Ivan Petersel's Journey from Dog Walker to Autism Advocate

Welcome to Why Not Me the World? Podcast hosted by
Tony Mantor, broadcasting from Music City, USA, Nashville, Tennessee. Join
us as our guests tell us their stories. Some will
make you laugh, some will make you cry. Real life
people who will inspire and show that you are not
alone in this world. Hopefully you gain more awareness, acceptance,
and a better understanding for autism around the world. Hi,
I'm Tony Mantor. Welcome to Why Not Me the World?
Have you ever considered the process involved in training service
dog with system viduals with autism?
Well, look no further.
Today we're joined by Ivan Petersil, a certified professional dog
trainer from dog Wizardry dot com specializing in autism assistant dogs.
Thanks for coming on. Hey, how are you doing great?
I appreciate you having me, I really do.
Oh it's my pleasure. I think, along with my listeners,
were fascinated on how service dogs actually get trained. What
led you to get into dog training?
I'll try to make like a long story short, but
it is kind of an unconventional story and I think
you're gonna like it. Yeah, sure, Which is that I
went to school for psychology initially, Okay, when I got out,
I worked with people of various ages with developmental disabilities,
and then in some of the jobs, the people were
also chemically addicted, and there was just so much that
went on. But I always knew that that field was
kind of not for me. Sure, I always knew I
wanted to do something with dogs. There's a whole long
story behind this, but basically I started a dog walking
business in the Wall Street area of Manhattan. Wow, it
was dog walking. It was weight pulling, which I also do.
It was a.
Special type of biking with dogs. What type of dogs
were you working with at that point in time?
All of the dogs, or almost all of them were
aggressive or lunging, the type of dogs nobody else wanted
to walk. From that, I got super into dog psychology
and dog training and taking in all kinds of you know,
reference points. And I did that for a long time
and then I was like, you know what, I want
to immerse myself. I want to learn way more about dogs,
learn something that I don't know anything about. And I
saw an ad basically traveling the country where you'd be
living out of a hotel, visiting people with various disabilities,
and I was like, all right, I want to do
that because you basically go to every state and I
wanted to learn everything I could about dogs.
That sounds great. How did that work out?
Long story short with that is it turned out to
be kind of a scam.
Wow, that's too bad.
They were actually ripping off parents that had children with autism.
I was kind of naive to it. And there's so
much more to this story, including me documenting it and
giving it to lawyers, and like there's really they're out
of business now, but there's just so much more to
the story. Well, at least you learned from it, just
to kind of come full circle, you know, like when
I saw the title of your show, you know, I
was just kind of thinking, why not me, you know,
like if these people could do it. Yeah, there's a
lot more to the story. But I mean, but part
of the story is that I also paid people to
be my tutors that were also in the field, and
I started going to conferences. There's a lot more to it.
Well, the main thing is that you got out of
a bad situation and turned it into good. So what
do you have to do to learn how to train dogs?
Well, initially, keeping in mind, you know how I even
got into it. Initially, I learned everything trial by fire
and wrong. I learned all of the wrong ways to
do it. And the way that I learned to do
it is because it turned out that these people were
amos for this. I had no idea, So I got
in contact with the most famous people I'm not going
to name names, but like in the service dog training world,
like the woman that invented that did the first diabetic
alert dog, people that are considered serious in their field.
Unfortunately, the best way to learn is from your mistakes
and of course learning from others. So it's probably fairly
well known that not every dog can be a service dog.
What criteria is it that you look at and say, okay,
this dog has a possibility.
Well, first of all, I always like to hear the
owner's top goals, or like their top two or three goals,
and I say, if I could wave a magic wand
this dog could ultimately do anything, what would you want
it to do? And when they tell me those goals,
if they don't have the dog yet, then I can
deal with the breeder and we could kind of find
the right dog that probably has the right temperament and
drive for that kid, But like the thing is also
I say probably because there's certain known unknown and then
on top of all that, there's physical things. You know,
you have to take the dog to a cardiologist and
check their hips and bones and joints and make sure
that they're even going to be able to do this
work for a long time. You know.
Sure, that makes perfect sense. So what's the timeframe from
the point where you find the dog, find the family,
connect them, start working with the dog, training the dog,
working with the family so they understand what you're doing
to train the dog. How long is that process before
that family and the dog become connected.
I would say a realistic time frame is twelve to
twenty four months. With that being said, I've seen eight
months of serious work and people could get really really far,
but I would say typically twelve months, fourteen months, sixteen months,
something like that.
