Connection With Your Service Dog

As a Service Dog Handler, how do you connect with your Service Dog?

Connection: a relationship in which a person, thing, or idea is linked or associated with something else.

A simple way to put it, is that a connection with our Service Dogs is our relationship with them. Many different aspects of daily life may impact our relationship that is always evolving. No two days are the same, but if we are lucky we feel that we have a strong relationship with our Service Dog most of the time. That relationship is vital to being successful in navigating a life together where we take care of each other equally. 

No matter what training styles we've used in the past, we all have a relationship with our dogs or we wouldn't be surviving in day to day life. Yet some training methods work to enhance or strengthen our relationship, while other training methods can break apart our relationship. 

Rather than go on and on about relationships, I thought I would share a portion of a lesson from our Confident Canines Class that does a good job looking at how important that relationship really is for the dog to become confident enough to work in a wide variety of places that we need our Service Dogs to help us in.

Confident Canines Lesson on Relationships

Relationship/Team Confidence - the belief that together (dog/handler) they can handle the challenges in front of them.

When it comes to being confident, the strength of relationships should be an easy way to assess one's confidence. Humans and dogs are both going to be more eager to make new friends if they feel confident in their ability to form and develop strong, healthy relationships. Yet neither humans nor dogs are born knowing how to develop great relationships. For this lesson we are going to be looking at relationships and teamwork skills. This is one of the most important of the confidences and often one that is hardest to develop and maintain.

To start with we are going to look at the Human-Animal bond. We will look at why this is so important and how to develop the bond between you and your dog more thoroughly. As a force free trainer, teamwork is the most important aspect of the relationship I have with my dogs so we are going to learn a bit about how positive reinforcement training impacts the strength of our team. Then last but not least, we will look at ways to help your dog learn how to form healthy relationships with other people and dogs.

The Human-Animal Bond is the dynamic relationship between people and animals in that each influences the psychological and physiological state of the other. Human-animal interaction has profound physiological consequences. People in contact with animals experience a decrease in blood pressure, reduced anxiety, and a general feeling of well being. By observing the behavior of animals, children learn to be more nurturing and perhaps better parents to their own children. The therapeutic value of animals for socially isolated individuals in nursing homes, hospitals, hospices, and prisons has been documented. People in the presence of animals are often perceived to be more happy and healthy.
Human-Animal Interactions - Science based terminology

Here are a couple of simple definitions to ensure we are all on the same page:

Bond: Mixed social groups being together and doing the same activity, in this case Humans & Dogs.
Love: A human emotion that we use to describe feelings of connectivity to another being.
Attachment: Observable traits that other humans can observe in a mixed social group that has a well developed bond. 

Relationship Building
One of the best ways to grow your dog’s confidence is to develop a relationship between a human and their dog that is beneficial to both participants by fostering a teamwork based approach which thrives by using cooperation to achieve common goals. We can safely say that all dog owners in this classroom LOVES their dog!

There is a blog post available if you would like to learn more about how dogs show us love.

Here are a few things to keep in mind during training sessions or activities with your dog:

• Every action or interaction with your dog has an effect, it can be beneficial or harmful. This goes for training sessions, games, snuggle time on the couch, etc. It’s up to the human to make the commitment to providing more beneficial interactions then harmful interactions because the dog has very little freedom or choice in daily activities. 
• Teamwork is an evolutionary process that involves history, is influenced by the economy or value, and driven by the culture or rules that you live by. In order to have true teamwork, all participants must receive a benefit of some sorts from the activities that you do together.
• Cooperation in activities is essential to achieve common goals as a team. All common goals can be broken down into one of these categories; games/fun, learning activities, being safe together, defending or taking care of each other.
• An effective Human/Companion Animal Partnership needs to be practiced every day! 

The activities that are paired with this lesson are designed to help your relationship evolve to one based on companionship, partnership, and communication. We urge you to spend 5 minutes a day, every day doing some time of teamwork exercise or game. There are a ton of activities for you to choose from based on the interests of you and your dog. Playing fetch seems to be the go-to or easy thing people often do with their dogs, but I’d encourage you to try to think outside of the box and look for more meaningful activities that help you strengthen your teamwork skills such as parkour, agility, rally skills, etc.

To learn more about the other lessons in the Confident Canines Class, be sure to subscribe to this blog or our Crazy2Calm Patreon Membership so that you can be the first to sign up for this class when it is released this spring!