All Presentations & Descriptions
“He does it perfectly at home, but I can’t replicate the trial environment!” If you’ve ever said that about your dog’s performance, you are in the right place. In this lecture, Megan will outline her process of preparing dogs for the competition ring without needing the actual ring, all of the equipment, people, or the busy environment.
It’s no secret that there is a big gap between training and trialing, which needs a bridge built between. Bridging that gap is all about fine-tuning your routines, reducing reinforcement, and layering in distractions and different levels of arousal.
Whether you’re a seasoned competitor or a beginner to dog sports, this presentation will help you see training from a new perspective and take your training to the next level. You have the power to prepare your team for competition even with limited resources.
Not an agility competitor? No problem! While the focus is on dog agility, the concepts are applicable to any dog sports competition. This lecture is highly recommended for those attending other Ring Prep without the Ring working labs during the conference and is suitable for all levels.
The goal of this session is to introduce your dog to the idea that rewards can be out of your hands, out of your pocket, and at a distance!
To do this we will be working with what is referred to as a “Zen bowl”- a small dish or lid on which a single reward (or small handful of rewards) is placed. The dogs will get started on being able to focus on you or “work” and willingly leave their reward of food (or a toy) they know they can grab at any time!
In this session we will discuss some motivation issues, why it happens, and what you can do about it. We will go over several games to help unleash your dog’s inner feral beast.
Fun games = DRIVE!
The things we need the most are often the things we train the least. A large part of being successful in performance sports is our dogs’ ability to work in the presence of external stimuli – what we often call “distractions.”
Performance skills can quickly degrade when our dogs aren’t practiced at maintaining attention and focus in difficult environments or under difficult circumstances. Not having these skills can decrease confidence in both the dog and the handler. They are the cement that holds our performances together and can mean the difference between a rock-solid performance and just getting by.
In this session, we will isolate and practice games and exercises that increase your dog’s desire to maintain attention and focus, turn attractions in the environment into cues to look to you and teach our dogs that it’s all part of a fun game. It’s not magic, it’s training!
Tricks aren’t just for fun anymore! This lab will focus on training tricks that offer more than meets the eye. Each of the tricks taught is specially picked for improving body awareness, developing critical thinking skills or for strengthening specific muscle groups.
Sara will talk about looking deeper into behaviors traditionally taught for entertainment to see how they can help you reach your training goals. Join us and see what tricks are hidden up our sleeves, you won’t be disappointed!
In this “Introduction to ODE” session, Sharon will discuss the Offered Durational Engagement (ODE) pattern and the 10-step ODE protocol. There are no pre-requisite skills for teams in the working spots. For teams that have already established the initial ODE pattern and/or have worked through the higher steps of the protocol, consider joining Sharon’s other session – “Working through the higher levels of the ODE protocol: Adding in distractions / ‘triggers.’”
About Offered Durational Engagement (ODE)
When our dog perceives a stimulus that interests or concerns them, a portion of their attention shifts to that stimulus. At this point we may only see evidence of “split focus” (i.e. glancing away from us and the task, responding more slowly to our cues, missing cues, performing an “incorrect” behavior, etc.), or our dog may perform a large reaction that we perceive as inappropriate or extreme (e.g. lunging, barking, whining, squealing, leaping, leaving us and rushing to the stimulus, attempts to run away, unable to respond to our cues in the presence of the stimulus, etc.).
Our dog’s response to the stimulus may be driven by emotion (e.g. fear, excitement, frustration, etc.), it may be driven by instinct (e.g. prey drive, etc.), or it may occur due to prior learning (i.e. expectation of a specific outcome, or a previously formed habit).
Offered Durational Engagement (ODE) is a simple pattern that forms the foundations for a 10-step protocol. For dogs responding due to emotions, the protocol helps to reduce the intensity of their feelings and hence their response. For dogs responding due to instinct or habit, the protocol helps our dog to find time to think between the stimulus and their response, so instead of going from stimulus to the existing automatic response, our dog is able to think before responding. This allows them to choose an alternative behavior to the existing inappropriate or extreme response. We can then ensure that our dog perceives the new response as more rewarding than the original response.
ODE is useful as both a behavior modification protocol for reactivity, as well a protocol for helping our competition dogs build their skills for comfortably ignoring and dismissing people / dogs / movement / sounds in the competition environment.
Do you walk courses and find that you don’t execute those handling decisions when you run your dog because you are not in
position or you mistimed a turning cue? Then this session is for you. Learn how to use those 8 minutes of your walk through
to develop a plan that you can successfully execute.
Teams will then have a chance to run the course with feedback.
In this lecture session, I’ll be going over the Play Way system itself, beyond just the how-to of the play itself, and into why we want it to be a conversation, what doors that opens for both reducing stress and pressure and allowing you to know a lot more about whether you’re over threshold or not.
We’ll also look at the principles of Look and Dismiss (LAD), and the ways we practice it on simple things so dogs get fluency in the skill and have it as a strategy!
Come learn how to apply Play Way in setups to facilitate new learning!
