Instructors Training Program

We offer an extensive, six-week introductory course for students wishing to develop their assistance dog training skills. Included in the student tuition is housing on the 12-acre, scenic NEADS campus with others from other countries also enrolled in the course. You will learn to enrich your training skills and develop the ability to select appropriate assistance dogs.

NEADS offers both service dog and hearing dog training in separate courses. Class size will range from five to seven students for maximum individual instruction.

Service Dog

These dogs are trained to assist people who are physically disabled. These teams have public access rights under the ADA law. They are trained to retrieve things that drop, portable telephones, or items from shelves and hard to reach places; open refrigerator and other doors; push elevator buttons, turn on/off light switches; carry items in their backpacks; pull wheelchairs up ramps or short distances; get help should their human partner need assistance.

Hearing Dog

These dogs assist people who are deaf or hard of hearing by responding for them to sounds such as the smoke alarm, baby crying, and the alarm clock, The dog is trained to alert his deaf partner to these sounds while they occur. A Hearing Dog is specially trained to assist a person who is deaf or hard of sounds such as a smoke alarm, baby crying, doorbell, alarm clock etc. and alert his or her deaf partner that these sounds have occurred.

Next sessions: 2009 schedule to be announced

Tuition: $5,000 US (including on-campus accommodations) (see "accommodations")
Contact dsheridan@neads.org for a payment plan prior to your taking the course.

Click here for an online application

In addition to exchanging information, students learn:

• Overview of service dog training
• The concept, history, tasks and training technique
• How to select a potential service dog
• Visit shelters, learn testing procedures, learn to determine dogs’ potential
• Canine care
• learn how to maintain animals, kennel management,
• sustain healthy dogs
• basic obedience
• go beyond basic commands to teach dogs to work with a wheelchair, understand working with people with disabilities
• special tasks
• teach dogs to retrieve, push buttons, bark for help
• training and entertaining
• learn effective ways to teach clients to work with their dogs and how to raise awareness for your program
• interviewing and evaluating clients and matching them with the “correct” service dog for them – a very complex job
• how to work with clients
• learn to adapt training to give people with disabilities more ability to work with their dogs
• American Boarding Kennels Association Pet Tech, level one course
• Earn certification as a pet technician, aspects of dog behavior, kennel practices
• Introduction to puppy early learning
  • Spend the day at the Niles Puppy Nursery on our campus
  • Train pups to tasks
  • Take puppies on field trips
• Introduction to prison pup partnership
  • visit an area prison and watch as inmate handlers work with NEADS puppies

Students choosing to reside on NEADS campus for the six-week instructor training will live community style with a private bedroom, shared kitchen and bathroom facilities. Off-campus hotel accommodations are available directly from the hotel. We will provide you a list of local hotels. All students will be required to take assigned dog(s) back to their living quarters.

About the Instructor

Brian Jennings has over 16 years experience in the field having graduated from Becker Jr. College, Leister, MA in 1988. He was hired by NEADS shortly thereafter. He has developed many of the training methods used by NEADS and has trained over 300 assistance dogs. In addition, he runs a private practice, “Jennings Canines,” where he specializes in solving canine behavior problems.

Read what a few former students have to say about this course.

Click here for an online application