How much does it cost to train a service dog?

The two questions most people ask me about training a service dog are…

• How much time will it take?
• How much does it cost?

I have the same answer for both questions:

• It depends
• Much more than you expect

Of course, there’s more to it than this. To find out what it depends on and how much it can amount to, read on!

The first question — how much time it takes to train a service dog — is answered in a previous post. Please read “How long will it take to train my service dog?”

This post focuses on the costs of training a service dog.

Be ready for a shock…

I hear from many people that they have decided to train their own service dog (SD) because they think it will be less expensive than getting a trained dog from a program. This is very rarely the case. It’s true that with a program, you may have to pay more upfront in one lump sum, whereas when training your own SD, you are spending more over time. However, depending on a variety of factors, it may actually cost much more over time to train your own service dog than it costs to get a trained dog from a service dog program. Obviously, if you’re able to find a nonprofit program that trains dogs for your disability and covers all or most of the cost, that is by far the least expensive option and certainly worth looking into.

As we examine the cost of training a service dog, we should start with…

The Cost of Owning (Any) Dog

All dogs cost money to keep and care for. These costs are almost always more than we expect. They include food, veterinary care, toys, treats, bedding, equipment (leashes, crates, harnesses), grooming, boarding, etc. A lot is situational:

• Small dogs cost less than big dogs (e.g., miniature vs. giant schnauzer)
• Healthy dogs cost much less than sick dogs (e.g., a dog with issues with elbows or hips, eye issues, breathing issues, dental issues, allergies, etc.)
• Well-behaved dogs costs much less than “behavior project” dogs (e.g., aggression, reactivity, separation anxiety)
• Dogs with easy coat care (e.g., Labrador retrievers) cost much less than those requiring extensive grooming (e.g., poodles and their mixes)
• Young adult dogs (ages two to seven) generally cost less than puppies and geriatric dogs

While you will probably know ahead of time the age, coat, and size of your dog, everything else is up for grabs. Nobody expects to get a dog that will be ill or injured often or that will have a severe behavior issue, but neither is uncommon. This is as true for people looking for a service dog as people looking for a pet.

Various sources I’ve found (some are below) estimate the cost of owning a pet dog as averaging between $300 and $10,000 per year, with many giving the average as $500 to $5,000 per year. The low end of these estimates are very low. I can’t imagine keeping costs down to $500 per year! They probably cover small, healthy, young adult dogs with low grooming and training needs, where owners are really doing the bare minimum in terms of treats, toys, medical care, gear, training, food, etc. If you’re thinking of training a service dog, you will never do the bare minimum with your dog in any area! That will certainly increase expense.

Note: As you read these cost estimates, keep in mind that your location will also affect the cost of services in your area. If you live in a more expensive part of the country, adjust all costs upward

Here are some articles on the cost of pet dogs:

• Pet Education: The Cost of Owning a Dog (Great article includes low, medium, and high estimates for multiple costs. Low estimate for first year is $511 and high is $6600. Annual estimates after that are $287 to $2,485.)
• The Annual Cost of Pet Ownership: Can you afford a furry friend? (Estimates first-year cost of a pet dog at $1,270)
• Petfinder: Annual Dog Care Costs (First-year estimate ranges from $766 to $10,350; annual cost estimates from $526 to $9,352)

Additional Service Dog Costs

Your service-dog-in-training (SDiT) candidate will likely cost much more in the first couple of years than later on. Let’s examine some of the costs you will incur when obtaining your SDiT candidate.

 Additional Annual Costs in Caring for a Service Dog or SDiT

In addition to the costs for a pet dog, SDs and SDiTs have more costs for the same issues. For example, while all dogs needs treats and toys, a SDiT often needs more treats and toys because of the amount of training, enrichment, and general attention to behavior needed. Here are some additional estimates of costs for a service dog or candidate…

• Training treats and toys (chews, feeder toys, retrieve items, bazillion treats). Costs will vary with the amount of enrichment needed, energy level, whether the dog tends to destroy their toys quickly, size of the dog, etc. Estimate: $200-2,000
• Service dog gear (harness, leash, vest, pack, cart, head halter, etc.). For a dog that just needs the basic vest with patches, it may be very inexpensive. For a dog that needs a custom support harness for guiding or balance, it may be much more. Also, handlers often must try several pieces of equipment or modify equipment to make it suit their needs or fit the dog properly. Estimate: $100-1,000
• Extra vet care. A SDiT may need x-rays of hips and elbows or other health tests (vision, hearing, etc.) or other veterinary care or check-ups to make sure the dog can safely and healthily perform the work needed. Estimate: $250-1,500
• Extra grooming. A pet dog doesn’t have to look and smell terrific every day, but a service dog must be neat and clean and free of offensive odors to work in public. This will mean, at minimum, combs/brushes, toothbrush and toothpaste, dog shampoo, nail clipping, etc., and for dogs with significant coat care (especially doodles, poodles, and any poodle mix), also grooming scissors, clippers, and blades, as well as trips to the professional groomer. Estimate: $50-1,500

Adoption/Purchase Cost

Finding a likely SDiT candidate is extremely difficult and is always a gamble. If you take your time and work with experienced trainers who can help you assess dogs you are considering, and if you also get lucky, you may end up with a dog that you successfully train as a service dog. However, you may also wind up with a dog who cannot become a service dog. But to stack the deck in your favor to make it more likely that your dog will succeed takes considerable time, money, and effort.