We love that “breakthrough” moment, when the dog figures out that their motions make us click. Trainers get reinforced because it’s so cool when our dogs do that! And… on and on, to shaping heaven, until you’re preparing to trial and there is a moment of stillness and suddenly the dog is offering all the things – legs and feet dancing around, head moving. – not exactly the steady position changes you were hoping for!
Join Shade as we teach our dogs the difference between verbal stimulus control sessions and offering/shaping sessions. We’ll teach them that stillness, (a stand by / stand and wait behavior), is a good thing, and how to add a cue to shaped behaviors without the frustration of waiting through an extinction burst of “all the things”.
Experience Level-some knowledge of shaping required.
The Fenzi TEAM Titles program uses these items throughout its levels to teach basic foundation skills… but they needn’t be limited to just the foundations. Come and learn how to use these simple props to convey and create an understanding of distance work and holding positions.
Plus, learn how to inject FUN using the equipment and how to use Strategic Reward Placement for setups and maintaining rhythm to gain and create behavior loops for added consistency in your training.
Are you struggling to maintain your dog’s focus during training or trials?
Common reasons dogs disconnect include:
-Dog isn’t mentally ready to work
-Distractions are too much for the dog
-The handler disconnects from the dog
-The dog doesn’t understand generalization
-The dog disconnects after a reward
Thankfully, there’s something we can do: we can play games that are fun and instill naturally focussed attention that will hold up in challenging environments—even the competition ring.
During this session, we’ll dive into why your dog disconnects. Then, you’ll learn a variety of games that prevent your dog from disconnecting and reduce the chance that your dog will disconnect in the future.
Finally, you will learn how to observe and listen to your dog through the different games. If your dog is telling you it’s too hard, you’ll know while playing the games, before you ever ask for behaviors!
Join Nicole to achieve better connection with your dog!
Leash handling is a skill. Matching the dog’s pace, anticipating changes of direction, avoiding leash tangles, managing the length of line, and anchoring at just the right moment are hallmarks of top nose work competitors. But these dance moves don’t come naturally. They have to be practiced.
In this session we are going to focus on leash skills, two in particular: anticipating choice points as the dog moves through the search area, and providing a pivot point when needed to set subtle boundaries to support the dog’s ability to work efficiently and effectively. Dogs should already be on odor, and familiar with multi-hide searches in novel environments.
This session will focus on getting your dog to understand, once cued to take a jump, that they should stay committed… NO MATTER WHAT.
How awesome would it be to be able to have 100 percent confidence that your dog will never pull off a jump again?
This lab will help you develop excellent toy play with your dog. Denise will introduce both the mechanics and the qualities of the dog-human interaction that can make toy play either highly enjoyable for both parties or an absolute misery. Toy play is not simple! It is fascinating and complex and subtle and, best of all, it can be learned!
Whether your dog shows absolutely no interest in toys or is a rabid tugger who simply refuses to return to re-engage, Denise can improve your game.
Ready to conquer real world distractions with your dog? This lab will go over a step by step process for determining when a behavior is ready to be subjected to distraction, how to properly introduce different distractions as well as what to do when your plan fails. The world is a crazy place, let’s make sure those trial behaviors are ready for it!
Looking to add some paw-zazz into your sport training? Wanting to try something new, yet familiar? Thinking it’s time to push your Rally skills to a new level?
Rally-FrEe is a rockin’ sport that emphasizes the precise execution of fundamental freestyle and obedience skills while encouraging creative and novel behaviors, all on a Rally style course! Come learn about this cool titling sport embraced by dog sport enthusiasts all over the world!
When your sports dog is injured, it is important to get an accurate diagnosis. This gives you the best chance of getting your dog back to competition as soon as possible. In this lecture, we will discuss:
- What do we mean by “accurate diagnosis?”
- Why is it important?
- What is the best way to get an accurate diagnosis?
- What can you do if you can’t get one?
- What is the role of rehabilitation practitioners in getting a diagnosis?
I will also demonstrate things you can do with your dog now to help you if your dog is ever injured.
Questions, including questions about your dog(s), will be welcome.
In this session we will use the ODE protocol to help our dog build their skills for ignoring distractions / “triggers” (people / dogs / movement / sound). We will also discuss how and when to implement the final steps of the protocol (i.e. adding in reinforced alternative behaviors, and increasing arousal up to optimal levels for work without our dog reverting to focusing on the stimulus/trigger).
The working spots in this session are perfectly suited to any team that has started working with the ODE protocol previously. There is no requirement to have achieved a certain skill level though, just some previous practice of step 1 or above.
About Offered Durational Engagement (ODE)
When our dog perceives a stimulus that interests or concerns them, a portion of their attention shifts to that stimulus. At this point we may only see evidence of “split focus” (i.e. glancing away from us and the task, responding more slowly to our cues, missing cues, performing an “incorrect” behavior, etc.), or our dog may perform a large reaction that we perceive as inappropriate or extreme (e.g. lunging, barking, whining, squealing, leaping, leaving us and rushing to the stimulus, attempts to run away, unable to respond to our cues in the presence of the stimulus, etc.).
