We Provide Custom Trained Service Dogs That Change Lives

Puppy Kindergarten

Dog’s approximate age · 8 weeks–4 months

Your puppy comes home a blank slate — everything to build. Almost all of it happens indoors or in the backyard: they don’t have all their shots yet, so most places aren’t safe. Early socialization is worth a lot, but you’ll have to carry them through a store or use a stroller for it. This stage teaches your pup how to communicate with you, builds the work ethic, and covers basic manners, housebreaking, crate training and the core skills — sit, down, come, here. It’s also when the canine-human bond forms — the reason a service dog will want to work for you at all.

Basic Foundations

Dog’s approximate age · 5–11 months

Now their world expands, and that’s the whole point. Take them to as many new places and situations as you can over these months — quiet, low-traffic stores first, then busier and more complicated ones. Every unfamiliar floor surface, noise and stranger teaches the same lesson: the world is safe, and work happens anywhere. Around fifty percent reliability is exactly where a dog this age should be. Alongside all of it you’re teaching the forty to fifty core commands that become the building blocks for advanced training and, later, the disability-specific work.

Advanced Training

Dog’s approximate age · 11–14 months

This is where single commands start joining into sequences. Your dog learns to chain behaviors together, to work a problem through instead of waiting to be told every step, and to begin the recognition-and-response process — noticing something has changed, then acting on it. Environments get harder too: busier, louder, less predictable. Adolescence lands here as well; some dogs move through a fear stage, others get testy and independent. How it’s handled decides a great deal. The right techniques carry a dog into their full potential — mishandled, this is the stage where most service dogs wash out. Full medical clearances are done now too, confirming they’re developing correctly and can take the physical demands of the work.

Disability-Specific Training

Dog’s approximate age · 14–18 months

Everything now assembles into the tasks built around your disability — alerting, deep pressure, retrieval, mobility support, interruption, grounding — while the core commands you depend on climb toward eighty percent in the public places you actually go. This is complex work, and it takes longer again if your dog is being dual-trained for more than one disability. They have to recognize a situation and respond independently, make the crucial calls on their own, learn the nuances of how you actually live — and then generalize all of it across the real environments and situations the two of you will meet. It’s the hardest thing we ask of a dog, and it can’t be rushed.

Placement & Transitioning

Dog’s approximate age · 18 months onward

Three things happen at this stage.

1. First — the dog transitions from us to you, and so do the daily responsibilities: handling, care, routine and upkeep. In Premier that comes at the end; in Foundations, earlier — whenever you’re ready to finish the training through the Service Dog School.
2. Second — we make that transition smoother, with as much or as little support as you want. A boot camp runs five to fourteen days, depending on your budget and how far along you already are.
3. Third — we prepare you both for working together day to day, out in public, and passing the public access test. And training doesn’t end here; it carries on for years.

Public Access Test & Certification

Dog’s approximate age · Varies

Certification comes in two parts. The written test covers what you’ve been studying online while we trained your dog: how they were trained, how to care for them, service dog law, and your program’s requirements. The second is a practical evaluation in a real public place — a mall or shopping center — with up to two hours to complete every requirement, where an evaluator documents that you handle your dog safely and that they perform your tasks. No U.S. law requires this. It matters anyway: in an access dispute, if your dog goes to school, and for your rights under Title I at work.