The Canine Good Citizen Test - The Elements

Here are the elements of the Canine Good Citizen Test and a little bit about how I think they are each important.

1. Accepting a friendly stranger: The Evaluator walks up to you and your dog and says Hello to you, but ignores your dog. Your dog must not break her position, approach the Evaluator, or show shyness or resentment.

Important Because: Not everyone thinks your dog is as cute and fun as you do. Not everyone wants to be licked or slobbered on. Sometimes you just need to have a quick conversation and your dog doesn't have to be a part of it.

2. Sitting politely for petting: The Evaluator pets your dog on her head and body. She must stay in place and show no shyness or resentment.

Important Because: To keep your dog, she must have better manners than people. Most people don't ask, or don't care, if your dog is friendly - they are going to pet her. If she doesn't accept the petting, she and you will be the ones in trouble, not the rude person.

3. Appearance and grooming: The Evaluator inspects your dog to determine his cleanliness and grooming. The Evaluator will brush your dog, lift his feet, and touch his ears and paws.

Important Because: You need to care for you dog and your dog needs to be able to accept care from you, veterinarians and even groomers or friends without fear or aggressive responses.

4. Walking on a loose leash: The Evaluator observes you walking a pre-determined, or your choice, of course to determine if your dog is attentive to you and following your movements and changes in direction.

Important Because: You need to be leading your dog instead of following him. You need to be in control, or better yet, have the relationship in which your dog wants to follow you.

5. Walking through a crowd: The Evaluator observes you and your dog moving through pedestrian traffic in public places.

Important Because: Again, you need to be leading your dog, and you need to be in control of him so the public has no reason to be concerned your dog will lunge, jump up on, or trip anyone. If you want to be a Therapy Dog Team, you need to be able to walk through buildings and halls with many people, and possibly a lot of activity, with your dog safely and politely following you.

6. Sit and Down on command and Staying in place: Your dog must sit and lie down on your command and follow your command to stay in one place until your Evaluator instructs you to release him.

Important Because: This shows you've worked together as a team and you value training manners.

7. Coming when called: You walk 10 feet away from your dog and call her to come to you.

Important Because: Your dog should want to respond to your direction and return to you when you call her. There should be safety and happiness in coming to you, not a sense of punishment as to why she is being called. So many people yell at their dogs to come to them and their dogs just don't want to. Would YOU want to come to someone who was yelling at you to get your butt over to him so he could smack you and throw you in the basement?

8. Reaction to another dog: Two teams approach each other, stop, humans shake hands and teams continue on. The dogs should show no more than casual interest in each other.

Important Because: Dogs behaving politely around each other keeps everyone safe. Secure dogs enjoy the company of other dogs. They know we are not dogs and they can learn so much more and quickly about being a dog in the world from other secure and balanced dogs than they can from us.

9. Reaction to distraction: The Evaluator presents two distracting situations like a skateboard rolling by, a person darting across your path, or a loud noise from something falling. Your dog cannot panic, run away or show aggression.

Important Because: Your dog needs to be confident and secure. If you will be in public together, a calm dog keeps everyone calm. If you are wanting to be a Therapy Dog Team, loud noises and unpredictable events often occur in typical Therapy Dog locations like hospitals, nursing homes and schools.

10. Supervised separation: You and your dogs are separated out of sight of each other for 3 minutes. Your dog cannot bark, whine or pace. He stays with The Evaluator.

Important Because: To me, this is true discipline and confidence. Your dog trusts you will return, and she shows good manners with everyone, even when you are not there.

Foster Dog is still working on not excitedly approaching the friendly stranger and the other dog (he's so social!) and on our being separated for 3 minutes without being concerned where I am. We're up to 2 minutes before he walks to the door that separates us. If we took the test at his sleepy time of 8 or 9pm, that might ensure our success!