Our dog’s response to the stimulus may be driven by emotion (e.g. fear, excitement, frustration, etc.), it may be driven by instinct (e.g. prey drive, etc.), or it may occur due to prior learning (i.e. expectation of a specific outcome, or a previously formed habit).
Offered Durational Engagement (ODE) is a simple pattern that forms the foundations for a 10-step protocol. For dogs responding due to emotions, the protocol helps to reduce the intensity of their feelings and hence their response. For dogs responding due to instinct or habit, the protocol helps our dog to find time to think between the stimulus and their response, so instead of going from stimulus to the existing automatic response, our dog is able to think before responding. This allows them to choose an alternative behavior to the existing inappropriate or extreme response. We can then ensure that our dog perceives the new response as more rewarding than the original response.
ODE is useful as both a behavior modification protocol for reactivity, as well a protocol for helping our competition dogs build their skills for comfortably ignoring and dismissing people / dogs / movement / sounds in the competition environment.
Do you run your own pet-related business? If you’re a dog trainer, groomer, or another pet professional with your own business and you struggle with marketing, this session is for you.
Whether you’re new and trying to figure out where to start, have been marketing your business for a while and just aren’t seeing results, or have enjoyed a ton of success but need to figure out what’s working and what’s not, in this lecture/lab we’ll cover where most people go wrong, evaluate what’s working for you now (and what’s not), and discuss new ideas for improving the effectiveness of your marketing efforts.
You’ll walk away with a better understanding of how marketing works and new ideas for bringing in new clients.
This lab will be an intensive focus on the Figure Eight exercise found in Novice and Open obedience, and all levels of Rally.
Nancy will discuss and refine the skills necessary for a focused, precise, and joyful performance. Both handling skills and dog skills will be covered. Nancy will show you how she strategically builds the exercise once dogs have mastered good heeling skills. She will not be covering heeling foundation skills, so working teams should have good heeling fundamentals before attending.
In order to solve complex odor problems in complex environments, a search dog needs a strong, “can do” spirit. Some dogs seem born with this spirit, but in reality, learning through experience is a powerful force for all. Mazes, 3D challenges, and barrier work provide fun opportunities for dogs to learn that there are many roads to success.
In this session, come give your dog the opportunity to learn that persistence pays off, and pushing a little harder to get to source is always worth the effort. Dogs should already be on odor.
Play is your best stress reliever! Have you ever thought about what play would look like if you didn’t have a toy to play with? Have you ever thought about playing with your food instead of handing it over? Play, especially play that doesn’t involve toys, is often something we don’t explore with our dogs, but it’s really a useful skill for making your dog feel better!
Developing a good personal play relationship with your dog will allow you to play anywhere and reduce your dog’s stress levels (and maybe yours!). Additionally, playing with food raises its value and introduces dogs unfamiliar with play to the the kinds of body language play has. Come play with us!
Students get to work one on one with Shade on the topic of their choice. It is best if they’ve taken one of her classes!
In this session, teams will work through the process of generalization and proofing that is required for behaviors to hold up under the context of a competition.
Everything from the car ride to the rewards you use to the judge in the ring can impact your team’s arousal level. This impact can cause our precious sports behaviors to break down and “trial-only” problems are quickly developed. How can we improve our training in order to get in front of this common problem? I’m going to show you during this working session! It’s my goal to shift your focus from “I need to calm them down” to “I need to train them to be precise in high arousal” – after all, the entire team will be aroused on the day of the competition!
The process is simple:
1. Write down everything you need your dog to do in the ring and the conditions you need them to be successful in.
2. Split those behaviors into replicable pieces.
3. Turn the dials on those pieces up to recognizable but unlikely situations.
I said simple, not easy. The process does take commitment and creativity on the part of the trainer. Not sure how that should look? Join this working session to see the process in action! Attendance at the Ring Prep Without the Ring lecture is encouraged!
Working participants should have one well-known skill that can be completed on cue without a reward present. Equipment available: jump, tunnel. (contacts/weaves TBD) Other behaviors we can work on: leash removal, start-line stay, and leashing up at the end of a run.
Having a problem with Heeling or an Open or Utility exercise? Do you need help with handling for your obedience skill?
In this session, Nancy will help you one-on-one with any heeling or obedience exercise.
Pocket hand is a way of teaching heeling that allows your dog to use the angle and position of your hand to develop and maintain an exceptionally precise heel position.
You’ve heard people talking about “pocket hand” for heeling, and now you get to see it in action! This technique will work just as well for retraining a 10-year-old dog as starting an eight-week-old puppy.
If you’d like to learn more about using pocket hand, join Denise in this lecture and lab and have your dog heeling with finesse in no time!
Working spots: Should be just starting out with this technique – if you already have advanced pocket hand heeling skills, and need some troubleshooting, sign up for the heeling problem-solving lab!
Do you struggle with getting your dog to turn? In this session we will work on how to go from extension to collection.
What exactly IS the perfect turn? And how to teach your dog that turning is FUN!