Yeah, that's what I've heard. Anyways, from twelve to twenty
four months is normal. What type of dog is best
suited to be a service dog? Is there any type
of breed that just?
Yeah? I mean labs, goldens, those are the most common,
and mixes between those are very common. But I've seen
all types of dogs be service dogs. Just this week
I worked with the Corgi that's a service dog. Okay,
that's really interesting. So what is the most unique dog
that at first you didn't think would work out that good,
but then after a little training, it worked out better
than you thought. Well, there's a dog I'm working with
right now, but it's not an autism service dog. It's
it's for a military vet. This dog in particular is
just very kind of all over the place. It's a
Czech shepherd and it was bred to do border patrol
in the Czechoslovakian border. Its mind is all over the place.
But I knew that we would ultimately get the dog
focused and be able to work it out without crushing
his soul, you know, like I don't want to diminish
a dog's personality or their spirit either.
Yeah. I think that's pretty awesome actually, because every dog
has a personality just like people. So when you have
an autistic family that comes to you, they may or
may not have a dog. What's the first steps that
you need to do to find a dog that would
fit them so they can work together, Because, as you know,
autistic kids can be all over the place. Because that's
why there's a spectrum and you need to find the
ones that would work well with them.
So keep in mind. For me, the best path is
always to work with their ABA therapist, all right, because
they're always amazed at how the tiny little steps that
I the increments that it takes for dogs to learn,
is very similar for their client, the autistic client, and
we often collaborate in various ways. It could even be
like if some of the goals have to do its speech,
we could work together where it's like I teach the
dog a command and he has to verbalize that command.
I'm not sure if that answers your question.
Yeah. Absolutely, I mean that's a great path. I never
would have thought an ABA therapist would have come in
on dog training, so that's absolutely so. Have you had
an instance where you've met with the ABA therapist, the people,
the family and you kind of thought, man, this isn't
gonna work, but then all of a sudden it did.
Oh yeah, yeah. Well, I mean the thing is, so
when I worked for that company that was completely crazy,
and by the way they did train me. They didn't
really train me, but they took me out for a
few months on the road. The lady that was running
the whole thing, just didn't know anything. But yeah, in
that situation, I saw families that, in my view, if
I were running that company, I would not eve even
given them a service dog. On every level, even according
even by their own accounts, they were not like a
good fit. You know. These are people that were turned
down by every legitimate place. This place was like, oh, yeah,
I'll take your twenty five thousand dollars. The owner's skill
set did not match up with where the dog was at. Ultimately, yeah,
there were lots of happy endings, but also it wasn't
always like that.
Yeah, but at least it was a silver lining in
that for you. You say that it takes sending with between
eight months and twenty four months to train a dog.
What are some of the things that you do to
train that dog? And of course, while you're working with
a dog, you have to be working with a family
because they have to understand what they have to do
to relate to that dog that you're training. So what
type of things go back and forth between you and
the family so they understand the dog when it's ready.
It's a really good question. So keep in mind that
engagement is the foundation to basic obedience, and without engagement,
you have nothing. This is a step that a lot
of dog owners miss and you can't miss it with
service dog. People confuse socialization with engagement and exposure training. Basically,
you're asking, why does it take that long? Is that
what you're asking?
No, not necessarily the time, just the process that it
takes for the engagement of you and the dog and
the family.
What happens, Yeah, okay, so think about this order there.
I mean, there's a lot of other things, but here's
like some of the basics that have to happen. Engagement,
which is the foundation to basic obedience. Basic obedience is
the foundation to intermediate, that's the foundation to advanced obedience.
And the tasks that dogs learn are kind of like
the cherry on top of the cake. Although I don't
want to make it sound like you have to wait
till all of those other things are done, you can
work on different goals at the same time. To really
answer your question, what happens during that time is it's
actually not that kind of amazing. And one of the
things I like to do is demystify what dog training
really is. A lot of what it is is increasing
the distance, duration, and distractions over time. So for example,
if your dog could sit in the kitchen, that does
not mean that your dog could sit in the middle
of times square. If we work on all of the
baby steps getting to that point, most likely your dog
can sit in times square. So a lot of what's
happening is building on what you already have at the
build at the beginning, building it up in big increments
of distance, duration, and distractions. I'll give you a simple
example of distractions, and I do this with kids with
autism all the time. Is like we'll have their dog
in a downstay me or the kids or somebody will
be like throwing paper towels off of the shelves in
the supermarket and things like that, And does that distraction
make the dog break its down? If it does, then
we have to go back a step.