If you buy a puppy or adult dog from an excellent,  reputable breeder that has done all the appropriate health testing, your costs may appear to be higher than adopting a dog from a rescue or shelter. However, this is not always so when we look at the details.

Adoption fees for a rescue dog are usually between $250 to $500, but finding the right rescue dog can be so challenging that it may require multiple professional assessments to choose a viable candidate. This can easily cost more than the dog’s adoption price.

Generally speaking, you can expect a puppy from a reputable breeder to cost around $2,000. However, the fee may be significantly higher, possibly up to $4,000, depending on the breed and associated costs (rarity, medically involved pregnancy/delivery, etc.). There may also be transport costs to get the dog to you (depending on logistics).

In addition, puppies generally cost more than adults during their first months home because they require frequent vet visits for shots and living/training expenses that adults often don’t require, such as pee pads; exercise pens, crates, gates; toys, equipment, or your personal possessions that must be replaced due to chewing or house training accidents, etc. But these single one-time outlays are really the tip of the iceberg.

Search and Assessment Costs of the Candidate Dog

One big expense — in both time and money — that people very rarely expect is in the search for the right dog. With a pet dog, the stakes are lower and most people are not choosy about their dog’s specific requirements for health, temperament, trainability, energy level, etc. With a service dog, those issues are of paramount importance.

Consider this: Only half of dogs that are the cream-of-the-crop — that have been carefully bred over generations by a service dog program specifically to be trained as service dogs — graduate to become service dogs. The percentage of dogs from good breeders that succeed is lower. The percentage of rescue dogs that succeed as service dogs is extremely low — between less than half of one percent (0.3) to 12 percent.

To find the right dog, you will likely need to do some or all of these steps:

• Hire a service dog trainer to help determine the best age, breed, or type of dog to search for, or to consult with to help you find excellent breeders or foster prospects. For example, my Pre-Adoption Consult and Dog Search Support service includes getting a detailed history of the client’s needs and lifestyles, a meeting to discuss details of what is needed, and recommendations for whether to get a puppy or adult, types of breeds, a rescue or dog from a breeder, etc. And then help with the search process. This all takes time and expense. However because I am guiding clients away from unlikely prospects, they are less likely to spend money on repeated tests of obviously inappropriate candidates…
• Hire trainers to temperament test a litter of puppies. Once you have found a great breeder and paid a deposit for one of the puppies, you’ll want an independent evaluator to temperament test the litter to help you choose the best candidate. This may easily cost $300-$400. And if none of those puppies test well, you may start over with another breeder or another litter and pay that much again. Or you may need follow-up testing on the most likely individual puppies in the litter.
• Similarly, if you want to get an adult dog from a breeder or a dog of any age from rescue, you will likewise need to have a knowledgeable service dog trainer conduct a behavior assessment of a dog that you’re considering. In the simplest case, the dog is local and your trainer conducts an assessment (costing $100 to $300). In more complicated cases — e.g., a dog in rescue on the other side of the country — you may need to hire a trainer to assess the dog, get a detailed history from the foster owner, pay to have the foster owner take the dog to a vet for x-rays or other health screening, hire someone to take video of an assessment of the dog (or repeated assessments) and then show the video to your local service dog trainer.

Initial First-Year Training Costs — after adoption

Once you have your candidate puppy or dog, an enormous amount of time goes into training it. How long it takes to train varies with the skill of the handler/trainer, the speed at which the dog learns, the amount the dog needs to learn (based on previous training and on the skill set needed for the dog), and particularly, on how much training time the dog gets. These factors also affect the cost of training. Generally speaking, if your dog is a great candidate and you put in a lot of training, you should expect to spend about two years on intensive training and then another year on refining while your dog is working.

Training cost will also be affected by what type of training you do — how much is done by a professional trainer versus by the owner — and the trainer’s rates and set-up. The least expensive options are the most do-it-yourself (DIY) including using books, videos, and online groups. The least expensive option for working with a trainer is usually group classes. Private lessons are more expensive, with day training usually costing more (because lessons are more frequent), and board-and-train as the most expensive. While more expensive, day training and owner lessons are usually best for training your dog faster and more effectively while also giving you better training and handling skills. The more you do on your own, the longer training takes because you will make more mistakes that you’ll have to retrain. So there is always a trade-off between cost and time.

