Training

Each type of service dog goes through common training, then are trained for their specialization in centers that train for many services (Ogden 1992). The dogs receive their basic training from the puppy raisers. The raisers teach the puppies good house manners, basic obedience, and most importantly socialization (Guide Dogs for the Blind 2011). Once they are ready for further training, the dogs are brought back to the training center where they are trained by a head trainer and assistant trainers. It takes a variable amount of time to train dogs, depending on the individual dog and the service they are being trained for. It can take as little as three months to train a dog for the deaf but up to a year to train a dog for a person with a physical disability (Froling 2001). There are methods for early and late behavioural analysis of potential service dogs to determine which are suitable to proceed to training. Weiss and Greenberg (1997) found that the behavioural tests were not predictive of performance in shelter dogs. They did, however, find that fear/submission was a good predictor for success in retrieval tasks. Serpell and Hsu (2001) tested whether a puppy raiser questionnaire assessment is predictive of future success of the dog and they found that is was an accurate measure.