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LJ Idol Week 2 - Deconstruction
Nov. 11th, 2010 09:43 pm"But she's so tiny! What can she do?"
It's a question I hear a lot. Tassie, my service dog, IS tiny. She's 6 pounds, a fully grown toy poodle. My husband took some ribbing about revoking his man card when we got her. After all, toy poodles are the annoying little yappy dogs that terrorize visitors to Great-Aunt Gertrude, aren't they? Nippy little balls of fluff that hide under the sofa and attack unsuspecting ankles, when not being fed bon-bons?
Not quite.
Poodles were originally developed to be hunting dogs. That frou-frou show cut that's become synonymous with pointlessly extravagant hairstyles was actually developed to trap warmth around the joints and major organs while retrieving birds in icy water. Even when the hunting dogs were bred down in size, the intelligence, drive to retrieve and desire to please that make a good hunting partner remained. Canine behaviorists believe poodles to be one of the most intelligent breeds of dog, second only to border collies.
So what does Tassie do?
Her primary job is psychological support. When my first service dog, Guinness the Wonder Dobie, had to be retired for medical reasons, I didn't handle it well. I don't think anyone, including me, fully appreciated how dependent I was on Guinness. Faced with losing him, I was suicidal. After a poor decision on my part that ended up in a hospital stay, my psychiatrist was pretty concerned at the medication levels I'd need to be even close to stable - unless I got another dog. Yes, getting Tassie was a requirement for getting out of the psych crisis ward.
As a psychiatric support dog, Tassie's work doesn't seem all that important from the outside. She is my 24/7 companion. She cuddles me when I'm down, makes me laugh when I want to cry, and provides me with the companionship I need to stay on a much lower dose of medication. My therapist says her effect on me is nothing short of miraculous.
Of course, that really doesn't impress people who can't figure out the need of a dog like this. And being in a wheelchair with severe back and neuropathic issues, there are plenty of physical tasks that I need help with as well! So I'm training Tassie to perform physical service tasks. Obviousy a toy poodle isn't going to pull my chair like Guinness did (unless I hook up a team of them... hmm, I may have to look into poodle mushing...), but she is perfectly capable of picking up and carrying objects on demand. One of the first physical service tasks I decided to work on is retrieving the gloves I wear to protect my hands when I'm wheeling around.
The first step in this is training the concept of a retrieve. Tassie has a good drive on her own. She loves chasing after a ball and bringing it back to me to throw again. I started associating this behavior with specific commands. "Go get it!" when I throw the ball, "bring it here!" when she's returning with it in her mouth. It didn't take long for her to understand what the commands mean. Get it means there's something to be picked up, bring it means whatever object needs to be given to me - and will generally get a reward, either more play or a nummy treat.
The next step was to identify the gloves as something to be retrieved on command. Tassie sees me wearing these gloves whenever we leave the house, so she associates them with the fun of going somewhere together. I started using the gloves as a play item, making sure I used the term "glove" whenever we did. I paired putting the glove in my lap with getting a food treat. Yes, my gloves have tiny teeth marks in them from playing tug-of-war, but Tassie knows what the term means now.
Then I combined the two. I'd toss a glove and use the get it and bring it commands. Doing this gets wild praise and treats. We started off doing very short retrieves from one end of my bed to the other. Now I can throw a glove down the hallway and Tassie will happily bring it to me. She knows that bringing a glove to me makes me wildly happy, which makes her wildly happy as well.
Racheting things up a notch, I started hiding the glove and giving the get it command. Now the glove wasn't just flying through the air, it was hiding under blankets as well. Tassie loves the extra challenge. She's figured out how to push her nose under the edge of the blanket and use a flip of the head to toss it to the side. And of course when she brings her found prize to me, she still gets praised and treated.
A few days ago, when my husband came home from work he accidentally knocked my gloves on the floor. Tassie grabbed them and brought them to me, ready to go. I was ecstatic! She got it! Bringing my gloves got her wild crazy amounts of praise, treats and we went out together.
We're still working on it, of course. Tassie and I are just staring our journey together, so we're nowhere near the team we can become. Starting with one simple concept, though, we can break down training any task into simple steps. It doesn't happen overnight but it does happen.
What can Tassie do? The answer is really only limited by my imagination.
