Rosie’s Tail Training is proud to offer training for those training their own service dogs. We have options including group classes, private lessons, and our specialty training programs. 

 

While we mainly focus on psychiatric service dog training, we also train autism assistance dogs, diabetes alert dogs, and cardiac response dogs. 

 

We can work with you wherever you are in your journey: searching for your new prospect, public access training, or helping a service dog that has had some setbacks. 

 

We are one of the only programs that will assist with owner trained service dogs. We are based in Minnesota, but with online services, we can work with you wherever you are. 

 

Get Started Today!

To start your owner training process, we start with an initial consultation, during which we will discuss your goals, where you are at in the process, and we will create a fully customized, step by step training plan. We will also discuss which training option best suits you. 

 

These options include: weekly group classes, private lessons, and day training programs designed to get you on the road to success even faster.

 

SERVICE DOG FAQs

 

Our Qualifications

Max has trained service dogs for himself and others for about 4 years now. He has thousands of hours of hands-on experience, and uses up-to-date, scientifically backed methods. He holds multiple certifications, and aside from service dogs, he works with reactive and aggressive dogs. Because of this, he has great understanding of the foundations of dog behavior, and how to apply that to the real world. Most service dog trainers only train service dogs, so this gives him a wider perspective and more ideas when working with service dogs. Being cross-specialized like this means you will get the best of both worlds: real-world experience with service dogs, and advanced knowledge of how dogs learn and how they respond to their feelings.

 

What is a Service Dog

Service dogs are dogs that are trained to help their handler with their disability. The training must be specific to the disability: like guiding a blind person, or performing a medication retrieval for someone with epilepsy. There are many different kinds of service dogs: psychiatric, autism assistance, seizure alert and response, cardiac alert and response, mobility assistance dogs, the list goes on. 

 

What Does Training Look Like?

Broadly speaking, service dog training is mainly public access training and task training. Public access training refers to good behavior in public, such as loose leash walking/heeling, focus on the handler, and not engaging with people who are not the handler. An example of this would be looking to the handler when people approach to pet the dog. 

 

How Long Does It Take to Train A Service Dog?

Service dog training generally takes about 2 years. This is a ballpark, and a lot of things will change it. The first year or so is spent on basic obedience, and learning the foundations of public access training. The next 6 months to a year are spent on learning the tasks that will assist their handler, and then training them to do these tasks, even in really difficult environments. 

 

How Much Does It Cost to Train A Service Dog?

Service dog training can cost anywhere from the low hundreds to the mid five figures- so 500 to 50,000. What effects this figure are:

• If you choose to owner train your dog, or go through a program

• Style of training you choose- group classes vs private lessons vs board and trains

• How well the dog takes to training, as some dogs might need more training than others

• Setbacks faced: While progress is never linear, there are cases where something will shake a dog’s confidence, and you may need to go back several steps in training to recover

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