit grab it bring it gives. i was like less than a foot infraction. slowlybut surely i went farther and farther and it just became more and more complete

and intense and then eventually he wouldgive it to me in my hand. and i would click and treat and now we have gotten to 6 items in a row where he has retrieved them, which isawesome. for push and tug, i took the same touch command that we worked on. and i would have him touch thingslincoln touch, like that where he would touch things and he lovesto play tug o war.

this dog is perfect, he loves everything.so he loves to play tug o war and i would have i would like go like this make it into a a toy thing, very appealing and he would grab he would get used to the texture. this ispara cord okay and so we would kinda play tug o war with it like we are right now and he's going totake it away from me "drop" good boy leave it then i attached it to a cabinet door and i kind of dangled it like this.

and he would grab it and i would say tug. i would actually tug it a few times to show him and then he'd figured it out and hewould tug it he had a little bit click tricked tugged it a little bit more, click and treat i mean if he didn't tug it, you knowafter doing that for couple sessions you know you wanted him to continue totug and eventually you stop clickingtreating when he would just tug a little.

and then they would tug even more andthen you would be like oh my god that's awesome! and click and treat with anything you want them to do you start by the little. you start slow and then you continue to work it. and it'sgoing to take a lotta treats it's gonna take a lotta clicks. it'sgonna take time. it always takes time and immediately catch it, but you still needto work it. you need to perfect it you need to shape it into what you need itto be.

so now linc can retrieve the six items so because he can retrieve them in thisroom a change i changed the location recently to another roomwith a different floor. that floor doesn't have carpeting and thiskind of changes it up that room has a laminate floor. so, change it up. make it different. make it harder. make it a little more fun right now at 11 months old, this is agame he sees it all is a game, not necessarilyas

work. but this is all fun this is intellectually stimulating forhim so remember work on this constantly, well not constantly. butdo training session twice a day, 30 minutes, an hour maybe, 15 minutes here,

10 minutes there, it's amazing how muchthat helps just like obedience, it isn't just aboutpublic access, it is just about obedience. a service dogmust perform tasks that mitigate your disability.