In the past month, we’ve had two service dog teams pass their public access evaluation (PAE) and two teams pass their Bronze DISC practical assessment. These are big accomplishments! We wanted to take a moment to celebrate these teams and to discuss what led to their success.
- Christine & David Bowie and Mugdha & Miso passed their Bronze DISC Assessment!
- Celina & Leila and Deb & Bentley passed their PAE! Bentley promptly accompanied Deb on a trip to Europe, and Leila will be flying soon, too.
Deb is so proud of Bentley’s accomplishment and happy to share a taste of Gelato in Italy!
What is the Bronze DISC Assessment?
We offer a series of service dog training courses called the Dogs In Service Certification (DISC) program. These are 10-session online classes. Each course followed by a knowledge assessment and a practical assessment. Once your dog passes the assessments, they can move to the next level. The level one class is PEARL DISC. Level two is Bronze DISC. (Learn what’s covered in these courses.)
The knowledge test for each level quizzes the handler on the training concepts we’ve taught in the course. We want to make sure they’ve understood the material so they can apply it when training their dog in the “real world.” Since it’s an online course, we also ask questions about their dog’s behavior in situations outside of class. We want to make sure there aren’t behavior issues going untreated.
The practical assessment ensures the dog can easily perform some of the most important skills from each level. The PEARL DISC practical assessment is relatively easy: the dog needs to perform some basic skills (sit, down, touch, attention, loose leash walking) around a mild distraction. But the Bronze DISC assessment must be done in a public-access venue by a credentialed trainer whom the dog has never met before. (This means we often ask another trainer to perform the assessment.)
After passing both assessments, each team receives a paper certificate of completion for that level, and an enamel pin for that level. Many handlers put the pin on their dog’s vest, leash, or pack.
The Bronze DISC assessment evaluates both the dog’s training and behavior. The dog must be calm and comfortable with several situations: handling (having its paws, ears, and hail handled), being approached by a variety of strangers (some carrying items or talking to the dog or reaching over the dog to shake the handler’s hand), movement (cars, shopping carts, blowing leaves, etc.), noises and unexpected events (an item being knocked off a shelf), and two dogs (one calm, one bouncy).
In the training portion, the dog demonstrates that it can perform basic skills in a distracting environment — sit, down, go to mat, touch, find it, name, and loose leash walking.
This is quite a lot to ask of a dog! But we do it at this intermediate stage because these are real-world scenarios that service dogs must be comfortable with to succeed and be safe in public. Dogs that earn their Bronze DISC pin have really accomplished something!
Christine and David Bowie
I started working with Christine over four years ago, when we met for a Dog Search Support consultation on how to find the right dog to train as a service dog. She had never owned a dog as an adult before and was volunteering at a shelter. When a litter of puppies arrived, with help from shelter staff, she selected David Bowie as her SDiT candidate.
I normally advise against getting a puppy from a shelter. (The reasons why are complex. For tips on selecting candidates, read this post, visit our “find a dog” page, or order our in-depth webinar.) David Bowie has both positive and negative traits as a service dog. The positive traits are that she is very confident, almost never fearful of anything, and was extremely friendly with everyone — people and dogs alike. The negative traits are the flip side of the same coin — she is extremely enthusiastic about everything and everyone, so she can be “over the top” with her behavior — even jumping and shrieking when she is excited. I was concerned about Bowie’s arousal level as a puppy and told Christine that this type of behavior in a puppy can often turn into reactivity.
Christine took that seriously and has been training with Bowie from day one, channeling her energy into positive outlets and training a LOT of calm, relaxed manners and impulse control. Christine trained with us in private lessons as well as PEARL DISC. David Bowie is now over three years old. The training process has been very slow — both because of Bowie’s excitement level and because having a disability often means training interruptions. The positive side of this is that Bowie had time to mature. With over three years of intensive training, Bowie was able to sail through the training portion of her test. A year ago, she could not have passed it. (We did not do the behavior portion because Bowie was assessed for behavior in the past.)
