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Junior Member
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Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Massachusetts
Posts: 8
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Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2009
Location: Massachusetts
Posts: 8
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Figure a service dog generally retires at 8 yrs old. It takes the average owner trained dog 2-3 yrs to complete training. So you take a 5yr old dog and the dog will be 7-8yrs old by the time they are fully trained. Therefore you will likely only get 2-3 yrs before the dog needs to retire. Since it is best that you start training before your trained dog retires, as soon as your dog completes training, it will be time to start training a new dog.
My personal opinion is that it is better to start with a puppy or young dog. You can control most of what they are exposed to and socialize them properly. So many dogs are surrendered to a shelter because they have started developing behavior issues teir people didn't want to deal with. Rarely do you find a young pup that doesn't have any issues. I have worked with rescue dogs in the past and every single one had some sort of issue. This makes the job of training them much harder as you must fix many issues before you can proceed with SD training. I prefer to get pups from reputable breeders. They are blank slates and I know the health history of previous generations. I can meet the mom to get a feel for the possible temperments.
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