Confession: I Am a Lazy Service Dog Owner

I have come to a realization.  And it's OK, because you know what they say - the first step is admitting you have a problem.

I am a lazy service dog owner.  What I am lazy about, specifically, is training my service dog.  Which is why I wanted a fully trained dog from a program, but here is what I have figured out.  Even a fully trained dog from a program needs ongoing training.  Without practice, he gets lazy.  Without practice, his skills get rusty.  And no matter how much training he's had, there are always new things that will come up.

Here is an example, the example, in fact, that led me to this conclusion.  Someone I know is in the process of training her own service dog.  The dog is maybe 15 months old now, not fully trained, but getting close.  She's had him, and been training him, since he was eight weeks old.  She has a lot of experience training working dogs and has owned service dogs before, so she's very qualified to train her own service dog (something I am definitely not qualified to do).

She said that the other day, she went to a picnic with her dog.  She noticed a paper napkin with barbeque sauce on it on the ground under one of the picnic tables.  She knows that her dog likes to eat paper napkins, whether or not they have sauce on them.  In that situation, I would have chosen a seat far away from the napkin, so my dog would not be tempted by it.  I mean, Isaac has no interest in eating napkins, but if he did, I would have sat far away from it.  If no seats were available far away from the napkin, I probably would have picked it up and disposed of it so that I would not have to worry about Isaac eating it while I was eating my lunch.

This person, much more experienced with service dogs and not as lazy as I am, chose to sit right by the napkin.  She wanted to give her dog the opportunity to learn, and practice, not eating napkins, no matter how tempting they might be.  Yes, she had to pay attention to what her dog was doing while she ate her own lunch and she had to remind him a few times not to eat the napkin.  But in the future, when she is busy with something really important, she will not have to worry about her dog eating a dropped napkin, because she knows he has been trained really well not to do that.

I need to put more time and energy into training Isaac like that.