So, my family adopted this 3 month Lab puppy (Duke Ellington) from Anti-Cruelty, a Chicago animal shelter.  The behavior report he came with said he showed mild food aggression and was timid and fearful.  We decided to take our chances anyway, since he was so young.  At the time, we didn't have a service dog in mind because we weren't sure how much a service dog would actually be able to help my quadriplegic sister, considering she has no fine motor skills.  I started to think about it more and more, and decided that I have nothing to loose by at least setting a goal.  At the very least, he can learn to retrieve the phone for her and offer companionship when she has to stay home alone.  I am also thinking of training him to alert my sister to curbs and stairs, since she has no depth perception.  It's a problem when she's in her power chair.

House training was a breeze, and Duke didn't follow through on his behavior report, thankfully for us.  He wizzed through basic obedience commands, but is not yet used to my sister's voice, so that will take time. Duke is now 6 months old, so sometimes he acts like the great dog that he'll become, other times he's just a goofy and rebellious adolescent.  Also, we need to introduce more distractions into our training, as his IQ drops about 20 points when there's a hyperactive dog any where near him.  We have been taking him to beginner training classes to combat this problem.  Currently we're 3 weeks in to the program, so still too early to see significant change.  The plan is to keep repeating the beginner training class at least for now, because he needs to learn how to work around untrained dogs, not necessarily ones that have been going to class for a while and have some manners.

As for socialization, I bought him an "in training" cape from things4yourdog.com.  We have been going to restaurants about once a week.  So far, we have met very little contention from business managers.  One guy tried to tell us to leave, but I informed him that under the Americans with disabilities act, my sister has the right to have a service dog with her.  The federal law does not actually mention anything about SDs in training, but I didn't let him know that.  He had no problem with us staying after I explained the law to him, but we won't be going back.  The majority of employees are very welcoming towards us, and you notice their warm smiles when they see a 6 month old puppy with a SD in training cape.  Duke behaves himself very well, and usually falls asleep while we're eating.  If I could just train him to lie under the table, we would be golden.  He thinks it's a scary dark place under there, so we will work on the command "under".

This is Duke on day one, still at the shelter:

Duke at about 3.5 months.

If Duke were in a professional organization, he would be raised by a puppy raiser and have structured obedience coaching and socializing sessions from the organization.  We don't have that luxury, so we have to improvise by going to pet dog training classes.  I was lucky to find a dog behaviorist/trainer in the Chicago area that is willing to mentor our training and help keep us on the right path.  I have consulted alot of books about dog training in general and found a wide variety of methods, most surrounding the positive training philosophy.  The Teamwork books/DVDs are really helpful, but I have not bought the second DVD yet, because we're not ready for actual SD work right now.  I plan on using this year to teach him the basics of directed retrieval and polish up his basic obedience with tons of distractions and socialization.  I have no practical experience in this field, but from my research, year one is the foundation year.  Then by next year, my hope is that he can polish up his directed retrieval in all conceivable situations that my sister would need to use him.  I will call our trainer to see when a good time would be to start training for curb alerts; at this moment, it's solidifying his basic obedience.  If he was going to be only a pet dog, the obedience he has now would be acceptable (he gets tons of compliments about how well behaved he is), but we need to keep improving in order to reach our goal.  He's a dog, so naturally there's a prey drive and a social drive we have to teach him to control.



Duke looking miserable with his ice bowl.  It's a hot day without AC.