Service dog? (new thread)

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i love my dog and i wanted to train her myself to be a service dog for me and my needs, but i cant display dominant behaviour. And it looks like shell need some advanced training.

i would love to put her through the advanced training but i cant afford it, my dad is a single parent on and were both surviving on the money he does get, My therapist said i might be eligible for a disability benefit but my dad doesn't want me to get one.

Let me cut to the chase, i need my dog to recognize:

1. when i'm entering a meltdown

2. when i'm over stressed

3. when i'm having an anxiety attack

4. to help me through everyday tasks

5. when i'm shutting down from Sensory overload

she already follows me around the house but i go to the mall and over my sisters and thats where i need her the most. just writing this has given me anxiety.

please help me i need a cheap, training alternative.

Simply put, there isn't a cheap training alternative.

Service dogs aren't cheap. They're specialized working dogs that not all dogs can be. They need to be highly trained. They need to be the right temprement. They can't just be thrown into situations, or you have a bite risk on hand, and you are hurting other disabled people by bringing a dog that is unprofessional in public.

In most cases, the cheapest way to get a service dog is actually to go through a program that provides service dogs. They generally require you to wait about 2 years and fundraise a few thousand dollars.

This is less money and time than it takes to train a service dog yourself. It takes 2 years to train your dog yourself - it take 2 years of training. And generally it takes multiple thousands of dollars to actually provide the dog what it needs in training. And this way you won't get fundraising support.

We have the downside as autistic people that there are many scams in the autism service dogs, and not many people providing real autism service dogs. If you are looking for a program dog you have to look carefully for one that is actually trained and specifically one that is actually task trained - i.e. one that actually does stuff to help you that you can't do yourself, not just having its presence there help you. Without that its not a service dog.

What you need though, if you really want to do this, is a private trainer, an evaluation of if your dog can do it, and a commitment of 2 years of hard work and a lot of money.

And then, after that, people in public treating you in different ways because of your dog.

It's not easy.

It's just sometimes necessary.

Because that's what service dogs are. They're not people bringing dogs in public because they want their dogs with them. They're people bringing medical equipment in public with them because they need them. It just happens that they're medical equipment has 4 paws.

So no, you can't take an easy way out. Because service dogs aren't an easy way out type of thing.

On the upside, a service dog, can be invaluable and can do a lot. There are things dogs can do that other things can't do. You just need to realize what you're getting into when you getting into that.

what you need is a Therapy Dog. I think they are usually cheaper and easier to train than service dogs.

These all sound like good reasons to have a dog.

As Tuttle said, If you need a dog the best way to get one is to apply for one since they, if approved will give you a dog for free more or less. The service dogs cost about $10,000 to train and the dogs start out from specially bread litters to improve the chances of the dog working out.

Not really. The kinds of tasks that ZombieBride mentions are psychiatric service dog tasks. They take training. It's a complex task to teach a dog how to recognize the beginnings of a meltdown and to notify you so that you can calm down before things get out of hand. The dog would need to know what a shutdown looks like and what to do when you are in a shutdown. Depending on which everyday tasks you want help with, it could be quite simple--the dog could remind you to take your meds when an alarm went off, for example. Or pretty complex, like prompting you through a household chore.

A therapy dog is the sort of dog that helps people who are in hospitals and institutions, or who live alone, or who generally need the sort of peaceful contact that an animal can provide. I had a visit from a therapy dog once when I was in the mental ward, and I think it really helped all of us to have a calm dog that we could pet and interact with, and the dog loved it too. But a therapy dog is not the same thing as a psychiatric service dog. You need a psychiatric service dog to deal with things like overload, shutdown, executive dysfunction, etc. A therapy dog tends to live with its handler and visit the people who benefit from interaction with said therapy dog; a psychiatric service dog stays with its handler full time.

Sometimes a dog can't do enough, and you need a human aide, but a dog really can be a good step toward independence (or a preventative against losing independence). I encourage you to find a service dog agency and get them to evaluate your needs to determine if a dog could solve some of those problems. Try to find an agency that has experience with psychiatric service dogs rather than just guide dogs.

By the way--if you do go with an agency, there is still a chance that you could work with your own dog. They could evaluate your dog, find out if s/he is the sort of do who could help you as a service animal. The odds are against it, but you never know; you might have gotten lucky.