Team Training: Fun, Games and a Lot of Hard Work

Team Training is an intensive, two and a half week training for people and their new service dogs, but it's not all hard work. We take plenty of time for fun and games, too. After all, isn't it more fun to learn while playing a game?

To review some of the new cues and knowledge about dogs that the new partners learned, we played Jeopardy. Then we put that knowledge to the test in the game D-O-G. The game D-O-G is similar to the basketball game H-O-R-S-E. We divided into two teams. One person and their dog had to perform a cue, such as "down," and the other team had to send a service dog team forward to do the same cue. If the other team successfully performed the cue, then play continued. If they couldn't do it, they received a "D." The goal of the game is to NOT spell the word "dog."

We had a lot of fun playing D-O-G! We practiced cues like "take it," "lap," and "visit." We even did "leave it" with an open tube of peanut butter - quite a challenge for the dogs!

In these videos of the game, Caspian picks up his partner's cane, Jasmine does "lap" for a hug and a kiss, and Teddy visits with her partner.










We're now in our second week of Team Training, and we're starting to practice in public. Wish the teams good luck!