Enrollment for the Academy and Foundations is currently closed. Learn more below, or fill out the form to join the waiting list.
Enrollment for the Academy and Foundations is currently closed. Learn more below, or fill out the form to join the waiting list.
Training your own service dog is exciting, amazing, and unbelievably rewarding.
Its also confusing, difficult, and scary.
But, it's also totally doable.
All you really need are three things:
A solid understanding of learning theory and dog behavior and the ability to apply that knowledge like a pro.
Straight forward training plans and techniques that are simple, effective, and scientifically backed.
A support system and coaches that have been there and can walk with you on this journey, help you problem solve, and keep you moving forward.
You may have one of these things. You may have none.
That's where we come in.
My Service Dog Online Academy can provide all three.
It's a monthly membership site filled with videos, live trainings, and printable PDFs, all designed to help you train your own service dog. As a member, you'll have access to things like:
- The Core Curriculum: A step-by-step course showing you how to train your service dog from beginning to end. (These levels are being released as they are created)
- Live interactive master classes and Q&A calls (plus access to previous replays)
- Access to our ever growing resource vault / video library
This means that:
When you join My Service Dog Online, for less than the cost of a single private lesson a month with a trainer, you get those three things every owner trainer needs:
A solid understanding of learning theory.
There is a science behind dog training. A science as real and governed by rules as physics or biology. Training a service dog really does require that you understand that science so that you can think and train like a professional.
With our dog training foundations module, live web classes, and live Q&As you’ll learn the science behind dog training, how to take that science and think like a dog trainer, and how to actually apply all that information to your service dog.
Straight forward training plans and techniques.
We don’t just cover the science and the theories behind dog training, we actually show you how to apply that science with step-by-step videos. You’ll have access to our video library where we’ll be adding new videos regularly covering everything from obedience, to task training, to problem solving.
Not only do you have the video library, but you’ll also have both our Advanced Beginnings course and our Fantastic Focus course.
A support system that gets it.
You need a coach and a community that can answer your questions and keep you moving towards that final goal: a service dog that is trustworthy, reliable, and focused.
When you’re a member of our Academy you’ll have access to our private Facebook group where you can get support and advice, not only from each other, but from my trainers and me as well. That’s where you can post videos and get feedback on your training, post questions, and where you’ll get to participate in our live and interactive Q&A sessions.
See what other have to say about the Academy:
What's included:
- The Core Curriculum: This is our full course showing you step-by-step how to train your own service dog from beginning to end. Every lesson includes a written lesson, video examples, and downloadable pdfs. It's the stuff every service dog team needs to know.
- The Resource Vault: Filled with videos on all kinds of training topics, replays of past web classes, downloadable pdfs, and more, on topics you may need but another handler may no.
- Task Training Library: This library is constantly growing and includes info on general task training as well as mini-courses on specific tasks.
- Private Community where you can ask questions and get feedback on your training videos. This is also where the live Q&As are held.
- Interactive live Masterclasses, Q&A s and webinars with guest trainers.
Ready to Join?
Your first step is to join our new Service Dog Foundations Course!
Service dog training is a lot like building with legos. Get the right core pieces and you can put them together over and over again in new ways, building a solid foundation that leads to l success in task training, public access training, and any other training you do.
This six-week course is all about building those core lego pieces and building a strong foundation for you and your dog.
It's about building a dog-handler team (you and your dog) who can work through distractions, train new behaviors, and proof those behaviors around distractions and in new places.
Week One and Two
The first two weeks are all about three things:
- Your skills as a trainer: So many courses focus mostly (or only) on the dog's end of the leash. But really, your dog's success is tied directly to your skills as a trainer, and a HUGE majority of the issues our handlers come to us with are solved when we fine- tune the human end of the leash.
- Your dog's ability to focus: This is the top struggle most owner trainers report, and it's the single most important thing for your dog to know, because you can't teach him anything if he isn't paying attention.
- You and your dog's ability to engage with each other, because service dog t and handling is a team sport with you AND your dog, and engagement and focus is a two-way street.
Weeks Three and Four
Week three and four are all about training a handful of core behaviors. Behaviors that serve multiple purposes and can be used to build all kinds of new things later. We'll also use those behaviors to continue to improve you and your dog's skills, understanding of certain concepts, and ability to work together as a team.
