Assistance Dog Training
Owner-Trained Assistance Dog Services
We offer specialist professional guidance for independent handlers of owner-trained assistance dogs and are able to help support you at all stages of training, including the selection, socialisation, taskwork, public access training and assessment of your owner-trained assistance dog.
We are experts in dog behaviour who have knowledge and experience in working with owners who wish to train their dogs tasks to support, aid and mitigate their medical condition. Our Head Trainer Jasper specialises in training dogs to help with mental health conditions and handlers who are neurodiverse (Psychiatric & Autism Assistance Dogs).
What Assistance Dog Training Do You Offer?
We can help with any stage of training with your owner-trained assistance dog, including:
- Finding a breeder/source
- Selecting your puppy or older dog
- Socialisation of a young assistance dog prospect
- Puppy training for assistance dogs
- Taskwork to aid a range of disabilities and medical conditions
- Public access training in real-world environments
- Assessment at multiple stages
What Conditions Can You Train Assistance Dogs For?
We are able to support your dog’s training to enable them to assist you with a wide range of medical conditions. We most commonly help train dogs to perform tasks to support mental health conditions or neurodiverse handlers (Psychiatric & Autism Assistance Dogs) but have also worked with training medical alert tasks.
If you are unsure about whether an owner-trained assistance dog would be helpful to you or whether we would be able to train your dog to support you with your specific health condition or disability, please get in touch and we can discuss suitability and your training options.
Assistance dogs can be trained to support people with disabilities and complex conditions. We have worked with handlers with conditions including (but not limited to):
- Neurodiverse conditions such as autism spectrum disorder (ASD), attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), dyspraxia, and more.
- Mental health conditions such as anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), psychosis disorders, and more.
- Other medical conditions such as Ehler-Danlos syndrome, postural tachycardia syndrome, fibromyalgia, chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS), functional neurological disorder (FND) and more.
If you have multiple complex conditions, just reach out so that we can discuss your needs.
What Tasks Can Assistance Dogs Be Trained To Perform?
We work with handlers to train their dogs to perform behaviours such as:
- Emotional distress alert and response.
- Deep pressure therapy (DPT).
- Retrieving objects.
- Opening/closing doors and cupboards.
- Picking up objects (such as keys, phones, wallet).
- Medical alert.
- Finding an exit/a seat/a person.
- Self-harm interruption.
- Blocking and crowd control.
- …And more!
What Do You Expect From Your Handlers?
By working with us as an owner-trained assistance dog partnership, you are making the commitment to adhere to the training and handling guidance we set out. We prioritise quality and have high standards, and expect our handlers to meet these by investing time into their dog’s training outside of the sessions.
We expect honesty and transparency from our handlers, and will always advise where we do not think a dog is suitable as an owner-trained assistance dog or working in public access, whether for health, welfare or behavioural reasons.
We expect our handlers to follow the training advice given and commit to using positive reinforcement training methods. We do not condone the use of aversive training tools and techniques.
Our philosophy is that we are here to support you for the entire duration of your dog’s career and training, even after qualification.
Owner-Trained Assistance Dog Scheme
Our mission is to give our clients support so that they can achieve independence by training their own dog to support them with their condition(s). To find out a bit more about the way our owner-trained assistance dog scheme works, and how to achieve endorsement from us as a qualified assistance dog partnership, please have a look at our Owner-Trained Assistance Dogs handbook. This booklet is available for download and covers in more detail the pathway to qualification, the criteria we assess against, and what you need to adhere to as a partnership with our scheme.
We prioritise making our scheme as accessible as possible, so if you have any questions or concerns we recommend reaching out to discuss the options that may be available. In situations where we aren’t able to help, we can refer you to colleagues or direct you to the relevant support.
Assistance Dog Assessment
Jasper is an approved assessor for the Assistance Dog Assessment Association (ADAA), a charity that offers public access assessments for owner-trained assistance dogs. If you are looking to verify your dog’s training with a public access test, the ADAA offers this for non-ADUK partnerships that may be owner-trained. If you are unsure whether your dog is ready for public access assessment, we can help you prepare for this and identify areas that your dog may need more training in before going ahead with a public access test.
As an ADAA Assessor and experienced assistance dog trainer, Jasper can help you ensure that your assistance dog is trained to the appropriate standard and support you with achieving this level of training with your dog. He has an understanding of the requirements and can help advise on whether your dog may be ready for the assessment.
Our Price
Assistance dog training is offered at our standard one to one training price (£75 for the initial session and £60 per follow-up, each session lasting for an hour).
Due to the nature of owner-trained assistance dog training, it is advised that you book a number of sessions in order to accrue the amount of training necessary in order to train a dog to the required standards.
This is important to make sure your dog can safely work in public access settings. Since our owner-trained assistance dog programme is ongoing, we can offer block session bookings at a discounted rate if booked together.
In addition to training hours accrued with the trainer, we expect handlers to keep a record and diary of the number of hours of training they undertake outside of one to one sessions.
To find out about price options and block booking offers, please get in touch for a personalised quote. We offer discounts for multiple sessions booked together and this is what we recommend for assistance dog training.
Contact UsBook Your Free Phone Consultation
We offer all our new clients a free 20 minute phone consultation - if you are interested in booking some sessions, you can arrange a free phone call with us by following the link below.
Book Your Free Phone Call