F3011: The Urban Dog Survival Guide: Creating Calm in the Concrete Jungle

Learning Outcomes:

By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Design an outing with a defined objective 
• Categorise environments correctly
• Assess whether their dog’s skills are ready for a location
• Execute a walk without escalating cues
• Adapt sessions strategically instead of reactively
• Reduce micromanagement and preserve relationship quality

Week 1: Recce & Pre-Walk Planning - Theme: Stop walking blindly.

This week teaches how to:

• Recce locations without the dog
• Identify density patterns and bottlenecks
• Predict pressure points
• Define outing objectives
• Pre-decide exit strategies

Students can clearly explain:

• Why they chose a location
• What the purpose of the outing is
• What would trigger an early exit

Week 2: Skill Readiness & Environment Matching - Theme: Match skill strength to environment.

Students learn to categorise locations as:

1 ) Learning Places - Calm enough to build and refine skills.
2) Stretch Places - Slightly harder but manageable.
3) Survival Places - Too dense or unpredictable. Get in, get out. Do not train here.

Core concepts:
• Latency (response speed)
• Duration (hold time)
• Recovery speed
• Why repeated exposure in high-pressure areas erodes confidence

Students can:
• Demonstrate a trained behaviour indoors
• Demonstrate it in a low-distraction outdoor setting
• Identify where it breaks down
• Correctly decide when a location is not appropriate

Week 3: Execution Without Micromanagement - Theme: Run the plan cleanly

Students integrate planning + skill readiness + execution.
They learn to:
• Define the outing type before stepping outside
• Apply fallback strategies early
• Avoid trigger stacking
• Exit deliberately instead of reacting late

Students can:

• Complete an outing without escalating cues
• Demonstrate an effective fallback strategy
• End a session intentionally