Weeks Five and Six
Finally, the last two weeks are all about doing those five behaviors around distractions and in new places.
This means you'll leave this course as a dog handler team who can:
- Use shaping, targeting, and capturing to train new behaviors
-Put behaviors under stimulus conrol so your dog only offers them when you cue them (no more throwing random behaviors to try and get a treat)
- Work around distractions as a team. Your dog being able to focus on you, and you being able to recognize when he starts to struggle BEFORE things really go south, and what to avoid it.
- Have a strong foundation in five core behaviors (plus a couple of extras) that p you and your dog with the skills to move seamlessly into things like heeling, task training, and public access training.
- And more!
Week Seven
Recieve an exclusive invitation to join the Academy!
At the beginning of week seven inside the course, you'll receive an invitation to join the Academy.
Academy FAQ
The Service Dog Training Foundations course is a pre-requisite to joining the Academy, which means enrollement is only open to students of the foundations course.
At the end of your time in the Service Dog Training Foundations Course (week 7) you'll receive an invitation to join the Academy.
The Academy is an online, $42 per month membership site, you'll have access to it for as long as you're a member. Here's how the academy's content will be delivered to you.
Every month, you'll receive one new level of the core curriculum every week for two weeks in a row. Then you'll have an implementation week for you to catch up and practice what you've learned.
The content inside the resource vault and task training library will become available to you as it relates to the information inside the core curriculum. Because you and your dog will need to know certain pieces of the core curriculum in order to be successful with exercises and behaviors in the Task Training Library and Resource Vault.
You'll have a to all live trainings including Q&As and guest trainer presentations as soon as you join.
While we do welcome students training therapy dogs, emotional support dogs, or looking to train a pet dog, this course is designed for service dogs and so it will guide students through the process of public access training. If you are not training a service dog, you will need to limit your training to pet friendly locations only.
The Americans with Disabilities Act defines a service animal is as a dog "that has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability." This task or tasks must directly relate to their handler's disabilities.
Because the sole function of a therapy dog or an emotional support dog is to provide comfort, they are not considered service dog's under federal law in the United States.
At this time only service dogs are legally allowed to accompany their owners into public places.
Completing this course does not automatically grant a therapy dog, emotional support dog, or pet dog service dog status under the law. Misrepresenting a service dog is illegal and it is your responsibility to understand and follow the laws in your area.
You may find more information on the federal laws here:
https://www.ada.gov/service_animals_2010.ht
Because this is a self-study program that does not require an application process, we do not offer certification at this time. Instead, the Academy is designed to do is to be an educational program providing students with the dog training skills, training plans, and knowledge to train their dogs to a high level.
*At this time, certification is not required in the United States. Click here to learn more about the ADA and how it governs the use of service dogs.
There is no time limit to join the Academy. However, once you receive your invite, you will have 4 months to join at the current price without submitting an application. If you wait beyond 4 months to join, there may be changes to price, an application process or other details of the Academy may change and acceptance is not necessarily guaranteed.
While you do not need to have finished the foundations course to join, we do want to make sure you and your dog have gained enough skills to be successful once you join. This way if you've taken a break from training or worked with other methods for a while, we can help ensure you'll have success when joining the Academy through an application process.
You can join the Academy for $42 per month or $420 per year.
About Kate:
Because I've been there. I remember training my first service dog. I'd already been training pet and working dogs for nearly 10 years, but I was still terrified.
What if I messed up, what if I failed? What if I gave it everything I had and it still wasn't enough?
But I didn't fail. And even though that first service dog took me months longer to train than it should have, I learned a lot.
My team and I created My Service Dog Online after years of training dogs and learning from some of the best trainers in the country. And not just service dogs. We've trained dogs and participated in performance sports and search and rescue. We've learned from the top behaviorists and helped solve behavior problems like aggression and fear.
But, it was watching owner trainers struggle to train their service dogs, and watching them struggle to sort through the huge amounts of advice online coming from all corners of the dog training world, that really convinced us to this online space was needed.
We started this site because we wanted to find a way to share both the training techniques and solutions that owner trainers like you know they need AND the skills, information, and science they aren’t aware they’re missing.
"Absolutely fabulous material. Concise, clear instruction, step by step instructions, a methodology that can be incorporated in everyday life. Highly recommended."
Emma
"These videos have given me the confidence and knowledge to train my own service dog. I would be lost without such amazing insight."
