What Service Dog Tasks Would Be Best For Me?

Questions like this I see all the time, and wanted to address as there really is no easy way to answer for most people.

The Disability/Disabilities

As we should know in order to have a service dog the handler must meet the definition of disabled that is put forth by the ADA (Americans Disability Act) here in the US, which states:

"The ADA defines a person with a disability as a person who has a physical or mental impairment that substantially limits one or more major life activities."

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All-in-all a pretty easy fence to get over. But when it comes to asking which task(s) would be right for you the question becomes a lot harder.

Taking my disability as an example, I have combat-related PTSD. The problem is that even though I have a label for my disability it does not mean that I have the same symptoms as other people with the same PTSD label (diagnosis). Meaning that other people with PTSD may need other task(s) than I do.

Task Lists and Ethics

If you search the internet, you will find thousands of service dog task lists. Overall, these lists do offer decent lists of common tasks known to be trained with service dogs. The problem is that within most service dog communities this is referred to "task shopping" and is frowned upon. The reason is that we, within the service dog community, see so many pet owners come in simply looking for an excuse to take their pets into public access situations.

While this may not be the case, we as responsible service dog teams tend to be very guarded/defensive when it comes to our community. Most, if not all of us, would gladly give up our dogs if we could get rid of the disability we have, the stigma we must endure, the discrimination (made even worse when we have a dog by our side). These problems are only amplified when there are those who take their pets out with them and act up. This makes our entire community look bad, and at times can pose a danger to our service dogs.

Making Your Own Task List

If you are looking into getting your own service dog and want to know what a service dog may be able to do for you, I always suggest pro/con lists. These help with input from your health professional(s) and friends and family. The columns I suggest would be something like

• Disability: Starting with the individual symptom(s) related to the ADA definition.
• Task (mitigation): What specific type of task would help mitigate the symptom?
• Other: What other ways would there be to mitigate the symptom? (like medications/therapy)

The reason that I suggest that others be involved with the list is that your health professionals should know of your problems and normally look at the situation from a 3rd party perspective. Family, the people you live with, typically act as a buffer that not only can offer other methods of mitigation, but these people also must live with the decision of either getting a service dog or not. Not only is this a 10–15-year decision for you, but for them also.

I Don't Know What Tasks Would Work for Me

Once you have a good list of the things you want a dog to help you mitigate you may have problems with the type of tasks a dog may be able to help you with. This is completely understandable especially when someone first gets into researching. There are tons of resources on the internet that can help, including those lists we talked about earlier. I have used YouTube, service dog-related internet groups, personal experiences/training, dog trainers, and many other resources around me to solidify the tasks that would help me.

For example, let's talk about a couple of tasks from my list. One of my biggest needs, in public, was help with my constant "threat assessment" of people around me. So how could I do this? I started by listing out the different things I needed him to do. Something like this:

• Clear Corners
• Clear Rooms
• Create Space
• Make a Hole
• Watch My Back

Lucky being both ex-military and ex-K9 I knew what I wanted but the question is how to train this in a manner that would be consistent with the ADA and not get me into legal trouble as my normal training would be either a "bark and hold" or "bite and hold" if the dog were trained to what I was used to. Both would be less than ideal in a public area.

After talking to a trainer and several SD-based groups I decided on a simple "sit" for an alert instead of a bark-and-hold type of alert. An alert is a trained action that the dog does automatically when on task. In some instances, my dog will do a "come" or a "block" (he will go out about a foot or so towards the "threat") and then "sit" looking toward the "threat". These allow me to notice the "threat" and react as I need to.

Thankfully my list was easy to teach as most of my setpoints revolved around basic obedience actions. Sit and Stay being the most important with a "center" (dog positions itself in-between my legs) reversed to watch behind me. A "Forward" where he was trained to move a foot or so towards someone, and a forward heel.

Everyone's list is going to be different. As are their commands and how they trained. There is an old saying for dog trainers. If you ask 10 trainers how to train the same action you will get 15 different answers. The same goes for tasks with service dogs.

Training the Tasks

Really depends on how you want to do it. Hiring a trainer is the easiest but can be self-taught as long as you, the handler, have the drive and time to do it. Most of Dougal's I was able to teach myself. We did hit some roadblocks where I would call on a trainer for help, but here are some of my takeaways.

Social media is your friend! I have a lot of self-help-type videos listed in our Owner Training area. Most of these were pulled from YouTube.

Once you have created your task list take each task you want and reverse engineer it. Decide how you are going to train each one and break each one down into small parts. Train each individual part and then start connecting them to the task you need. Always remember "baby steps".