Every consequence we choose in training is there to motivate behavior change, but did you know it also inspires emotion at the same time? In fact, that’s why they work! Emotion underlies all of your training, and that’s not optional – Pavlov is always sitting on your shoulder!
In this lecture, I’ll go over Conditioned Emotional Responses (CERs), what the quadrants feel like, why that matters, and how to keep your dog in the “happy bucket” and out of the “yucky bucket.” You have heard me say “every time you teach your dog what to do, you’re teaching them how to feel,” right? What emotional responses are you conditioning?
Disc dog freestyle, Tricks, Distractions, Obedience and secondary obedience for protection sports or whatever you would like!
Join Sara for some one-on-one time to work on whichever skill you need.
Targets are a great way to communicate criteria, often doing so more quickly and accurately than shaping or luring. Targeting is a previously trained behavior that is used to convey criteria for a new behavior.
In this session you’ll learn how to use a variety of targets to isolate movement, maintain stillness, speed your dog’s understanding of both broad and nuanced behaviors, and transfer to a new verbal cue.
As the sport of dog agility evolves, more and more handlers are turning to reliance on verbal cues to guide their dog on the course. While they are a very useful part of any communication system, verbal cues are the hardest handling element for dogs to understand and are even harder to learn when paired with our natural physical cues.
During this working session, students will work through different generalization tasks that build fluency with any task and learn how to introduce discrimination to two known behaviors.
Working teams will plan sessions based on equipment available, but the skills can also be practiced with marker cues, and other behaviors that are primarily on verbal cue.
Trainers don’t always take “trick” behaviors seriously, but trick behaviors are a powerful method of motivating handlers and learners of all levels.
Ask anyone what a “trick behavior” is and the response will likely be similar to:
- “Behaviors that are fun to train!”
- “Behaviors that are fun for the learner.”
- “Something entertaining to watch.”
- “An unusual behavior put on cue.”
- “Behaviors not taken seriously by the trainer.”
Successful trick training requires the same effective skills that more commonly trained behaviors require. In many cases, training a trick behavior can require handlers to use tools they have never (or rarely) used before. This often increases the handlers’ overall skills.
Michele Pouliot began training trick behaviors when she first discovered clicker training in 1999. Although her career prompted Michele to develop a very serious use of clicker training for guide dogs for the blind, she believes that her deep experiences with training tricks are most responsible for her personal development as a positive reinforcement trainer. Why? Trick training provides variety for both the trainer and the learner. Variety prompts more creativity in training decisions and keeps training sessions more interesting.
Trick training is not “assembly-line training.” It continues to bring something new and stimulating to a learner’s repertoire and expands the training skills of the teacher. The intrinsic results are eagerness from the learner and continued enthusiasm for training in general for the trainer.
Join Michele for this enjoyable presentation to learn how trick training can help motivate trainers and learners and result in more joyful training sessions for everyone involved.
A creative hands on workshop developed by Barbara Lloyd the creator of “The Nimue Box Challenge” to test your dog’s ability to problem solve!
This workshop will consist of a series of Cognitive Challenges that range from easy to varying degrees of complexity. The main goal of the lab will be helping your understand how your dog reasons through how to solve a challenge and access a reward.
We will also discuss your dog’s learning style in contrast to your learning style and how that impacts your training sessions with your dog, as well as how to improve your training sessions with your dog via a better understanding of how your dog processes information and problems solves.
Decoding what your dog is telling you as they work through the challenges will be discussed in depth in order to give you a better understanding of how to harness your dog’s skills to train more efficiently.
This workshop is suitable for puppies and dogs all the way up to adulthood.
For young dogs and sensitive dogs this workshop help build resiliency, grit, and confidence. Adult dogs will gain more sustained focus and thoughtfulness.
Participants will be instructed on how to set up the challenges and then allow their dog time to solve the challenge.
Each participant can choose how much assistance to give their dog, and part of the class will be outlining and discussing why or why not you choose to simplify the task for your dog.
As the instructor I will give you feedback on what I see your dog doing, how to play to your dog’s strengths, how to improve a particular problem solving skill and how to make this relevant in other areas of training.
Ha ha, got a dog who won’t stay still?
Shade loves stays! In her own words “I am the eye contact and down stay queen. I think knowledge of stillness and stays are so important for our dog’s mental health, even if our sports don’t require it. “
Leave your dogs in the crating area for the short lecture where we’ll go over techniques, different kinds of stays, different emotions, etc… Then we’ll get the dogs out, and practice!
Come equipped with a towel, or blanket if you want, to make it easier for your training.
When dogs respond to odor, they are following dovetailing pathways through the air that humans cannot see. Becoming more attuned to this secret world requires close observation of body language. Can you tell what type of hide your dog is working long before he actually tells you where it is? How soon in a search can you recognize the telltale signs of a ground hide, an inaccessible hide, converging hides, or a high hide?
In this session we are going to test different types of hide placements and let the dogs teach us about what the odor is doing. Dogs should already be on odor, and familiar with multi-hide searches in novel environments.
