Oh My Doodle!

I am starting this blog to document the adventures with our Goldendoodle, Ivan.  He was born 2/15/2019 and before he even came home to live with us, we knew we wanted to train him to be a therapy dog.  About a month after he came to live with us, we started working on training him for obedience.  He has completed 2 obedience classes at The Dog Spot and is now working with Grant from Canine Dimensions.  Grant comes to the house to help us work with Ivan.  He is doing great and Grant has no doubt he will be an awesome therapy dog.

A little bit about being a therapy dog. (for more check out this from Ivan's website)  This is different than a service dog or emotion support dog.  Ivan will work with people in nursing homes, hospitals, schools, libraries etc and will be there to cheer them up and be a "fluffy stress ball" as my daughter likes to say.  He can't go anywhere he wants like a service dog but we have found several places around town that he is welcome.  In order to be considered a therapy dog, a dog has to be certified.  There are several organizations that can certify a dog and we are still determining which would be the best one for Ivan.  Once he is certified with an organization, he will be insured and can start working with people.  Until then, we are just working to train him on obedience and socialization.

Currently, we are focusing on training for the AKC Good Citizen Advanced Certification and he can test for that in February.  Once he gets this certification, becoming a therapy dog should be relatively simple. He will also be taking the evaluation to work with an organization called Platte County Pet Power and they do many things similar to therapy dog organizations.  However, he can join this organization (if he passed evaluation) before he turns a year old.  We hope this will help him gain some experience with working as a therapy dog and get more practice using obedience skills.

Come back soon for updates on how Ivan is progressing and some of the crazy adventures he has along the way.  I will share what is working for us in training and what isn't working so well.  I will share our successes and our setbacks.  My hope is that this can be used for future dog owners who want to go down this same path with their dogs.