There are service dogs and there are service dogs. (let’s leave emotional support dogs out of this conversation.) Dogs for the Blind are service dogs that need to be certified and tested BECAUSE if they don’t perform correctly they can endanger the lives of many more than their (blind) handler.
(This may vary from country-to-country; locale-to-locale): It is my understanding that there are other Service Dogs that do not need to be tested or certified…
Because we are an AF community I would like to stick to Cardiac-related dogs.
What are the some services Cardiac Alert dogs provide?
What are some of the services that Medical Assistance dogs provide?
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afibapnea
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I can only comment on one dog my wife has met who helps her owner dress/undress, fetches things like phone, calls for help if she collapses (the lady not my wife) etc and a mirriad of other things. Not sure what a cardiac alert dog does. There are I am told dogs who can detect cancer so why not heart attacks? Why the interest?
I’m a dog trainer. I know that many service dogs who ‘alert’ when a particular event happens, do so naturally and do so naturally for the person with whom they have a close relationship. In other words, the behavior is one that occurs BEFORE it is reinforced into a dependable behavior that the lucky patient can recognize as helpful to his/her survival.
From the standpoint of a trainer this is not an unusual, nor an unreasonable way to reinforce a predictable behavior. (Unfortunately, this approach seldom gets the publicity it deserves.) The reinforcement process is called “capturing the behavior”. Here’s a very practical example of capturing a behavior:
1)You have a dog who pulls whenever you put him on leash. The dog’s owner wants her dog to walk reasonably when on leash (heeling comes later) so she immediately attempts to train the dog to do so.
A better approach is to FIRST capture the (pulling) behavior. When the dog pulls on the leash, click and treat the dog. Continue to reinforce the behavior (I’m not going to explain behavioral conditioning—Google ‘clicker training’) It’s a win-win situation for both dog and inexperienced owner. The dog is being appreciated for what he does naturally and the owner is successfully training the dog from the get-go.
2)Once the dog pulls dependably you can attach a name (“Pull”) to that behavior. This does three things. A) It instructs the dog to pull when you want it to pull; B) It acts as a deterrent—the dog will tend not to pull when not given the command—making it easier to train the dog to “walk (reasonably)” C) Because the dog has learned to distinguish Pull from all on leash behaviors that don’t involve pulling it’s now much easier to concentrate on training the dog to walk well on leash, then “Heel” (left side), then “Side” (right side), then “Near” (maintain a certain distance from the trainer), etc.
Sorry for going on…
I’m curious to know:
- What behaviors to look for when you’re wondering if a particular dog ‘alerts’ to a particular occurrence. (Obviously, you don’t have the option of triggering the emergency occurrence.)
- What variety of behaviors dogs have been trained to do to assist owners in need of medical assistance.
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