This has been my entry for Week 2 of LJ Idol. The topic was Deconstruction. I hope you enjoyed reading it!
It's a question I hear a lot. Tassie, my service dog, IS tiny. She's 6 pounds, a fully grown toy poodle. My husband took some ribbing about revoking his man card when we got her. After all, toy poodles are the annoying little yappy dogs that terrorize visitors to Great-Aunt Gertrude, aren't they? Nippy little balls of fluff that hide under the sofa and attack unsuspecting ankles, when not being fed bon-bons?
Not quite.
Poodles were originally developed to be hunting dogs. That frou-frou show cut that's become synonymous with pointlessly extravagant hairstyles was actually developed to trap warmth around the joints and major organs while retrieving birds in icy water. Even when the hunting dogs were bred down in size, the intelligence, drive to retrieve and desire to please that make a good hunting partner remained. Canine behaviorists believe poodles to be one of the most intelligent breeds of dog, second only to border collies.
So what does Tassie do?
Her primary job is psychological support. When my first service dog, Guinness the Wonder Dobie, had to be retired for medical reasons, I didn't handle it well. I don't think anyone, including me, fully appreciated how dependent I was on Guinness. Faced with losing him, I was suicidal. After a poor decision on my part that ended up in a hospital stay, my psychiatrist was pretty concerned at the medication levels I'd need to be even close to stable - unless I got another dog. Yes, getting Tassie was a requirement for getting out of the psych crisis ward.
As a psychiatric support dog, Tassie's work doesn't seem all that important from the outside. She is my 24/7 companion. She cuddles me when I'm down, makes me laugh when I want to cry, and provides me with the companionship I need to stay on a much lower dose of medication. My therapist says her effect on me is nothing short of miraculous.
Of course, that really doesn't impress people who can't figure out the need of a dog like this. And being in a wheelchair with severe back and neuropathic issues, there are plenty of physical tasks that I need help with as well! So I'm training Tassie to perform physical service tasks. Obviousy a toy poodle isn't going to pull my chair like Guinness did (unless I hook up a team of them... hmm, I may have to look into poodle mushing...), but she is perfectly capable of picking up and carrying objects on demand. One of the first physical service tasks I decided to work on is retrieving the gloves I wear to protect my hands when I'm wheeling around.
The first step in this is training the concept of a retrieve. Tassie has a good drive on her own. She loves chasing after a ball and bringing it back to me to throw again. I started associating this behavior with specific commands. "Go get it!" when I throw the ball, "bring it here!" when she's returning with it in her mouth. It didn't take long for her to understand what the commands mean. Get it means there's something to be picked up, bring it means whatever object needs to be given to me - and will generally get a reward, either more play or a nummy treat.
The next step was to identify the gloves as something to be retrieved on command. Tassie sees me wearing these gloves whenever we leave the house, so she associates them with the fun of going somewhere together. I started using the gloves as a play item, making sure I used the term "glove" whenever we did. I paired putting the glove in my lap with getting a food treat. Yes, my gloves have tiny teeth marks in them from playing tug-of-war, but Tassie knows what the term means now.
Then I combined the two. I'd toss a glove and use the get it and bring it commands. Doing this gets wild praise and treats. We started off doing very short retrieves from one end of my bed to the other. Now I can throw a glove down the hallway and Tassie will happily bring it to me. She knows that bringing a glove to me makes me wildly happy, which makes her wildly happy as well.
Racheting things up a notch, I started hiding the glove and giving the get it command. Now the glove wasn't just flying through the air, it was hiding under blankets as well. Tassie loves the extra challenge. She's figured out how to push her nose under the edge of the blanket and use a flip of the head to toss it to the side. And of course when she brings her found prize to me, she still gets praised and treated.
A few days ago, when my husband came home from work he accidentally knocked my gloves on the floor. Tassie grabbed them and brought them to me, ready to go. I was ecstatic! She got it! Bringing my gloves got her wild crazy amounts of praise, treats and we went out together.
We're still working on it, of course. Tassie and I are just staring our journey together, so we're nowhere near the team we can become. Starting with one simple concept, though, we can break down training any task into simple steps. It doesn't happen overnight but it does happen.
What can Tassie do? The answer is really only limited by my imagination.
This has been my entry for Week 2 of LJ Idol. The topic was Deconstruction. I hope you enjoyed reading it!