So basically, every dog and every family is different. So
if one or the other has a problem in cohesiveness
within that unit, then the best way is to take
it back, create that structure and move forward to get
to that point again.
Absolutely, and then also there's so many other things. You know,
there's enrichment for the dog in a lot of ways.
The dog is my client the dog is more my
client in a way than like, you know what I'm saying.
Sure, I get it.
I always want to make sure that the dog feels fulfilled,
because every dog urns for physical and psychological challenges and
a sense of a fulfillment and accomplishment. Just on a
small level, I think you might just find it interesting.
If I had it, I would show it to you.
I have this dog piano that you fill with treats
and the dog plays piano.
Yeah.
I like that. That's just a simple example of dog enrichment.
Yeah. So once you get the dog trained, and then
you get the human element of it trained, and they're
starting to function as a unit. Now, what kind of
tweaks have you found that might be needed afterwards because
maybe they weren't fully prepared or the dog wasn't fully prepared,
which causes a little regression. So when that happens, what's
your next step to correct it?
Well, me personally, and I actually have an app coming
out for dog trainers to actually fix this whole thing.
There's kind of a blind spot, not just for me,
but for a lot of trainers of what's going on
in between sessions. So even today I had a session.
I always make people send me videos of the good,
the bad, and the ugly, so whatever is happening, we
can fine tune it. But usually it's just Usually what's
going on is the owner is off on their timing,
maybe the timing of when they give a reward, or
maybe they're timing for something else. It's usually that simple.
I wouldn't say that there's a most common thing.
Okay, Well, that makes sense because everyone is different. I
saw on your website where you train a variety of dogs.
You've got PTSD, you've got diabetics, service dogs, and so
many different things. How does that change the way that
you train the dogs for each different scenario like that?
Well, for like a diabetic alert dog, for example, you
want a very high drive dog that's gonna nudge you
or bark or whatever. You teach that the alert is.
There is a lot of overlap, you know, and public
access training is kind of the same for all of
those different things.
Yeah, that makes sense. With PTSD, diabetics, those type of things,
that's a fairly focused situation where I would think everything's
pretty common. But with autism, there's such a wide spectrum
of personalities that you'll always will have to deal with, right,
So how do you deal with the autistic spectrum when
you have to train that dog to work with that
autistic child or the autistic adult. Yeah, and that spectrum
can be so diverse.
Right, that's a very nuanced thing. Typically I take people
higher up on the spectrum. Okay, if I do take
somebody that I have worked with people that are lower
in the spectrum or nonverbal, in those situations, I definitely
have to work with the ABA therapists.
Do you see a huge difference between some of the
nonverbal autistic children compared to those that are verbal but
may still have a lot of challenges they have to
deal with. Do you see a difference in the way
they treat the dogs or are they still fairly comfortable
either way no matter how it works out, verbal or nonverbal.
I have seen differences, but I wouldn't attribute it to
the verbal nonverbal thing. It's more just in general. I've
just noticed a lot of differences I've noticed. I've been
in situations where there was like a child with autism
that was putting the dog in danger and it was
not a great situation for the dog, and you know,
I had to advocate for the dog.
Sure, I've heard situations like that, even with the ABA
therapist where they've had to leave because they felt unsafe.
So I would think that in that particular case, they
would be in jeopardy of losing the dog and have
to do something because you're again siding on this favor
of the dog's health.
Yeah. I mean a lot of times the parents they
know it's best, And yeah, I've seen situations like that.
What have you seen for response from either the autistic
child or the autistic adult from the time they started
working with the dog to the times they started being
with the and just really having that consistent interaction with
each other and bond hopefully starting to grow.
Would it help if I explain some of the things
that I have trained service dogs to do for.
People with autism. Yeah, sure, there's a big range.
Okay, but like down in motion, which I can explain
that helps with elopement, barking or alerting. For certain things,
it has to be something that's reproducible, Like for example,
let's say the kid is like flailing his arms and
he always flails his arms. That would be a visual
cue that I could tell the dog to do this
for that deep pressure therapy, interrupting various behaviors, balancing coordination.
I can go on and on, stemming.
So each of these things the dog is trained for
that causes them to react a certain way, which should help,
according to what everybody thinks, the autistic person to calm
down or forget about what caused them to have what
issue they were having at that time.
Right. Oftentimes I hate to put it like this, but
oftentimes for the autistic person, their worst moments are kind
of like the best moments for the dog, you know,
like for diabetic alert dogs, for example, there are bad
moments are having like a low or a high for
the dog, it means something very good, like some sort
of a high value reward is going to happen. But yeah,
we pair those things together. I do you want I could,
even on a small level, just demystify how you even
teach some of these things.