Before we commence a training session, start the next exercise, or enter a competition space, we want to know that our dog feels ready to undertake the task ahead.
In order to be ready to give their full focus to us and the task, our dog needs to feel safe in that space, they need to have previously built the skills needed to ignore the distractions in that space, and they need to have a desire to participate with us and engage in the task. When these requirements have not been fulfilled, we will find ourselves having to compete for our dog’s attention.
Having to compete for a dog’s attention is not fun, and ultimately leads to frustration for both the dog and the handler. Continuing to ask for “work” from a dog that is disengaged, distracted, and/or frustrated may result in:
- Missed cues
- Anticipated cues
- Slow responses
- Incorrectly performed behaviors/exercises
- Looking away from us and the task
- Stalling / hesitating
- Zoomies
- Leaving us to “visit” other people / dogs
- Leaving us to investigate objects / pieces of equipment
- Attempts to escape the training/competition space
- Performing displacement behaviors (e.g. scratching, self-grooming, sniffing the ground, etc.)
Ensuring we only ask our dog to work when they feel ready requires accurate assessment, not only at the start of the work but on an ongoing basis throughout the session.
But what do we do if we assess our dog’s readiness to work at some point and they indicate they are not ready? These are the times we need a systematic protocol for influencing our dog’s readiness to work. The steps in this system help our dog to dissipate excess arousal, calm their emotions, and re-focus their thoughts. At this point we can then accurately reassess the best course of action in each instance.
In this session we will cover:
- Strategies that allow us to accurately assess our dog’s readiness to work, both initially and on an ongoing basis throughout a session
- Methods for assessing what caused a deterioration in focus/work during a session or whilst at a competition
- Strategies for influencing readiness to work, both prior to starting work and at any point where we notice a deterioration in focus/work
Working spots: To gain the most out of this session participants need to have at least a few simple skills/behaviors that are reliable in a “boring” environment (i.e. they do not have to be reliable in the camp environment). Dogs with high level competition skills are also welcome. If your dog is almost 100% reliable performing all behaviors in a “big” environment, then it is unlikely you will gain enough value from a working spot in this session, but may still find the information to be a useful addition to your existing toolbox.
Being in a trial environment often means being in a novel location with a lot more stimulation and distractions than you might usually see. Even the most seasoned dog can sometimes need your support and advocacy! You’ll need to be able to navigate busy, high arousal environments, prevent their social engagement with others, and keep their boundaries maintained so that the stress stays low.
In this lab we’ll practice some movement strategies and mental-game techniques to keep your dog able to cope with higher stress situations or close proximity to others, while staying connected to you. Join Amy to learn some tricks to traverse crowded areas with connection (magnet moves!) and games to keep their attention as other things pass by!
What is your ideal picture of beautiful heelwork? It likely includes words like precision and accuracy. Does it go beyond that to include enthusiasm, energy, lift, spark and joy? These are the attributes that make heelwork beautiful to behold, exciting to train and yes! Fun for both dog and handler!
By building animation, energy and enthusiasm as a separate piece from precision we can increase the rate of reward for each, creating value and joy in our heelwork training and performance. This session will focus on games and exercises that bring joy to your heelwork training and performance. Teams should have an understanding of heel position.
One of the most common agility skills that handlers struggle with during their dog’s career is remaining in position at the first obstacle of the course until they are released. Why does that happen? In this session, Nancy will help you build a good training foundation on this skill. You will also learn how to clean up your handling and release cues so that skill is preserved during your dog’s entire career.
Want to build your distance control and connection with your dog while participating in a great new sport? Or maybe you’ve always been fascinated by herding, but don’t have sheep. Check out Treibball!
Sometimes called “ball herding” or “urban herding,” treibball is a cross between billiards and soccer that you play with your dog. It’s perfect for a dog who is retired from other sports, dogs new to the sports world, or reactive dogs (since most venues restrict access to the competition field).
During this lab, we’ll cover the basic rules of the game and the foundation skills to get you started! Come learn about this relatively new dog sport!
Handler errors are the most common reason for losing points in Rally, but achieving higher scores is easier than you might think!
This Rally session will teach you effective strategies, techniques, and tips that you can practice today to boost your score at the next event. By making minor changes in your handling, and with a little bit of education, you will see instant improvements in your competition behaviors. By the end of the session, you will have a better understanding of how to improve your scores and be better equipped to compete in future rally events.
Even if you’re just starting out in Rally, you can get ahead of the game by learning these tips before entering your first competition.
If you want to take your rally game to the next level, join Nicole for this session!
Join Denise Fenzi, Sharon Carroll, and Loretta Mueller for a conversation on arousal — guaranteed to be an interesting conversation!
From the moment you say “search” to everything that happens after you call “finished,” you and your dog are continuously responding to a stream of cues—both from the environment and from each other. Your dog is in charge of following the odor cue, but his job can either be helped or hindered by you. How clear are you really at your end of the leash? Are you sending conflicting signals and creating uncertainty? Or are you supporting your dog’s work?
