For the highest chance at success, service dogs should be picked from puppyhood, by temperament testing the whole litter of puppies and starting training for Public Access from as young as possible. It is also vitally important that the dog’s breed is picked based on the work it is being trained for, and the energy level and grooming requirements are right for the handler’s average working day, not at all based on breed preference or appearance.

Even if your dog is already somewhat perceptive to your problems, that doesn’t mean they have the right personality and temperament for public access. Service dogs also take 2 years to train, and can only work to the age of 5-7 years old on average, so most dogs are old enough they’d retire soon after training. Since service dogs are trained by boarding them with the trainer so they can get training multiple times a day, it would also mean two years away from you and your home, making it even more stressful for them.

MOST service dogs in training do not become service dogs, not because they can’t/won’t learn the tasks, but because they don’t love the work or don’t have the right personality to ignore the public and work under conditions that would be extremely stressful for most dogs. There should be as much consideration into the dog’s comfort and happiness as there is need for the dog to improve the independence of their owner.

Even in programs that breed generations of service dogs for these exact personalities and working drive, often only 1 in 3 dogs make it to graduation, because of incompatibilities with the dog’s temperament, working drive, or intelligence, so the chances that the dog you already have is right for a life of service work is very low.

The current charge is $20 an hour, plus $5 per session per dog. This is because each dog needs to be worked with independently and having many dogs in the home is much more to address in the same amount of time. This price is subject to change as more clients are taken on and there is the need to add more value to trainer’s time.

Your starting rate is what will be expected of you after every session, and the price you are charged will not go up without consulting you first

It can be guaranteed that it will NEVER cost more than $50 an hour, and severely doubt it would ever even be that much, but as Dylan’s disabilities get worse and medical bills increase, there has to be enough income to support this as a continued profession

Dylan himself is within multiple factions of the queer community, including being Asexual, Gay, and Transgender. While personal questions about these statuses are not encouraged, questions about how to address him or whether you should use certain phrases are allowed, as long as they are asked respectfully and the response is honored in the future. Dylan uses HE/THEY pronouns, and anyone that continually refuses to respect this will be dropped as a client, because Dylan reserves the right to not be around people who imply that his identities are invalid or “wrong” based on their personal or religious beliefs. If you have those opinions, just keep them to yourself and dont disrespect Dylan’s right to a different view and right to be treated with the same respect as people without those identities.

Dylan’s opinion on positive-only (PO) training is pretty negative, due to those kinds of trainers demonizing other trainers, but positive-only methods are not something all dogs respond to. Multiple cases have occurred of dogs needing to be trained by Dylan that have been labeled as “untrainable” by 2 or 3 PO trainers, as well as some smart dogs who know how to circumvent those methods, so it is not something that should be pushed on all dogs as the only way to train them.

Often when a PO trainer’s methods don’t work, particularly on “aggressive” or not food-motivated dogs, the trainers state that the dog is entirely “untrainable” and sometimes even recommend that the dog is euthanized. This is not a fair assessment, and the dogs often just need more understanding of the training, and need a downside or “consequence” to encourage them to make the better choices in the future.

Dylan’s methods center around communicating with the dogs in the same way that another dog would, and in the social world of dog interactions, corrections and consequences are the main way dogs discourage behavior that they don’t like of another dog, so its what makes the most sense and is the easiest for a dog to understand because instead of trying to treat them like a human, (“if you do this you get the reward”) you are using methods that the dog understands and will cause less confusion and frustration for the dog in the long term because you’re “speaking dog” to them