Yeah, yeah, that's that'd be great. I think it's I
think you know that's interesting.
Okay, I knew you'd like that. Let me let me
think of it. Let me think of a good example. Okay,
let's just use the flail. And there's there's multiple ways
to teach all of these things. And it's just gonna
give you one simple way. Sure, there's a concept in
dog training of transferring a queue. I like demystifying this
for people transferring a que so like, at one point,
for example, the Q might be one thing, but now
like now it's something else. So like, for example, let's
just say I teach the dog to bark. The dog
is solid on bark, and when I say solid, I
mean he's doing it eighty five percent of the time.
Then we have the person flailing their arms while I'm
giving the old queue for bark. Maybe it was speak
and I'm saying speak while the person is doing this,
And then over time I phase out the verbal queue
and this becomes the new queue.
Yeah, that makes sense. So now you've worked with the family,
you've worked with the ABA therapist, you've worked with the
autistic person, you've worked with the dog. You must be
able to now sit back, look at all your work
that's been accomplished and just know that it's working properly
and just take a huge comfort in that.
Oh yeah, for sure.
And it must be a deep satisfaction the dog is
trained and is working well and it's just a success.
Story, Oh for sure. And It's tough to say. Honestly,
when a dog is trained, it's something like I've thought
a lot about, you know. It's like there's always something
to learn, and like I go to conferences every few years,
and I'm always reading books and going to lectures and
different things. Yeah, I mean, like that dog piano was
a recent purchase, you know. So it's hard to say, like,
but yeah, I could look at a certain level of
success and step back and be like, WHOA, that was
like a big transition.
Yeah for sure. So how many people or how many
dogs do you find yourself working at any single point
in time.
The most I would ever work with would be twelve
a month. But that's not twelve service dogs. There's not
an exact number, but I would definitely. I don't really
try to work with more than let's say, three service
dogs in that month, because I really I customize things
for each dog, and I really give each dog a
lot of attention.
Yeah, for sure. I can just imagine. So is it
just you and the business or do you have others
that are helping you as well?
I have other people that help me, including if somebody
wants it, I have a police This is for scent
detection work for elopement, specifically if a kid runs away
or something like that. I have a retired police dog
trainer that was a trainer of police dog handlers, you know,
like he trained police dog trainers. So if somebody wants that,
then yeah, he's who handles that. That's great. Now.
I saw on your website that you even mentioned cats.
Oh yeah, how does that enter into the scenario that
we're talking about now.
I'm so glad you're asking me about this. Have you
ever owned a cat? Oh? Yeah, oh you have? Yeah.
So I'm super into cats right now. And actually so
I hired a certified feline behaviorist. Really she handles all
of my cat calls, but me myself. I mean, she
and I have very deep talks about cats. And I
don't want to say I'm more into cats than I
am dogs right now, but I definitely have more cats
than I have dogs right now, and I have including
a colony of cats that I take care of. I'm
really into cat enrichment. Like, for example, there's this channel
called Kittie Saurus. If you love cats, you would love
this YouTube channel. She creates all kinds of mazism puzzles
for cats. But to kind of answer your question, I
think the cats are very misunderstood, and actually they were
very misunderstood by me for a very long time. And
when I had so many cats coming around the house.
I approach all animals differently. I listen to animals. I
don't know if you saw that on my website, you know,
but like a lot of trainers are obsessed with like
shit down come Lily like training, the dog communication goes
both ways. And if you don't know how to listen
to a dog or listen to a cat, it it's
a big deal. You know you're missing out. And I
listened to them. I learned a lot and just observing
how they interacted with each other. It's a whole long story,
but really long story short. I saw a cat not
too far from my house and I was like, we
just had like this moment, and I started walking backwards.
I never had a moment. I'm a dog guy. I've
never had a moment like this with a cat in
my life. I just walked backwards and it just followed
me and like it's been here ever since. Yeah, there's
just a lot I can say. I mean, I've gone
camping with cats Okay, that's cool.
So are you actually training cats kind of like you
with dogs? How does that work with cats versus dogs.
There's a couple of different things. So, first of all,
there's something in dog training and also cat training. It
may have a different name in catterraing, but in dog
training it's called capturing. So like if you're using a clicker,
for example, and a dog sits and you're like click
or you're like good sit, you know, for a choice
that he made. So cats are the same way where
you could capture certain things. But like like there's a
lot of dogs that are kind of out of balance,
you could say, and there's cats that are out of balance.