In this session we’ll be looking at common communication glitches that happen in searches, such as confusion about repayment at hides, exactly when and how reinforcement is going to happen, or ending searches abruptly in a way that may be confusing or demotivating. Dogs should already be on odor, with some experience searching for multiple hides.
Wonder what all this fuss is about marker cues? Why complicate it? The dog gets reinforced, right?
Join Shade as she covers what marker/reinforcement cues are and why you might expand beyond a clicker/yes/general marker cue. We’ll get all the humans out without dogs to practice timing and human behaviors (make sure you can leave your dog alone in the crating area for the first part of this lab!) and then every dog/handler team gets a couple chances to practice as well.
Beginners and advanced students welcome!
Ready to add a frequently overlooked training tool to your toolbox? Pre-placed rewards have an endless application to our agility training including:
– building obstacle focus and independence
– increasing speed
– adding elements of discrimination to all tasks
– proofing obstacle behaviors
– teaching dogs to prioritize multiple cues at once
– using a more ring sustainable reward solution
In this working session, teams will take two approaches to get started using pre-placed rewards and learn how to continue applying this skill to different agility skills. This lab is appropriate for teams of all levels, even if you’ve never trained this skill before. Each team will progress to the next level during their working time with Megan.
Since Michele’s first Platform Training DVD in 2010, trainers around the world have discovered the power and simplicity of this training tool. What began with Michele’s development of specific platform-training methods has evolved to an international platform phenomenon. Over the past 23 years, Michele has continued to discover and expand the versatility of raised platforms as very effective training tools.
Are you up-to-date on all the creative ways trainers are using raised platforms?
Do you have difficulty in removing platforms from a behavior in training?
Join Michele Pouliot for this lab that goes beyond the basic use of raised platforms as training tools!
Pet-dog training challenges amateur owners to train management skills in their dogs effectively. Competitive dog sports challenge the trainer to develop precision behaviors for a variety of scenarios. Platforms offer strong communication tools for our “teaching conversations” with our dogs in both scenarios.
This working lab assumes that the audience has a basic knowledge of how to use raised platforms (both 2-paw and 4-paw platforms) for training foundation skills. Although some fundamental information will be included, this LAB will focus on more advanced, effective, and creative ways of applying the platform tool for training and problem-solving. Watch Michele coach teams as they move through platform skills.
Working your dog? Feel welcomed to bring whatever raised platforms you use to train and join in the platform fun!
Join this informative session and learn powerful platform techniques from Michele Pouliot, the original “platform guru.” Experience how platforms are a “must-have” tool in any trainer’s toolbox. This lab is sure to give you some light-bulb moments!
Does your dog love toys? Let’s turn that toy drive into disc drive!
This lab will focus on the foundation skills needed to compete in a disc dog competition. You will learn how to properly throw a disc, how to teach your dog to bring the disc back, as well as flat work for strategy games and freestyle. Come get your disc dog on and see what one of the fastest growing dog sports is all about!
Have more than one dog that wants to work? Or a dog that doesn’t want to wait its turn at class?
This lab will cover how to manage working multiple dogs at the same time by using perch stays. Not only will your dogs learn to wait for their turn, but they’ll learn impulse control, patience and commitment to their stay!
Having a problem with an Obedience exercise or part of an Obedience exercise? Want to improve a known skill for obedience?
In this session, Denise will address any Obedience handling or training issues that you might have.
Most dogs learn their end-of-run routine “on the job” at the competition. While this does work for many teams, it’s a slow process and odds are, you won’t see all the benefits a trained end-of-run routine can provide. This working session is for you if:
– Your dog gets faster toward the end of the run
– Your dog gets confused if the middle of the course is near the exit gate
– Your dog avoids getting their leash on at the end
– Your dog watches/tries to visit the next dog on the line
– Your dog struggles to perform unless rewards are visible
In this session, teams will begin building a solid end-of-run routine that rewards each individual dog for their effort on the agility course, taking into account what kind of energy they should have at the end of the run and what reinforcer they’d enjoy swapping to after work.
Participants will learn how to attach that to the coursework itself in order to build speed throughout the entire course and how to swap from the intensity of work to the less intense but just as enjoyable reward contingency.
Working teams should be comfortable taking their dog’s leash off and have a few behaviors/obstacles that can be completed without reinforcement present. Behaviors can be tricks and don’t necessarily have to be obstacles.
Interesting smells, dropped food crumbs, open treat containers, and toys — these can all be very challenging for our dog to ignore.
We can try to block our dog’s access to these items, or we can use a cue to call our dog back to work, but wouldn’t it be better if our dog just continued to work in the presence of open treat containers, dropped food, interesting smells, and toys on the ground?
In this session we outline a systematic approach that will have your dog heeling past an open treat container or favorite toy in no time.
The key to success is helping our dog to make a choice to ignore these items. When our dog DECIDES to ignore something, the outcome is very different to when we ASK them to ignore something. This is because choosing to ignore an item is empowering and allows their full mental focus to be shifted elsewhere, whereas being asked to ignore something may result in our dog’s visual focus returning to us and the task, but there may still be conflicting emotions and split focus/attention within the processing in the brain.
