Anxiety, depression, flashbacks, or dissociative states can be challenging to manage. Fortunately, with the right training, your service dog can become an invaluable partner in recognizing and responding to these psychiatric episodes. This article explores two effective methods for training your service dog to alert you to and help mitigate your anxiety. The primary goal is to ensure your service dog can recognize your distress and respond in a way that helps manage your disability.
Association with Anxiety
The first step in training is helping your dog associate certain signs with your anxiety. When you begin to feel anxious or experience a panic attack, immediately call your dog to you and offer high-value treats or preferred rewards. Consistency is key; by repeatedly associating your anxious state with positive reinforcement, your dog will start to proactively seek you out when they detect changes in your behavior or physiology.
Once your dog reliably comes to you during anxious moments, you can begin training a specific response. Whether you desire a lick, a nudge, or a paw-up, choose a behavior that best mitigates your disability and train it until it’s a reliable command. Then, during your anxiety episodes, prompt your dog to perform this trained behavior and reward them generously upon successful completion. Over time, your dog will learn to perform this specific action to receive a “jackpot” of rewards, reinforcing the connection between your anxiety and their helpful response.
To refine this training, it’s beneficial to keep a log. Note when your dog offers the trained behavior and simultaneously assess your own anxiety levels. This log will help you identify any lag time between your dog’s alert and your own awareness of symptoms, allowing you to adjust the reward timing accordingly. By gradually delaying rewards until you can verify your anxiety, you ensure your dog is being reinforced for responding to genuine distress, not random occurrences. This method, applied consistently from a young age, can lead to a service dog reliably recognizing and responding to both major and subtle anxiety triggers.
Responding to Tells
An alternative or complementary training method involves teaching your dog to respond to your “tells”—subtle behaviors you exhibit when experiencing anxiety. This method is particularly useful if your dog struggles to recognize your physiological anxiety cues or if you need assistance even when you are at a distance.
To implement this, first identify your personal tells by asking friends and family for their observations. Common tells can include specific body movements, breathing patterns, or vocalizations. Once identified, train your dog to perform a desired behavior (e.g., jumping on your chest) in response to a standard cue. Then, pair your tell with this established cue. Start by exhibiting your tell, immediately follow with the known cue, and then reward your dog for performing the desired behavior.
Gradually increase the time between exhibiting your tell and giving the verbal cue, allowing your dog to make the connection independently. Consistent practice with varying the time intervals will help your dog learn to associate your tell directly with the expected response. Rewarding your dog when they perform the behavior solely based on your tell reinforces this association.
Context and Considerations
It is important to understand that you don’t need to know the exact physiological signals your dog is responding to; the association method allows the dog to utilize whatever cues are most reliable for them. However, dogs are not always adept at generalizing, so if you want your service dog to assist you in public settings, it’s crucial to extend your training beyond the home environment as you progress.
Training a response to tells is more targeted and allows for practice even when you are not actively experiencing symptoms, which can be a significant advantage if your episodes are infrequent or difficult to manage during training. Collaborating with a professional dog trainer can be highly beneficial to ensure effective training and address any potential issues.
With these methods, you can train your service dog to be a reliable partner in managing your psychiatric needs. Happy training!