For Bowie’s assessment, we met at a Stop & Shop grocery store to cover all the training components. David Bowie was succeeding with flying colors when there was a sudden, VERY LOUD and concussive sound right behind us. It looked like an industrial pallet full of goods was dropped. It was so loud and unexpected, all three of us jumped. David Bowie and I recovered immediately when we saw there was nothing to be worried about, but Christine felt extremely anxious. She was not going to be OK to continue training without some help. She sat down on the floor and told Bowie, “Pressure.” Bowie instantly settled in her lap, and Christine started to feel better. After a few minutes, we were able to continue the lesson.
David Bowie performs deep pressure for Christine when Christine feels dysregulated.
This is a perfect example of the temperament and training we need from a service dog. The training meant that Bowie knew exactly what Christine meant when she said “pressure,” and she was able to get in position and stay there. She did her job.
However, it is David Bowie’s temperament that allowed her to hear and respond to the cue in this situation:
- Comfort with loud noises. While everyone was startled and jumped, Bowie immediately returned to baseline. A dog who is stressed about loud sounds would probably have needed several hours to recover.
- Great resilience. A stressful event occurred, but Bowie was able to shake it off and go on as normal.
- Comfort with novelty — new sights, sounds, smells, locations. The slippery floors, the strangers, the wind blowing the leaves, the machine driving the pallets — Bowie didn’t care about any of it.
Temperament is largely inborn, though life experience affects behavior and how temperament is expressed. Training teaches a dog skills that are layered on top of the dog’s innate personality.
A service dog prospect needs to have the interest and ability to work in these situations, in addition to the education of how to do so.
Good work, David Bowie and Christine. It’s a joy and a privilege to work with you two!
Mugdha and Miso
Mugdha and Miso have had a very different journey! Mugdha and her husband were volunteer dog trainers and puppy raisers for three years at a service dog program. They have had more than 20 dogs pass through their home. They have been training with Miso since they got her from a breeder at two months old.
Despite their past experience, they recognized the importance of working with a qualified service dog trainer to train their own service dog. They started Miso in our level one class, like everyone else, and she progressed quickly through the lessons.
Miso “smiles” for the camera
“I want to provide some context on why this felt like a bigger win,” Mugdha recently shared with me. “Miso was not super treat motivated, and that made our rewards-based training super hard. We’ve worked on that. Now she LOVES her training time and all her special treats. Also, during situations where there are complex sounds, she gets overwhelmed and stops taking treats. That would stress me out because I felt like I didn’t have a handle on her. We have worked a LOT on this. I was shocked and thrilled during her Bronze assessment as to how calm she seemed!”
“All of our [knowledge] of training dogs went out the window when we had our first treat-fussy dog, and we’ve had to relearn a lot of things from scratch. We got a good foundation with Alex in PEARL! They had encouraged me to trust Miso more, and that was actually game changing! I also learned to connect with her in different ways and not rely only on treats.”
Miso was not even ten months old when she passed her Bronze DISC assessment! Like David Bowie, Miso is confident and friendly. Nothing seems to bother her, and she loves to train. Unlike Bowie, Miso is a very chill, relaxed dog. We referred Mugdha to a credentialed, rewards-based pet trainer in her area, Judy Bernard, who had previously agreed to perform this assessment for our clients. Judy videotaped the entire assessment and sent us her notes and footage. I could easily see that Miso had passed with flying colors! A few clips from the assessment are in the video below.
Congratulations to Mugdha and Miso! I have loved getting to know you two and witnessing Miso’s steady improvement.
What Is the Public Access Evaluation (PAE)?
When a service dog has completed most of its training, including public access skills and trained tasks or work, many owner-trainers want official recognition of their dog’s status as a fully trained service dog. We use the PAE to ensure that the dog has completed training and is safe and effective working in public. Teams that pass the PAE receive our embroidered patches for their dog’s vest, a letter of attestation on our letterhead, and cards that they can carry to easily and quickly respond to access challenges.
