SD Handler Chat: Noticing Needs with Grisha Stewart

Crazy2Calm Canine Coaches is a collaborative effort that brings together various resources created and shared by our network of Trainers, Team Coaches, & Behavior Consultants. SD Handler Chat: Noticing Needs Guest Speaker: Grisha Stewart In this Service Dog Handler Chat we have a group discussion on tracking our dog's physical, emotional, and mental needs. Grisha was kind enough to start us off with a grounding exercise before explaining what physical needs, emotional needs, and mental needs mean to her. We had a very good chat about what micro signals are displayed by our dogs that let us know they have a need. Grisha explained the importance of tracking, where a service dog tracks their handler's needs and the handler tracks their dog's needs creating a teamwork relationship based on helping each other. Someone questioned the idea of gear on for working mode/gear off for off duty mode among SD Handlers. Penny explained the general idea of the concept and why she doesn't train that way although it works really well for some handlers. There was also discussion on how our goal might be to give our dogs as much freedom and choice as possible, but we also need to pay attention to safety. What dogs perceive as dangerous or safe is often not the same as what humans perceive as dangerous or safe, therefore it might be necessary to ask our dog to focus on us briefly if an unknown dog approaches or prevent our social dog from approaching an unknown dog. While we want to let our dogs do as much natural dog behavior as possible, they still need to be safe in a human world.