Right now, Seva is working on two crucial skills, Watch and Sit. Service dogs need to pay constant attention to their handler so they are always ready to receive the next cue. The focus is amazing.

A Helping Paws dog at the Wag Walk & Run

You can see in the photo that while this person is watching the disc dog demo, the dog in the vest is facing and watching her with intense concentration. This readiness to work and the ability to watch a handler for cues is the foundation on which the other skills are built.

This always amazes me. This dog is surrounded by not only a crowd of people, but other dogs, and there’s activity all around him, and yet, he’s waiting for the next cue.

Seva is not there yet. In fact, a stick is far more interesting than I am. Sometimes I lose out to dirt. But she is on her way, which is beyond cool.

When we train, I have a clicker and treat bag on me. For Sit, every time her butt hits the floor, I click and give her a piece of kibble. Over and over. Between each click and treat, I move a little and she follows me. This resets the behavior. Pretty simple stuff.

For Watch, she has to make eye contact to get the click and treat. This is harder. Seva tracks the hand that feeds her–who wouldn’t? So I put my hands behind my back. She looks at the feed bag, she looks at my knees, my hips, finally my face and I click. She does catch on fast, and the eye contact comes more readily after a few minutes of practice.

A dog quirk, however, is that she likes to circle me between repetitions. She gets a treat, I step away, she follows, walks around me, then sits down. Sometimes she decides to sit behind me and watch my hands. Not so good for eye contact. I ignore this behavior and wait for her to reposition.

Today, Seva was sitting behind me, waiting a few seconds, then standing up and putting her paws on me: “Hey, I did it. Click me already!” This kind of behavior is neither rewarded nor punished. I help her get her paws back on the floor and we try again.

It’s important that the dog be able to perform anywhere, so we train in the kitchen, the hallway, and outside. As she can handle more distractions, I’ll increase the number of places we train. As I said, there are times when I still lose out to dirt.

She is a smart girl. Tonight when she was ready for dinner, she did not look for her bowl or whine. She parked her butt and stared at me.