Course Details
You’ve spent time, sweat and probably even a few tears, working hard to teach your dog lots of different skills—but now you need to make sure that those skills will hold up when you enter a ring or out in the real world. We will go over adding distractions, duration, distance and many other fun games in a way that will actually build your dog’s confidence and enthusiasm for doing the behavior that you cued. Come learn how to add distractions, duration and distance to your dog’s behaviors. We’ll talk about refining criteria, reinforcement strategies to build reliability and precision, how to set your dog up for success, how to make a distraction easier or more challenges, and much more!
We are going to play games to add food distractions, different angles, distance, duration, out of motion behaviors (drop on recall, sit at a distance, stand out of motion, etc.), spacial pressure and visual distractions to our behaviors. These are all games that can be played with common household training props.
Gold students can choose which 2-5 stationary skills (sit, down, spin, stand, touch, set up at heel, etc.) and which 2-5 motion skills (heeling, stays, contacts, go outs, drop on recall, signals, etc.) they want to practice during class. Once the dog is able to do the stationary skills with that distraction, then we will work on skills that are done in motion. This class also contains weekly games to build reliability and precision with fronts for rally and obedience.
Join in our games to teach your dog to do the behavior that you cued regardless of the distraction, distance, duration or whether you cued the behavior while the dog was in motion or not! This class is perfect if you want to work on obedience, agility, parkour or rally skills!
Registration
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Available as a prerequisite purchase - lectures only.
Syllabus
Students are practicing the games with these skills:
Set up in heel position
Sit from a stand
Down from a stand
Fronts
Heeling
Stays
Out of motion stand
Out of motion down
Come when called
Signals
Go outs
Finishes
Sustained paw lift
Hind leg stand
Jumping over a prop
Returning over a jump with a dumbbell
Running contacts
Weaves
Pre-Class:
Setting our dogs up for success
Reward Markers
Fair Play: Do your cues have multiple meanings?
Week One:
Criteria and your chosen skills
How to Reset a Cue
Reinforcement Strategies for Faster Learning
Reps, play breaks and duration of training session
Fading the lure, maintaining the behavior and baseline behaviors
Can you do it here and from there? Adding Angles
Neutral distraction: Can you do it with this and with that?
Fronts- getting the behavior with a prop without body language luring, getting the behavior without a prop with body language luring
Week Two:
Can you wait for the cue?
Can you do it if I look happy or goofy or nervous?
Can you do it if I say it like this or like that or maybe even this other way?
Cookies in the fist and cookies in the palm games
Fronts- getting the behavior with a prop without body language luring adding angles, getting the behavior without a prop without body language luring- motion
Week Three:
Around the Clock Game: Adding more distance and more approaches to the behavior
Adding Duration: Can you do the behavior until the magic words?
Cookies in the palm duration game
Verbal Reliability Game: Are you listening?
Fronts- fading the prop- straight approaches, adding duration
Week Four:
Adding Distance
Adding speed and anticipation
Can you do it from any position?
Can you cue it with cookies in my palm
Opposite Behaviors Game
Fronts- adding more distance and speed with and without a prop
Week Five:
Can you do it near another prop
Nervous Handler body language
Cookies on the floor game
Handler Dress up Game
Odd things
Fronts- adding more angles
Week Six:
New location Games
Unusual sounds
Spacial pressure
Scent Distractions
Can you cue it with cookies on the floor
Fronts- generalization games
Sample Lecture
Introducing Food and Scent Distractions
This session, we are going to introduce some smells and/or food to our practice sessions. We want to help our dogs be successful. For dogs who really love to sniff, we will want to use an easy distraction, to begin with (maybe the dog's meal) and build up to more challenging distractions (meat juice).
Remember that food and scent distractions are going to be included in one of the games each week, so we don't need to accomplish all the food distractions with just this one game. Help your dog be successful by not making it too hard.
Ideas:
- Put a handful of treats behind a baby gate and then practice your skills
- Put a dish rag in with the dog's meal for a few minutes and use that as a distraction item
- Rub your dog's treats on a towel
- Use the FaceBook Alumni group to request samples of female dogs in heat and use those cotton balls as distractions
- Dry off your pork with paper towels and use that for distractions
- Pour meat juice on the dirt
The more high-value the reward that you use to create the smell, the more challenging it will be. If you transfer the smell to another item such as a towel, the longer the food spends on the towel, the more challenging it will be (if you rub one piece of kibble on the towel that is easier than putting the towel in with the kibble for several hours). The shorter amount of time that the smell has to mix with the air, the more challenging it will be (if you put meat juice on the grass and wait 1 hour to train that is easier than training immediately). The shorter amount of time that the dog has to explore the scent before asking for the dog to work, the more challenging it will be.
Remember that it is easier to make it more challenging after the dog has lots of successful repetitions than it is to make it too hard in the beginning.
Exercise: Can you do the cues with scent distractions?
Place the scented item on the floor, let the dog smell the distraction until the dog offers attention 3 or 4 times, then practice your stationary behaviors first. Once the dog has had success with the stationary behaviors, then you can practice your duration behaviors.
Testimonials
New course for the December 2017 session.
