Training “Tails”: Building Skills with a Future Speech Therapy Dog (Part 2-The Middle Months)
With apologies to my stepdaughter, I’m not sure if I could be prouder of Zephyr if he was a human child. (Sorry Munchkin!)
Gone is the round baby face and droopy ears of the puppy I first fell in love with, and here to stay is a long wolf-like snout and possibly the biggest ears ever seen on a dog.
Let’s just say he’s an awkward adolescent. But he is learning something new every day, soaking up our training outings and bounding to the car for each new adventure!
So now that he is solidly trained in the basics of having his body handled, following my hand (luring), and socializing confidently with a wide variety of people and in a wide variety of places (see part 1), what’s next for Zephyr? How do we keep our training progressing during this adolescent period when he’s not yet mature enough for true work and yet still needs something to occupy his mind?
For the next few months we’ll be focusing on more precise obedience for a wider variety of skills, slowly introducing him to the office environment, and continuing to socialize whenever possible. Let’s look at each of these areas in a bit more detail…
Speech therapy dog hopeful Zephyr during one of our many training outings in town. Here he works on a relaxed but attentive stay while I walk around him. (Check out those ears!)
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Increasing Skills for Future Animal-Assisted Speech Therapy
Before I begin, I am a speech-language pathologist by training and not a dog trainer. I highly recommend working with a professional dog trainer while preparing to partner with a therapy dog (see “Un-Slumping” with a Team: Lessons from Dr. Seuss for Speech Therapy Dog Partnerships). The suggestions included in this article are based on my six years of experience working with five different therapy dog hopefuls.
Soon, Zephyr and I will join a Canine Good Citizen preparation class to help refine skills around behaving politely in public spaces. I have found the framework of this affordable and widely available third-party assessment to be a helpful starting point for my dogs.
(See Sky Did It! Four Ways Earning a Canine Good Citizen Title Benefited Our Speech Therapy Dog Journey)
When it comes to specific skills a therapy dog will need in a professional setting, however, there will be some variation based on your particular work environment. Basics like sit, down, leave it, and stay are helpful in a variety of contexts, but others I personally have found particularly beneficial include:
“Go to your bed”—to direct a dog either to rest, to get away from a potentially dangerous situation (e.g.., if a child client is being too impulsive), or to create distance if a client is becoming dysregulated by the dog’s presence
“Back-up”—again to direct your dog out of harm’s way (e.g., in my office preventing crashes with the swing) or to increase distance if a client is having a difficult moment
“Drop it”—essential for preventing clients from pulling something out of a dog’s mouth. This action could injure the dog if done roughly and also could encourage the dog to grab for the item and potentially bite in the process, even without meaning to. It’s also helpful if the dog picks up a toy or item dropped by the client that is not okay to play with (e.g., a child’s stuffed animal)
“Wait”—to keep a dog behind a threshold (either visually marked, such as at a doorway, or invisible such as a particular spot in a hallway you teach not to go beyond without being released to do so)
I enjoy including a few tricks into therapy sessions as well. I find tricks can be an especially great way to generalize particular skills, letting a child ask the dog to do a behavior using a well-practiced articulation sound (e.g., “spin” for the /sp-/ combination) or language skill (e.g., asking “Can you…?).
Because I teach my dogs to respond to both verbal cues and hand signals, I can hand signal them to do a trick while the child says whatever synonym includes their communication target, such as saying “loop-de-loop” to practice the /l-/ sound even though the dog typically hears “spin.”
Zephyr enjoys using his paws, so he’s quickly picked up on shake and high-five and we are working on a wave. He’s also learning to roll over and crawl. And I’ve just started asking him to do deep pressure input “squishes” with a few family members who know to lie very still, as many of my clients love this activity with my other speech therapy dogs.
Searching for items in my level one and two dog puzzles, another common way I incorporate my dogs into sessions, took Zephyr about 30 seconds to figure out, so we have that covered.
I hope in the future to teach him “paws up” to stand next to kids at the sink while hand-washing and/or while hanging up their coats. For now though, I’m holding off to prevent him from getting confused about counter-surfing and jumping up on people. He is still an impulsive puppy after all.
I also hope he’ll enjoy jumping on the swing and ball pit with kids. He has spontaneously jumped on both while exploring the office (see next section) and seemed comfortable, but for right now I’m avoiding asking him to jump to avoid possibly damaging his rapidly growing body. They are also two items that could quickly became scary if he slips, so I’d rather not introduce these at his age. There will be plenty of time for that in the future.
Exploring the Office
Zephyr at about five months old on his first visit to my office building. Over several successive visits we have practiced skills he will need for animal-assisted speech therapy and taken steps to help him develop a positive association with this setting.
To help Zephyr generalize what he’s learned at home and puppy class, I have started bringing him by the office when it’s closed.
Giving him plenty of time to sniff and explore while I clean or complete paperwork allows him to get used to the noises of the place (people walking in the hallway, voices from the office next door, air conditioning kicking on, etc). We can also practice our obedience skills in this environment, both within the office and in the building’s common areas.
My main focus of these trips though is to develop a positive association with the office. So when Zephyr is with me he gets play-time with his favorite toys, extra special chew toys, sunflower-butter filled Kongs, and plenty of enthusiastic praise for exploring (see Speech Therapy Dog Supplies for ideas).
