guide dogs training

Communicating successfully with someone that doesn’t speak English is one thing, but how do make yourself understood when the only word that that your protégé really understands is ‘walkies’? Guide dog trainers have come up with a series of successful communication strategies that allow person and pooch to work together.

Not just any puppy can go on to become a guide dog and one of the most important aspects of raising a future guide dog is to get it used to all kinds of different situations. Puppy trainers do this by getting it used to five new experiences a week. Whilst socialisation is important for any puppy, it is extremely important for a future guide dog who needs to be confident in any situation its handler might experience.

Whilst training doesn’t start until later on, a guide dog must get some experience with obedience early on in its life. Staff working as puppy-handlers are taught to build up a rapport with the puppy early on in its life, and this is a good way to start building up effective communications strategies between person and pooch. Many people wrongly assume that you need to use food treats to get your dog working for you. This is not one of the most effective communications strategies and one that will leave your puppy fixated on food. A guide dog needs to be able to work without the expectation of a reward, so using praise or leash correction is much more important.

Once a puppy has picked up on these two basic elements, he’s ready to go back to guide dog training school for his evaluation. For a dog to be able to easily adapt to the in-depth communications strategy used by the Guide Dogs Association he must show a number of qualities, including intelligence and willingness to learn. A dog that is able to concentrate is a great candidate, whilst pups with poor health and poor attention to sound are automatically disregarded. Dogs that meet all the qualities but that are nervous or show an extreme reaction to cats are also removed from the screening process.

Dogs must be tested extensively before they begin training and in order to for the trainer to assert him or herself as the dominant pack animal, an effective communications strategy should be put in place. Dogs as pack animals have a natural need to please an authority figure, which is what makes them easy to train. The communication strategy works as the trainer is simply stepping into the place of the Alpha Dog.

One of the first tasks a dog-in-training must master is how to walk like a guide-dog. This means walking in a straight line without getting distracted by any surrounding activity. Dogs are also taught from the start to stop at curbs, and how to develop the ability to spot any potential dangers. With the trainer asserted as the pack-leader, and the dog responding to both leash corrections and verbal instructions, an effective communications strategy has taken place between the dog and owner.

Jenny Kettlewell is the Marketing Manager for Multitone Systems, a leading telecommunications strategy company. Multitone has implemented custom, integrated communications strategies for businesses and organisations in the public and private sector for over 75 years.

Guide Dog Training : Guide Dog Training: Curbs

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