Resources
American Poodles At Work
is a Massachusetts-based program which breeds, raises, trains, and
places Standard Poodles as assistance dogs. We are dedicated to
providing well-trained, intelligent, healthy Poodles who enjoy working
for their partners, fulfilling the assistance dogs' purpose as an
unobtrusive helpmate.
Resources
There are many organizations that promote the training of service dogs, specifically. We recommend some of the most influential and inspirational ones. We learned a lot about how to be successful with American Poodles At Work by following their sage advice. As with many things in life: practice, practice, practice!
Read the Articles
Jillian has written a number of articles to explain the fine art of raising a service dog puppy. Thousands of hours of love and many hundreds of hours of training are required before a pup is ready for graduation. In these articles Jillian explains how a service puppy is first selected based on personality and good health, then progressively trained to willingly perform ever more challenging tasks.
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Service Dogs: The Inside Scoop -- Part I, from International PartiPoodle Gazette (Volume 4, Issue 1 - January 2008) |
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Service Dogs: The Inside Scoop -- Part II, from International PartiPoodle Gazette (Volume 4, Issue 2 - April 2008) |
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What? Dogs Can READ?!?, from International PartiPoodle Gazette (Volume 4, Issue 4 - October 2008) |
Watch the Videos
This section is for folks who want to learn more detail about how we train our dogs. We have been developing training videos for several years and are now systematizing them as reference material. Feel free to visit the entire collection
Assistance Dogs are in such high demand that it is not uncommon for programs to have a waiting list of even 5 or more years.
In general, Service Dogs should start training and socialization by 8 weeks of age. In programs that breed their own dogs, training can begin as early as 3 weeks with astounding results.
Poodles have "hair" -- not "fur" -- which grows continuously and needs to be maintained with regular brushing and clipping. It is recommended to have them fully groomed every 6-8 weeks.