Here are some possible estimates for the least expensive route possible, the average route costs, and a more expensive route. NOTE: Keep in mind that these estimates assume a dog that is an appropriate, successful candidate (behaviorally and physically healthy and normal level of trainability) and an owner that keeps up with their side of the training. When either of these is not the case, it will have a profound impact on the rate, success, and cost of training.

Super-Frugal DIY Example —  Lowest expense first year

For the owner-trainer who is incredibly motivated, resourceful, frugal, already reasonably skilled at training, who has loads of free time, and who also has a rock-solid dog in terms of temperament and health, here are examples of potential training costs. This assumes this individual is devoting most of their time to training, including learning everything they can about service dog training. This individual is getting a lot of their training information from reputable, credible free training sources such as information from skilled, reputable, science-based trainers via blogs, youtube, listservs, etc., as well as these services:

• Service dog consult/assessment: $200
• Group puppy class: $150
• Group basic manners class: $150
• Group intermediate manners class: $150
• Group advanced manners class: $150
• Service dog and training books and DVDs: $200
• Package of five private lessons to address persistent bad behaviors and coaching on assistance task training: $500
• Total: $1,500

Team Requires Significant Training Support —  Higher expense first year

For the great majority of situations, that DIY example will not be nearly enough. The other end of the spectrum is the person who wants their dog trained but needs a great deal of skilled training assistance. This is often the case for people who do not have a lot of time or interest in doing a huge amount of training. Examples may include…

• A parent or parents who work full-time and want their dog trained to assist a family member
• A handler whose disability interferes significantly in their own ability to train their dog
• A handler who — due to disability, age, education, learning style, personality, or other factors — requires more skilled training/support
• A dog that poses more training challenges (e.g., hyper dog that needs to learn to relax or dog that has developed strong bad habits — e.g., jumping, barking, stealing — or that has mild behavior issues), requiring skilled training before it can be reassessed to see if service dog training will be possible

The first year of training services in this situation may look like this:

• Service dog consult/assessment: $200
• Puppy kindergarten or group basic manners class: $150
• Puppy board-and-train (6 weeks): $6,000
• Day training (three times a week for 10 months): $13,000
• Specialty (e.g., advanced manners class, public access field trips, assistance task training, referral to behavior consultant): $1,000
• Total: $20,350

“Typical” Training Expenses  — first year

While there are so many variables that I hesitate to ever say “typical,” many of the clients I work with fit some version of this picture:

• Interested and able to devote considerable time to training (only work or go to school part-time and have limited family or other obligations)
• Have minimal training skills but with hard work, careful instruction, and practice, become relatively skilled handlers and trainers after six-to-12 months
• Dog does not have severe behavior issues but has some entrenched bad habits (e.g., counter surfing, hyper greeting) or mild behavior problems (e.g., limited reactivity to one type of trigger, moderate separation distress)
• Handler uses recommended books, handouts, videos, but team learns much better with in-person coaching

The first year of training services in this situation may look like this:

• Service dog consult/assessment: $200
• Puppy kindergarten or group basic manners class: $150
• Day training (three times a week for 6 weeks): $1,500
• Private lessons (once a week for 4 months, twice a month for 4 months, once a month for 3 months): $2,700
• Group intermediate manners class: $150
• Group advanced manners class: $150
• Specialty (e.g., public access field trips, assistance task training, referral to behavior consultant): $1,000
• Recommended service dog and training books and DVDs: $150
• Total: $6,000

 The Tally

Obviously, there are huge ranges in all of these estimates, but if I add up the lowest estimates, the highest estimates, and the average rangers, here are how the estimates stack up…

First-Year Cost Estimates

Least Expensive: $3,650

Most Expensive: $40,250

Both of these extremes are unlikely. For the low end, everything would need to go right:

• the dog has perfect health, breeding, behavior
• is low-maintenance (small breed, easy coat care, young adult)
• and the owner/handler is skilled, has lots of time and devotion, etc.

Obviously, the chances of the stars aligning this perfectly are low!

The high end assumes an expensive puppy from a breeder, large expenses in finding and selecting the pup, the biggest veterinary and basic care costs, and the most training expenses. Fortunately, this is also atypical.

More Typical Expense Estimate: $16,000-$20,000

For this estimate, I took the averages of some of the usual pet dog costs and then the more typical training and gear needs estimates.

Final Thoughts

Once you see what goes into training a service dog, it can help explain why a service dog trained by a program can easily cost many thousands of dollars. There are many good reasons to train your own service dog, but if you’re doing it because you think it will be an inexpensive option, you are likely to be continually, shocked, disappointed, and scrambling to cover costs. Before embarking on this journey, make sure you have the time and money to devote. While you may hope that your expenses come out on the low end of the scale, there are never any guarantees. It is helpful to have extra set aside for those inevitable unexpected costs.