That is great! Congrats!!! I am having Kiara go through more training in hopes of getting her TDI certified...she is my emotional support dog and I would love to be able to take her with me when my husband can not be there with me. After I breed her, I would like to set it up to have one of her pups go into a program like that for someone.
That is great! I do want to point out that getting her certified as a therapy dogs only allows you to take her to visit places like hospital, nursing homes, etc to cheer people up. It doesn't give you public access rights or make her a service dog.
This is something my friend wrote which is really helpful if someone wants to train their own dog as a service dog (the links relate to psychiatric service dogs but are good basics for any type):
The ADA defines a service dog as a dog who is individually trained to perform tasks or work that mitigates their handler's disability. This also means that the dog just being there does not qualify as a task or work.
Step 1: Talk with your doctor, verify that your disability meets ADA standards, and discuss what work or tasks a dog could do to assist you. Talk with other service dog owners about the pros and cons of living with a service dog, reading these webpages for more information
Psychiatric Service Dog Society and
Psychiatric Service Dog Society Determine what tasks/work your dog could do to mitigate your disability. For example, training your dog to retrieve is only a task if you can not do that on your own.
Step 2: Find a trainer and have your dog temperament tested to make sure they are likely to make it as a service dog-- any sign of aggression in a dog's past (towards humans or other animals) is unacceptable in a service dog candidate in my opinion. Talk with the trainer and/or a vet to be sure your dog can safely do the work/tasks needed to assist you. Also have your dog examined by a vet to make sure they are healthy enough to work. If you don't have a dog, or your dog is not suitable for service work, read this article for help deciding what breed and where to get the dog:
Psychiatric Service Dog Society and hire a professional trainer to help you pick a dog.
Step 3: Master basic obedience at home, in local parks, in petstores, and in other dog friendly stores-- some hardware stores and bookstores will allow pets, call and ask. Make sure to start keeping a training log of what you are doing, how your dog is doing with obedience, public access and assistance behaviors. Find a trainer able to assist you. Also, start learning both the Americans with Disabilities Act and your local laws (which will tell you if your service dog in training gets public access or not. SDiTs aren't covered by the ADA)
Step 4: Once your dog is pretty much able to pass the CGC (in other words could do it with the use of a few treats, or could do it all except for the leaving the dog alone bit) purchase a vest and in training patches, and visit the places in step 3 with the vest on. If you haven't already started training tasks/work, start that now, too. It is helpful to have a trainer who is familiar with service dogs to help you through this process. If you have never trained a service dog before, it is very difficult to so it by yourself the fist time.
Step 5: Gradually visit more and more difficult environments-- saving places with lots of crowds, food etc for later. Train to the public access standard on the PSDS website.
Step 6: If you live in a state with SDIT protection, spend another few months to a year in training just to make sure you're both really comfortable with whatever comes up. Really, it's not a race! Slow is fast with service dog training.
Step 7: Take a public access test like the one here
http://www.psychdog.org/attach/Public_Access_Standard_Test_Sheet.pdf and have someone videotape it if possible. If you don't have a trainer who can give the test, have a friend do it. The idea is that your dog should be able to perform these things, and if you ever have a court case, video proof of this may be helpful, or at least a letter from a trainer saying that you did the things.
Also, PSDS has an owner training standard that lists the steps in a slightly different format here:
Psychiatric Service Dog Society
Also remember that if you have an intact service dog, you won't be able to work her while she is in heat. A service dog can legally be ejected for making a mess.
Hope this helps a bit!
