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.


Charlie demonstrating how to read a stick figure cue card

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.

Click to download Service Dogs: The Inside Scoop -- Part I, from International PartiPoodle Gazette (Volume 4, Issue 1 - January 2008)
Click to download Service Dogs: The Inside Scoop -- Part II, from International PartiPoodle Gazette (Volume 4, Issue 2 - April 2008)
Click to download 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

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Pup in a Wheelchair in Warren

Not every dog is suitable for Service work, even if they receive all of the correct training and socialization. There are many factors involved, from genetics, to health issues, to a personality that is not quite willing/gentle enough.