Introducing Logan the service dog in training

Logan is a service dog in training.
Visit his page for more information and to read all of my blog posts about him.

This is Logan! He’s a one-year-old Labrador retriever, and he is in training to be a service dog. He is going to be staying with me for the next few weeks to work on his training.

(You can find all of my blog posts about Logan on this page.)

As many of you know, I am involved with an organization at the University of North Texas called ORCA. It’s a student organization that does research and community projects related to animal training. ORCA has a new partnership. We are working with Patriot Paws Service Dogs, a non-profit organization based in Rockwall, Texas.

Patriot Paws trains service dogs to help veterans with disabilities and PTSD. The dogs are provided to the veterans at no cost, even though it takes much time, energy, and effort to train each dog. Each dog learns more than 60 different behaviors, and it takes about a year and a half to train each dog.

The training program has several different parts. Dogs spend part of their time at Patriot Paw’s Rockwall facility and part of their time living in the community with puppy raisers so that they can practice their training in a variety of different settings. As well, Patriot Paws has a program with a woman’s prison, where the dogs and the inmates get to learn lots of skills as they work together. Patriot Paws uses clicker training and positive methods with all of the dogs.

ORCA students will be serving as puppy raisers and helping Patriot Paws to train its dogs. We are really looking forward to this, as it is going to be a great way for the ORCA students to refine their training skills while learning all about service dog training. It is also a wonderful way for ORCA to give back to the community.

So, more about Logan. Logan already has had quite a bit of training. However, he can be easily distracted, especially in busy settings. When he gets distracted, it is difficult for him to stay focused, and he doesn’t respond well to cues, even for behaviors that he “should” know.

However, he is a very sweet boy and is very eager to please. He really loves being with people and seems to have a pretty calm, easy-going personality. Although he’s been with me only since yesterday, I can tell that he is a smart boy who picks up on new things pretty quickly!

Over the next few weeks we will be working on lots of different training exercises to help Logan become more focused when out in public and to help him learn to be 100 percent reliable on his cues, even when he is in a new place or when there are distractions in the environment. I’m looking forward to seeing how he progresses with his training!

You can follow updates about Logan here on my blog and also on my Instagram account.