Private Lessons for Service Dog Handlers
🐕🦺 OWNER-TRAINED SERVICE DOG PRIVATE LESSON PROGRAM
Already have a dog you would like to develop for service work?
Fulton Strong K9 is offering a 3-Month Owner-Trained Service Dog Private Lesson Program for handlers who want professional, in-person instruction while training their own dog.
IMPORTANT: This is NOT a fully trained service dog program and does not guarantee that a dog will become a fully trained service dog within three months.
This is a private lesson and handler-education program designed to teach new service-dog skills, refine skills your dog already knows, develop disability-related tasks, improve public-access foundations, troubleshoot training challenges, and teach YOU how to continue your dog’s training between lessons.
🐾 HOW THE PROGRAM WORKS
The initial program includes:
• 3 months of individualized instruction
• 6 one-hour private lessons
• 2 private lessons per month
• Saturday appointments
• Lessons at the Fulton Strong K9 ranch in Homosassa, Florida
• Individualized goals based on your dog and your needs
• Handler education and hands-on coaching
• Service-task development
• Obedience and public-access foundations
• Refinement of previously learned behaviors
• Public outings as the individual dog becomes ready
• Training plans and skills to practice between lessons
Program Investment: $1,500
Additional 3-month training blocks can be added as the team progresses.
There is no expectation that every dog or handler will progress at the same rate. Service-dog development is a long-term process, and the amount of training required will depend on the dog’s age, temperament, previous training, handler participation, intended tasks, and individual needs.
🐶 START WITH A PUPPY — OR BRING YOUR CURRENT DOG
Dogs may begin as early as 10 weeks old, allowing handlers to start building the foundations for potential future service work from puppyhood.
Early training may focus on engagement, confidence, appropriate socialization, environmental exposure, neutrality, handling, basic obedience, settling, reinforcement systems, and learning to work comfortably around distractions.
Adolescent and adult dogs may also join the program at any age.
Already have a dog with training? Great. We can evaluate what the dog already knows and focus on refining, strengthening, generalizing, and adding skills rather than starting over.
🐕🦺 WHAT CAN WE WORK ON?
Training is customized to the individual team and may include:
• Psychiatric service tasks
• Medical response or alert foundations
• Retrievals
• Deep pressure therapy
• Interruption behaviors
• Environmental assistance
• Guiding-related skills
• Mobility-related tasks when appropriate
• Public-access foundations
• Neutrality around people and animals
• Advanced obedience
• Settling quietly in public
• Working around distractions
• Improving reliability of existing behaviors
• Generalizing known skills to new environments
• Customized disability-mitigating tasks
🌎 REAL-WORLD HANDLER EDUCATION
As appropriate for the individual dog, lessons may move beyond the ranch into dog-friendly public environments.
These sessions allow handlers to learn how to work through real-world distractions, maintain engagement, recognize their dog’s behavior and stress signals, reinforce appropriate responses, troubleshoot problems, and build reliable skills outside of a controlled training environment.
The emphasis throughout the program is handler education.
We aren’t simply teaching your dog a handful of behaviors during six lessons. We’re teaching you how to understand the training process, develop new behaviors, strengthen existing skills, practice effectively between sessions, and continue progressing with your dog long after a lesson ends.
📍 Fulton Strong K9 | Homosassa, Florida
📅 Saturday Private Lessons
⏱️ 3 Months | 6 One-Hour Private Lessons
💲 $1,500
Additional 3-month extensions are available as needed.
This program provides professional instruction and service-dog skill development. It is not a fully trained service dog placement program, certification program, or guarantee that an individual dog will ultimately be suitable for service work.