In this session we outline the steps needed to have our dog choose to ignore interesting smells, food, and toys whilst working.
Working spots: There are no pre-requisite skills for working participants, but having an established loose leash walking or heeling behavior will be beneficial.
NOTE: The contents of this session is targeted towards dogs that compete (in-person or virtual) and/or dogs that participate in training sessions/classes. This is not a protocol aimed at teaching dogs to ignore dropped food whilst out on a sniffy walks or when on “free time” in their yard at home.
Pre requisite: online or physical toy class
There will be no lecture, only working one on one with Shade on the toy subject/step of your choice. We will divide up the time available and get the dogs out for working as many times as possible. If you have all the toy steps, structure, we can also work on behaviors within the toy game.
It’s a fact of life that things happen suddenly, and for your dog, even the more experienced and well socialized, those sudden events can sometimes be distressing!
Whether your dog is often pulled off center by events around them or it’s only occasional, when it happens to your dog, they need your help to recover.
It’s a great idea to have a plan in place before that happens, so you and your dog both have something to rely on! The startle to recovery framework involves simple, non-scary practice events, and parties that’ll convince your dog she won the lottery! Come see how to turn surprises into surprise parties!
Each dog sport has a foundation skill framework that builds reliable performance. But what about the glue that holds that sport-specific framework in place?
In this session, you will learn glue skills that can help accelerate learning opportunities (training, classes, seminars, and trials) for your dog. These skills are essential for your dog if competition is the ultimate goal. But they are also beneficial as general life skills for your dog. Without glue skills, dogs can develop unwanted habits, which interferes with their learning. Furthermore, once habits are established, they can be more challenging to change. Once you train glue skills with your dog, you will never return to training without them in your future dogs!
This session is for teams who have taken the Ring Confidence class at any level. Let’s keep working on trial prep to help your dog feel confident and happy in a trial environment! You know the pieces your dog still needs to work on, such as people pressure, transitioning with focus between exercises, or happy setups!
There will not be a lecture. Each team will get to run through their current sticking points and get feedback on how to support their dog. The goal is to help the dog feel confident in meeting these challenges! The sport focus should be obedience/rally as there will not be agility equipment available.
“How do I get my dog to stop… (fill in the blank here… marking on pee, going after food, sniffing for critters, etc)?” is a common request among nosework students. But often our very attempt to fix these issues backfires, and the behaviors we don’t want grow more persistent. This is because tackling distraction problems head-on frequently sets dogs up to practice the habit of losing focus—and, as we all know, practice makes perfect!
Come learn new ways to make distractions less relevant via antecedent arrangements, finely splitting environmental criteria, speed drills, and motivation games.
Are you always behind? Do you need to work on trusting your dog to do their job so you can move onto the next obstacle? In this session, we will work on plans to not get behind so we can direct our dogs around the course efficiently.
Are there skills that you need to teach your dog that will help you not be so far behind? We will identify those things that keep you from staying ahead of your dog.
Heelwork-to-Music combines all that you love about heeling, with your enjoyment of music!
It showcases the precision, connection and teamwork you strive for with transition freestyle behaviors and sequences that help maintain position, increase flow and ease of movement for your dog while having fun and moving to music! Come learn about this fun sport!
Why use different marker cues? What is the point and how does it affect behavior skills?
Join Shade for some quick lecture as she covers more advanced marker cues and why you might use different marker cues to teach different behaviors. (dogs in crates in crating area for this part!)
Then, we’ll get the dogs out, practice a simple behavior they already know. Second time, come with a behavior skill you want to teach and based on the lecture before hand, we’ll explore what marker cue you should use.
How your dog enters the ring can tell you a lot about how the run will go. The rewards are gone, the distractions are front and center, and you’re feeling nervous about how this will all play out. Without a well-rehearsed routine, it can feel like you’re never sure what dog you’re going to have upon entering the ring. Will they be fast? Will they hold their startline? Will they stay with me on the course? These are all questions we can find lingering in our heads when we don’t have a way to directly ask the dog!
Building a predictable routine that you and your dog can rely on is the same as asking them those questions, and will produce more consistent behaviors and give you reliable information about your dog’s mindset.
In this session, teams will work on:
– Teaching a choice-based ring entry
– Attaching anticipatory feelings (increased arousal) to the leash removal
– Changing the reinforcement contingency of the startline setup from food to work
– Chaining the pieces together for use in competition contexts
All agility teams will benefit from learning how to give our dogs a choice with regard to competing and how to reduce reinforcement effectively with the use of routines and sequences of behaviors.
Working participants should feel comfortable taking their dog’s leash off in the working space and have a trained setup behavior. A lead-out is not necessary for this session but is recommended (can be just a few steps).
We spend a lot of time preparing our dog for competitions, but mostly we don’t match that with our own personal preparation.
All dog sports require at least some participation from the human. In some sports our primary role is as our dog’s coach and support crew, but in many sports we are also their teammate, performing alongside them throughout.
