Teaching My Service Dog To Call For Help
by Francine McClendon
(This article originally appeared in “Partners Forum” published by the International Association of Assistance Dog Partners, Volume 14, Number 3.)
My service dog, Rudy, has learned to call for help by pushing the button on a Life Alert machine. Life Alert is a system that when triggered will reach a dispatcher who can send out assistance in the form of ambulance, police, or designated responder. An individual can enroll in Life Alert for about $30 per month and the fee may be covered by insurance. I had been a Life Alert enrollee for many years prior to owning a service dog and decided to try to train my dog to call for help by activating the system for me. The company I’m enrolled in very kindly agreed to issue me a practice machine to train my dog thus leaving my actual machine operational during training. I kept the practice machine disconnected from the phone line which prevented actual alarms being sent to the dispatcher during training. However, the audio alarm was intact on the practice machine. This was crucial in determining whether Rudy was pushing the button sufficiently hard enough to trigger the actual alert.
The Life Alert System is comprised of a stationary machine with a large button of about 2.5 inches. The machine is off white in color and resembles a speakerphone but has no handset or number pad. The system includes a remote alarm that can be worn as a wristband or around the neck. It is difficult for my arthritic fingers to depress the alarm and Rudy has become a successful alternative backup to the remote alarm as he has mastered pawing the large button on the system’s stationary machine to set off the alarm.
To make more of a contrast and make the large button more of an obvious target for Rudy to paw I cut out a red felt circle to cover the button and attached it over the button with double sticky tape. The felt surface also has the benefit of preventing his paw from slipping as much. Rudy already had learned the concept of touch by paw and it was relatively easy to do a refresher using an additional red felt circle for him to touch with treat rewards. After becoming consistent with pawing the circle, I affixed it to the large button alarm, and Rudy began pawing the button immediately, however not hard enough to consistently set off the alarm.
Rudy is a small breed dog, an 11.5 lb. Bichon Papillon Mix, and it was necessary to gently lift him up and place his paw on the button to set off the alarm, giving him praise (“good!”/ “yes!”) and a treat reward at the sound. The sound of the alarm is a sort of loud squelching noise and was a bit scary to him. Some additional sessions of my setting off the alarm and giving Rudy a treat at the sound helped desensitize him to the disconcerting noise. And doing this most importantly helped him to associate what he initially perceived as a negative sound into something positive (the food reward). After several practice sessions, Rudy eventually understood that his job was not complete until he pawed the button hard enough to hear the noise, thus sounding the alarm to receive the much desired service dog jackpot of treats!
Soon I could point to the machine and give him the command to “push 911,” gradually increasing my distance from the machine in 5 foot increments. After about a month Rudy was reliably activating the device from any room in my apartment. The Life Alert machine is kept stationed in one spot (on Rudy’s feeding station cum leash up table) so he knows the place to go to carry out this task.
A glitch in the process soon became evident however, when I realized that in his exuberance to paw the button, he was occasionally hitting a tiny recessed square button on the right side of the machine. He was depressing a clear/reset mechanism and inadvertently turning off the signal before the alarm was completely activated. This was a serious dilemma as, if this button was tripped, no alert would be sent to the response center. Our good friend Jane came up with a simple remedy that has been 100% successful to this point. By turning the machine and placing the right side with the tiny clear button flush to the wall, ONLY the big red felt covered button is open to Rudy’s approach. Rudy has not turned the signal off with the machine positioned in this manner.
It has been near 2 months since I sent back the practice device and Rudy has consistently been conducting a weekly test to maintain this potentially life saving skill. Rudy eagerly races to carry out the command when I’m in bed or in the shower as well as when others are present to distract him. Rudy, whose specialty is item retrieval, has been underestimated many times by me and others, because of his small size. I recently found out that this little dynamo is capable of picking up more than my small cell phone, when he retrieved a friend’s phone I had dropped. I never even considered getting a cordless phone because I always drop them and can’t pick them up. Now Rudy is learning to retrieve a regular sized cordless phone just like the “big dogs.”
It is difficult to say how my service dog will react in the event of a real emergency. But, I know for certain that this little dog with the big heart is working hard to learn tasks to keep me safe and I love him for it!
Service Dog in Action: Only 11½ lbs., Rudy, a Bichon-Papillon mix, can assist his partner Fran, who is severly disabled by rheumatoid arthritis, to call for help by fetching the phone. Alternatively, he will operate her Life Alert machine on command.