In many cases, passing the PAE is a badge of honor, a way to feel confident and complete in your dog’s training. The patches demonstrate that we trust this dog to carry our name and logo in the world as an ambassador of how trained service dogs should behave.
However, for several of our clients who travel internationally, the PAE is a necessary part of being able to travel outside of the United States. In most other countries, some type of official certification is required. Our letter of attestation carries my name and certificant numbers for both the Certification Council of Professional Dog Trainers (CCPDT) and Karen Pryor Academy (KPA). I know that foreign air carriers check these numbers because an employee at Lufthansa tried to deny one of our clients from flying when she tried to look me up in the certification registry and couldn’t find me. I had to contact her to tell her that she had misspelled my name!
The PAE also takes place in a public setting and monitors the dog’s body language signals, assessing the dog’s comfort with all manner of distractions. Some of the required skills are harder. For example, we require the dog to stay while a stranger greets and chats with their handler, to walk past food on the floor, and to stay in a down for several minutes under a cafe table while ignoring spilled food within reach.
Celina and Leila
Leila is a five-year-old mixed breed that Celina adopted through rescue when Leila was about nine months old. Celina’s manners and public access behavior were already very good when Celina contacted us about a year ago. Celina wanted to train Leila in tasks and complete her public access training. They took our online Deep Pressure Therapy (DPT) Class and trained in private in-person lessons with our senior trainer, Alex Wise.
Most dogs get excited when they see their trainer. Since Leila had only worked with Alex and never met me before, I conducted their PAE. We used another service dog as the “distractor” dog in the parking lot and store. Leila is a very chill dog! She is a rock-star at a long, relaxed “settle.” At the end of the assessment, I asked Celina to demonstrate Leila’s deep pressure task. They were both happy to comply, as you might have seen in the picture at the top of this post.
We had a service dog ready to come in as a distractor dog, but another shopper had a service dog with her, too!
It was so much fun to meet Celina and Leila. I love celebrating these special moments of joy and success with our clients.
Deb and Bentley
Bentley is another adult dog who already had lovely public manners. Like David Bowie, Deb adopted Bentley through rescue when he was a pup. Deb contacted us about a year ago because she had been bringing Bentley with her to dog friendly stores and cafes as an emotional support animal (ESA) for several years. She had flown with him, too, before the Department of Transportation changed their service animal guidelines under the Air Carrier Access Act. (ESAs are no longer granted access to fly with their handlers in the cabin under the ACAA. Only people with service animals have this right.) Now, Deb wanted to train Bentley in some helpful tasks and then take a trip to Europe once he completed training.
Deb took our PEARL DISC and Deep Pressure Therapy classes with Alex. I also coached her to train Bentley in a symptom alert task in private, online lessons. Because Deb was not in my area, we conducted Bentley’s PAE online via Zoom. Deb’s neighbor held the phone so I could see everything Deb and Bentley were doing and gave instructions. This also meant that we needed to arrange for someone in their area to bring an unknown service dog to the test as the “distractor dog.” Mugdha very kindly volunteered to bring another of her dogs. (Thank you, Mugdha! It takes a village to train a service dog!)
Bentley passed the PAE and was cleared for takeoff! Deb and Bentley have been vacationing in Spain, France, and Italy! Deb is over the moon with pride and joy. She sent us some pictures. I was delighted to share in her celebration.
Bentley loves everyone! Deb took him to visit the pilots in the cockpit. He gave them a kiss to thank them for safely flying them to their destination.
Thank you to the teams that so generously shared their stories. What they all have in common is friendly dogs who love to train, are confident around new situations, and most of them are very calm. They all have human handlers with patience and perseverance with training their dogs until they reach their goal.
If you want to train your dog as a service dog, we’re happy to help you, too! We’d love to see your dog in the “client wins” column of our newsletter some day. The journey of a thousand miles begins with one step! We recommend registering for PEARL DISC as the best first step. Happy training!