When we prepare our dog for competition, we help them to develop the technical skills needed, the mental stamina needed, the ability to remain focused in potentially stimulating environments, the ability to remain confident and accurate under “pressure,” and the ability to maintain their arousal in the optimal zone for the duration of each performance. However, it can be easy to forget that we need this exact same skillset in order to be both successful and to be a productive teammate.
Our skills for managing our own thoughts, emotions, and behavior become even more critical if our dog is less robust, less experienced, has had previous negative competition experiences, or is prone to non-beneficial arousal shifts.
It is very easy to inadvertently send our team into a downward spiral of unsuccessful and unenjoyable performances in instances where either end of the leash has not been adequately prepared, or when gaps in preparation have not been rapidly identified or have not been adequately resolved.
In this session we will look at the human end of the leash and the role we can play in preventing unenjoyable competition experiences for us and our dog, as well as the steps we can take to turn around a downward trajectory of unsuccessful and unenjoyable competition performances.
This isn’t about winning, it is about having an enjoyable competition experience ourselves, and providing an enjoyable competition experience for our dog. This is where winning starts. Successful performances (winning, placing, fast times, high scores, titles, etc.) aren’t achieved by focusing on those end results, they are a bi-product of both teammates being adequately prepared, confident, and in control of their own thoughts, emotions, and actions throughout the competition performance.
This session is a lecture only (no practical) but please bring a pen a paper to get the most out of the session.
Yep. You’ve got the heeling basics AND…you need help! Maybe removing pocket hand or simply fixing a pesky little heeling issue. Need some attention to your heeling challenge? This is your lab!
Note: If you’re brand new to heeling, the Pocket Hand Heeling Lab is the place for you!
We spend a lot of time teaching our dogs to retrieve items to us and to hold onto items, and then when we want them to take an object away from us and drop it in the middle of nowhere our dogs are understandably confused.
In this Drop It Like It’s Hot hands-on workshop I will teach you how to train your dog that taking an object away from you and dropping it on cue is just as rewarding as giving you an object.
It is a step by step process that will teach your dog on cue:
- “Drop it Like It’s Hot”
- With the handler at a distance
- And then return to the handler having left the object behind
Prerequisites: your dog must be able to pick up an object off the floor
Supplies
- Small floor target (a fit paws silicon paw target is a good example; we we likely have a few available if you do not have one with you)
- Food your dog will do backflips for
- Clicker or other marker, a whistle or a duck caller
- 5 or 6 objects your dog likes to put in their mouth
In this lab, we talk about how to build reliable toy play through the use of food reinforcement. If your dog loves to play but struggles in new spaces, plays keep away once they get the toy or doesn’t show interest in playing, this is a beneficial lab to take.
We will be using food as reinforcement, so dogs who have medium to high food drive will do best in this lab.
You’ve trained hard, have your heeling all set, your dog is engaged … uh oh. Where’d that judge come from? Why is she following us? Lots of dogs are proximity sensitive and aren’t comfortable with being directly approached, followed or crowded by strangers (especially strangers with clipboards and hats!). Some dogs want to rush to greet anyone within a 10 foot radius!
In this lab, we’ll go over things you can do to help your dog be comfortable with these “strange” judge behaviors and not feel the need to keep an eye on them, and help those greeters learn that judges are boring, and you are best!
Does your dog get easily distracted during agility? Are you not exactly sure how to train distractions without overwhelming your dog? This session is for you!
We will work on layering challenges, how to work on thresholds, and what to do in different scenarios.
In both training and trialing, dogs frequently encounter hides in boxes, on chairs, or under tables. Dogs also quickly learn to focus on objects that look like training aids, such as tins or tubes, and smells associated with training aids, such as putty. If too regimented, even your movements or positioning can inadvertently pull your dog’s focus away from the all important odor cue. Over time, repetition of these set patterns can create expectations about where to look for odor, resulting in, at best, inefficient searching, and at worst, fringe or false alerts.
In this session we’ll be using fun, mind-bending hide placements to help clarify for the dogs that only following odor to source matters—no matter what the picture is. Dogs should already be on odor.
We’ve all heard the term! And many of us strive to apply it. So why is it so hard? And is it really all that important? When you see the lightbulb go on for your dog and it suddenly makes sense to them, you start to realize just how important a skill it is.
Clean handling is more than just separating your marker from your reward or making sure you have enough treats. It is a communication system that can reduce confusion, alleviate frustration and lead to a more enjoyable and productive training experience. In this session you will learn how to create changes in your training that will increase trust and overall success in your sessions. It’s up to us to make sure it all makes sense to our dogs!
There are many different strategies for training duration behaviors.
In this session, you will learn the situations where event markers can be used and the circumstances when you should avoid them. You will also learn to train and use several event markers effective for duration behaviors.
Join Loretta for some one-on-one time to work on whatever agility skill you need!
Join our FDSA team of presenters and staff for one final conference-wise session reviewing camp, announcing the details for next year, and bringing the conference full circle!