I mean, at least the people that are calling me
this is what they would say. Cats need enrichment. They
don't always need training. Like a lot of cats are
bored and they're not physically and psychologically challenged enough. And
a lot of times, like when cats have the enrichment
and the vertical spaces and all the things that they
need to feel safe and fulfilled, a lot of their
problems kind of fix themselves.
So do you work with cats and the autistic people
as well?
No, I've never done that.
Okay, that's what kind of piqued my interest because cats
can have that warm and loving feeling for humans as well,
so that made me interested to see how that would
work within the autistic community.
Yeah. I mean there's been homes that also had cats,
but we didn't even really as in a focus.
By working with the cats, you get into working with
the cats with any other special needs purposes. No, okay,
so it's just mainly dogs then.
No, the Certified Feline Behaviors does do things like that,
and we've worked with cats to become therapy cats or
certain situations, but that's not I wouldn't say that that
is something I've done, but it's not a main focus.
Yeah. I get that because dogs and cats and animals
in general can have a calming effect on many different people.
Oh yeah, and also this is a whole topic in
and of itself. But when I say that, I'm also
I'm majorly in it for the dog. There are ways
to release kind of like relax relaxing chemicals in the
dog's brain. I'm not sure the right way to put it,
but there are certain activities for dogs that create indorphins
and are relaxing for dogs. So like if I take
a dog, for example, to a mall where it might
be nervous, we might use like a licky mat with
peanut butter or something like that on it, because just
the act of licking itself releases like relaxing hormones in
the dog's brain.
Wow, that's very interesting. So how do people find you?
A couple of ways, Well, dog wizardry dot com is
the main way, and then Instagram, dog Wizardry, Facebook, dog Wizardry,
or just my phone number.
Yeah, that's great, and that's on your website, so that
shouldn't be a problem for him to find you. Yeah,
how do you get your business? Do you get referrals?
Do you do ads? You go out and talk with people?
What's your main way that you found that people find
you and give you a call and say they need
your help.
It's you know, it's a really it's a really good
question because it's all organic. I don't really spend hardly
any money. I haven't spent money on advertising in a
really long time. It's really just service dog trainer in
my area or whatever, and I pop up and they
read my reviews or they talk to people that have
used me in the past. But Yeah, a lot of
it is. It's both. It's both of those things. It's
mouth to mouth that happens all the time, and then
people finding me on search engines.
Yeah, I think that's great that you are organic and
people are finding you. I've talked with several different people
and they all tell me that to find someone that
does what you do is a very difficult thing to find.
Yeah, I'll just I'll just tell you one one thing
real quick, you know, Like, let's just say, let's say
I'm working with a child with autism that social situations
make them nervous, or social social situations where they want
to be more sociable. The dog could help in either
of those situations. Like, for example, if a social situation
makes him nervous where he wants to get out of there,
he could give the dog a verbal, a physical cue,
or some sort of a cue that will tell the
dog to nudge him and then he'll say, oh, I
have to take him out to the bathroom.
Yeah. I think that's great. I've had that told to
me a couple of times. I think that dog therapy
is just outstanding, and I just see where autistic people
working with dogs is just so helpful.
Oh for sure. Yeah, deep pressure therapy. There's so many
different ways that we work with this type of dog.
One thing that we didn't touch on that I like
to go over real quick is what happens when a
service dog comes in contact with an autistic child that
may be having a meltdown? How do you train it
for that?
Okay, so that goes back to what I was saying
before when I say to somebody, if you could wave
a magic wand what will be the top two or
three things you want this dog to do? And that's
often at the top of the list. Can you can
the dog interrupt meltdowns? You have to have kind of
a high drive dog that will be persistent to interrupt
persistent meltdowns. But but yeah, we could teach the dog
to nudge, paw, bark, or you could think of new things,
you know, like we could always we could always customize
something to whatever the person's goals are. You know. That's
why I like to ask them when there is a meltdown,
if the dog could do anything in the world, what
would you like to see it do?
Yeah, that totally makes sense. Well, I really appreciate this.
This has been a great conversation, and I know we've
missed a lot of things, and I'm probably gonna have
to have you come back on so that we can
just continue this and enlighten others on the many other
things that you can do to train dogs to help
their autistic child.
That'd be amazing.
Well, again, thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it.
It's been great, all right, Thank you so much. It's
been my pleasure. Thanks for taking the time out of
your busy schedule to listen to our show today. We
hope that you enjoyed it as much as we enjoyed
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