Education

The mission of Sterling Service Dogs is 
(a) to explore mutually beneficial ways for dogs and disabled persons to work together
(b) to promote high standards for the training and care of service dogs and therapy dogs
(c) to help the disabled community in other ways by sharing our research on new tasks, equipment and training methods, and through educating health care professionals, other organizations, disabled individuals and the public about assistance dog partnership.

This section contains a sampling of our Educational Outreach activities. Also look below for links to articles that can promote a better understanding of assistance dog partnership.

Community Education Events

Presentation for Catholic Social Services in Detroit 
at its annual picnic for volunteers and employees

Service Dog Training Seminars

Dakota demos 25 tasks to a gathering of program trainers, private trainers and assistance dog partners at Sharps Rehabilitation Hospital, San Diego

 

International Helping Hand

Sterling Service Dogs has hosted trainers from Finland (see photo), and from India, Malaysia and Austria as well as helping other programs outside the USA with equipment and task training information upon request.

Share Training Research

Sterling Service Dogs participates each year in the conferences held by Assistance Dogs International (ADI) and the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners (IAADP), a world renowned four day event attended by programs from many countries and the leaders of the assistance dog movement. Our program is committed to obtaining continuing education for our trainers. We are equally committed to sharing our new task and equipment innovations and training insights with ADI training programs and IAADP partner members through workshops at this event to multiply the number of disabled persons who can ultimately benefit from our work. Articles in a number of publications and on websites about our findings provides an additional way to help the disabled community through the work we do here at Sterling Service Dogs.

New Task 
Step by step instructions on how to train a service dog to respond to an emergency involving a patient who depends on a ventilator to breathe, retrieving the air hose apparatus so it can be re-connected by a patient to the trache tube, involving silent signal communication, shared by Sterling Service Dogs in 2003 at the IAADP conference with video tape presentation

Articles: 

What Every Caregiver Needs to Know About Service Dogs
Tasks for Traditional Assistance Dogs
What Will They Think of Next?