Like a child who is potty-training, I also try to fill him up with water so that he feels a need to use the potty spots I’ve designated for my therapy dogs at the edge of the parking area. It also helps me figure out his “tells” for when he needs to go. We did have an accident on one outing, so having non-toxic enzymatic cleaner on hand is a must.
Continued Socialization as a Speech Therapy Dog in Training
My favorite place to socialize my speech therapy dog hopefuls is farm supply/feed stores. Employees there are generally knowledgeable about dogs and willing to interact (or not) with your pup as you desire. Plus there’s plenty of sight/smell/sound distractions to provide training challenges as you progress.
To date, Zephyr has always been a very confident, resilient pup, but keep in mind that each therapy dog candidate is different and will need a personalized approach to socialization.
The goal is to provide just enough of a challenge with new experiences to stimulate learning, but not so much that the dog is taken “over threshold” and becomes stressed to the point they can’t immediately bounce back.
That said, mistakes will happen. It’s okay and it doesn’t have to be the end of the world (even if sometimes it feels like it in the moment).
Puppies from six to fourteen months of age can unexpectedly develop transient fears around people, places, and objects that they’ve handled readily in the past. This “fear period” can be daunting as a puppy raiser, so I recently did a deep-dive on this topic in “Fear Isn’t Failure: Helping Your Young Therapy Dog Candidate Through Emotional Growing Pains”).
Overall however, by staying vigilant to watch Zephyr’s body language and back off to a safe distance if he’s expressing discomfort with a situation, I’m putting him in slightly more challenging situations both physically and emotionally.
From a physical standpoint, I’m asking him to explore different surfaces while walking beside me on leash or following my hand.
Trips to a child’s playground provide opportunities to walk up stairs made from metal grating (both a different texture and potentially challenging because you can see through it to the ground below), a bouncy bridge, and even a pile of wood chips covered with a slick tarp to bound over. Each try from my eager-to-please pup gets amply rewarded with treats.
Of course, since Zephyr is still actively growing I’m cautious not to ask him to jump up or down very high to avoid damaging the growth plates of his bones.
Visiting campgrounds, whether as a special trip or to stay overnight, gives us opportunities to walk past unfamiliar dogs on leash or tether, many of whom bark. One of few challenges I’ve faced with Zephyr so far, even at a safe distance he understandably shows a little bit of reactivity to the yipping dogs jumping at the end of their ropes (though he doesn’t when meeting dogs in stores or on our typical walking paths). It gives me chances, however, to practice redirecting his attention and rewarding him for looking at me with an enthusiastic “yes!” and a treat when possible.
Campgrounds also expose Zephyr to every assortment of wheeled object (bikes, scooters, hover boards, roller skates), buzzing drones, and having to maintain a mannerly walk past campfire cooking smells. He also gets to hear lots of kids squealing, both in delight and during meltdowns, and he is periodically surrounded by running, excited children.
Street fairs and farmer’s markets in my town have also given us regular opportunities to work amongst a larger, more chaotic crowd.
While maintaining some basic boundaries for him, I nonetheless let Zeph pretty much figure out how to interact with admirers. So far his affiliative nature has shown through in every interaction, even when a child with special needs was a little rough out of excitement and delayed motor control. (Zephyr’s reaction? To pull on the leash to get closer and lick the boy’s hands.) While I want to keep him safe, I also want him to feel he can make decisions around how he interacts with people without being micro-managed.
After stepping a bit away after each of these more chaotic interactions, I give Zephyr a “party” with lots of treats and playful pets and then walk confidently onward so he feels pride in performing like a therapy dog.
I also like to put him on a tether at our campsite or in a picnic area, away from other people and unfamiliar dogs, to learn to relax and rest without me micromanaging his needs. Of course, it’s helpful that Zephyr is at this stage in his training during summer months, but I could also get similar benefits from walking past elementary schools at recess or visiting busier parks during cooler months.
Again, if Zephyr does at some point show difficulty in any of these interactions I will be diligent to get him immediately away and calmed down before reintroducing the situation more slowly and with more predictability to help build his resilience.
An approach individualized to where your therapy dog hopeful is in the moment is key to keeping socialization outings a positive learning experience.
What’s Next for Speech Therapy Dog-in-Training Zephyr?
I certainly hope I will continue to feel the pride in Zephyr’s accomplishments that I have felt up to this point. He continues to seem a strong candidate for future speech therapy dog work, but only time will tell for sure.
As Zephyr approaches his first birthday this winter and develops more mental and physical stamina, I plan to slowly start introducing him into actual work. Stay tuned for part 3 of the Training Tails articles around the holidays.
In the meantime, if you’re feeling ready to learn more about animal-assisted therapy check out the book Paws for Progress: Integrating Animal-Assisted Interventions Into Your Speech-Language Pathology Practice, the course Talk to the Paw: Therapy Animal Inclusion in a Professional Setting, and the FREE one-hour video Welcome to Animal-Assisted Interventions: The What and Why Behind AAI.
May your day be filled with puppy wiggles and children’s giggles,
Sharlet
