Has anyone had experience training their own dog to act as an assistance dog (help with balance, pick things up, turn on lights, open/close drawers, doors)? Would it be better to have a professional trainer train the dogs?If so, what organizations do this? My two dogs are working therapy dogs, have rally titles, and have done some work towards CD. There's no immediate crisis, but there's no telling how quickly a disease like MS progresses. Any book recommendations? Thanks very much for any suggestions.

You might want to check this out. http://www.dogwise.com/itemdetails.cfm?ID=DTH203 Good luck!

I have trained one of my own dogs to be a certified assistance DEMO dog for Paws With a Cause. All of the picking up skills and door/drwer opening skills are based on the trained retrieve or force fetch. Light switches push buttons are based on targeting skills.
If you can train dogs you can do it. If not you could get with a retriever trainer to get a foundation for the retrieve skills.
Sorry for your diagnosis and best of luck. Where are you located?

I have a friend whose now gone PBGV would alert her to her extreme blood pressure changes. This came naturally and at first Alice had no idea what Desie was doing. Once Alice understood, Desie did save her life by getting her to go to the hospital early. Alice is now training her younger bitch to do things around the house for her-retrieve and pick up things. There are books and also email lists that have helped her. If you will send me your email address, I will be happy to get you in touch with Alice.
Julia

Hello Just Diagnosed,
Sorry to hear your bad news. I have been training since 1996 and training service dogs since 2005. I would love to help if I can. A few things to start, where are you? What is our time frame? A detailed list of what you would like your dog to do? Sit in a rolling desk chair in each room of your house, think of all the things you do on a daily basis. What is your dream list of what you would need your dog to do, plus some. Then we begin. You can do this yourself, but we need to start you on the best foundation possible.

There are a few train your own assistance dog DVDs that I know of, a subscription DVD rental library has them, might be useful if you aren't sure you want to buy them yet, http://www.bowwowflix.com/category.php?id=28

All of your replies are much appreciated and very helpful. We just started working on targeting and the dogs are picking it up quickly. THe dogwise link is exactly what I was looking for and a rental is surely the way to go for now. I'm in No. Va. and very fortunate to have labradors who can be trained to help. I will certainly give training them myself a try - it will hopefully be a good while before I really need them.

I would certainly take Trainer up on the kind offer. You know how to train, Trainer's experience would be excellent help. Sadly, I've had a service dog fail even though family got it off to a great start, I think a trainer would have helped a lot, even if just for advice. All the best, hope and pray it progresses very slowly or goes into remission.

Another thing, I make door and cabinet tugs, the right ones. You place them on the doors and cabinets that you need the dog to open for you. Email me, I will send you one for training and then a few for you to attach. I'll walk you through the training process and you can do the rest yourself.