Thank you for giving me the opportunity to present today.
We work with individuals who have PTSD, TBI, OSI and physical limitations due to their injuries.
The premise of our program is “Are you present? Are you safe?” If you're present, you have the awareness of your surroundings and are capable of being safe. If you are present and safe, you have the timing to reward your potential service dog to develop skills, routines and rituals. This allows the ability to connect as one with your potential service dog. The daily routines help you regain a sense of worth.
Our program develops connection-based activities and training that fosters the reclaiming of the injured veteran or first responder's life. Matching the veteran with a service dog that is complementary to them reinforces a connection to caring for the dog through daily routines and walks. It's an integral component of our program.
You may not know Karen Pryor, who conducted research in the 1970s around shaping and marker signals by training dolphins. The dolphins are trained by teaching the end through a reward marker. This allowed the researchers to learn which behaviours were reward based and how, with no reward, behaviours became minimal. Many people do not realize that positive marking behaviours were led by this researcher and how she contributed to animal training in the world.
I've been using this approach for over 30 years with the RCMP police dog service, and I've spent eight years training service dogs with injured people with PTSD, OSI, TBI and physical injuries in both Canada and Ukraine. Karen Pryor's finding is key to injured veterans and first responders. The marker for them is feeling present and gaining the ability to function through reward, which is their service dog's connection for supporting them.
How do we do this approach in training? We begin with a connection base, where the injured person connects to a non-judgmental dog. This fosters connection within the service dog training through small increments of positive and attainable goals. This leads to regaining connection and engagement with family and friends and, slowly, engagement in the community.
What have we learned through the research we've put into practice? Having a holistic environment, where you are with nature, fosters the ability for the injured person to have a positive state of mind. Within this environment, routines and rituals are developed for the injured person that are unique to them, to learn how to do activities with their potential service dog. Routine building fosters the injured brain to make reconnections and to develop improved long-term and short-term memories.
Additionally, we have learned that when a person has been injured, over years of exposure, their brain injury generates different learning requirements in the amount of time required to learn and develop skills. Learners go at their own pace, and they move through the program as they develop. We are supportive. In many cases, people take over a year to get through our program, and we have several people who have taken up to two years.
The service dog is part of the overall treatment and augments conventional treatments, such as the person's ability, through talk therapy, to last for longer periods without shutting down from triggers. For example, if triggered 15 minutes into a session, they will do a regulating activity that we have taught them and can return to the session for a longer period and improve the success rate of their treatment.
Due to COVID, we spent over a year developing the ability to deliver online Zoom training in line with our program. This was done by working with the research to determine best practices and how long learning and connection can be done, and the parameters required within Zoom. How to foster connection, how long you can train and how many skills you can be taught at one time were examined. We learned that using the safety of the home and making connections with the training team and participants' cohorts is a critical component of the program.
We now know that having 12 to 15 pre-learning lesson modules are required for someone to start the program. That means we've determined that there are 15 things that someone needs to learn or be able to do before they can be successful in training a service dog.
Connection is established through learning how to touch your dog, and the dog learning how to want to be touched. The reward increases in the presence for both by improving the timing and the use of the handler to know when to be present, and for the dog to want to do tasks for that handler or user.
There's working through feelings of anxiety and having tunnel vision during the various drills and skills that we work on. The user of the dog returning to being present makes it possible for them to feel safe and have awareness of their surroundings.
Obedience is used to develop the connection and understanding of being present and safe through the dog. Obedience is not the driving force of our program. We are not a 52-week obedience program. We use obedience to foster a connection. The result is an obedient dog that is working, present and safe.