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FF160: The PROOF is in the Training: Building Strong Behaviors

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FF160: The PROOF is in the Training: Building Strong Behaviors

Course Details

Consistent. Reliable. Confident.

We’ve all admired those dogs who seem rock-solid no matter where they are—whether they’re calmly walking through a crowd, holding a perfect stay as chaos swirls around them, or wagging confidently as they heel past a judge in the ring.

What if your dog could be that dog?

Imagine a dog who can ignore a flock of chickens, hold steady as kids dash by, or stay focused when life throws curveballs. Whether you want a competition-ready partner or a dog who listens reliably at the park or lake, the key is the same: strategic proofing and thoughtful training.

Does any of this sound familiar?

  • Your dog nails behaviors at home, but everything falls apart when you step outside.
  • You’re eager to try agility, rally, or obedience, but have no idea how to bridge the gap between your living room and the precision of the ring.
  • You just want a dog who listens and stays focused no matter where you go.

If so, this class is for you.

We’ll teach you how to take the solid behaviors your dog already knows and build them into reliable, confident performances—no matter the environment or distraction. You’ll learn how to systematically add challenges in a way that strengthens behaviors, without overwhelming or confusing your dog.

Proofing doesn’t have to be harsh or discouraging. In this class, you’ll discover how to use proofing as a tool to boost your dog’s confidence, build resilience, and create clarity. We’ll also dive into generalization, helping your dog understand that a behavior means the same thing no matter where you are or what’s happening around you.

Each team will focus on a handful of well-established behaviors and learn how to train them to fluency in a variety of settings. You’ll leave with a clear, repeatable blueprint—so you can apply the same process to any new behavior down the road.

For those with competitive goals, I’ve included specific lectures on preparing for the obedience and rally rings. We’ll cover the details that set you up for success, and you’ll learn how to simulate trial conditions right at home with simple tools like gates, chairs, or tables.

No matter your goals—whether it’s earning ribbons, having a reliable off-leash dog, or simply enjoying a calm, confident companion—this class will give you the skills and strategies to get there.

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This class is the perfect one to follow Connect and Engage with Games or Beyond the Backyard.  The PROOF is in the Training will take the concepts learned in those classes and add behaviors to the picture.  Connect and Engage or Beyond the Backyard is NOT a pre-requitsite, but if you took either class and am wondering about next steps, this is your answer.

Trailer

 

Teaching Approach

Lectures will be released weekly on the first day of the week.  They will be a mixture of concept-based lectures and instructional lectures written out with video examples.  The videos will not need to be heard in order to be understood.  Most videos will be short, under 2 minutes.  For the instructional lectures, homework will be outlined at the end of each lecture.  Supplemental lecture and videos will be posted as needed.  This class would work well for students preferring lectures with step by step instructions and video examples. 

This class will have a Teacher's Assistant (TA) available in the Facebook study group to help the Bronze and Silver students! Directions for joining will be in the classroom after you register.

Nicole Wiebusch Instructor: Nicole Wiebusch

Nicole Wiebusch CPDT-KA (she/her) has been competing in dog sports for over 25 years.  Starting in 4-H, Nicole quickly became addicted to the sport of obedience and has been showing in obedience, rally, and agility ever since.  (Click here for full bio and to view Nicole's upcoming courses)

Syllabus

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1.1 Setting Up Your Training Session for Success

1.2 My Dog Made a Mistake! Now What?

1.3 Reinforcement Cues: What They Are and Why We Need Them

1.4 What's Your Behavior List?

1.5 Distraction List for Your Dog

1.6 The Building Block of it All: Where's Your Brain

 

2.1 Can You Hear Reinforcement Cues?

2.2 Increase Criteria = Decrease Difficulty

2.3 Acclimation Strategies

2.4 Reinforcement Value: High Verses Low

2.5 Cookies: Reinforcement or Distraction?

2.6 Where's Your Brain: Adding Mild Distractions

 

3.1 Where's Your Brain: Handler and Environment Generalization

3.2 Behaviors: Handler and Environment Generalization

3.3 Behaviors: Add Mild Distractions

3.4 Distance from Handler

3.5 Distance from Distractions

 

4.1 Premack = Go Sniff

4.2 Distractions: Sounds

4.3 Distractions: Smells

4.4 Behaviors: Moderate Distractions

 

5.1 Focus On Focus Off Focus On

5.2 Behaviors: Pressure

5.3 Distractions: Objects in Motion

5.4 Multiple Reps and Longer Behavior Chains

 

6.1 Combining Distractions

6.2 Putting It All Together: Generalization, Distractions, Distance, and Duration

6.3 Ring Ready: Go Show Your Dog!

Prerequisites & Supplies

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Teams should have 5-6 solid behaviors and the ability to train in several different environments

Students wishing to prepare for competition should have some sort of gates and a threshold to walk through

Sample Lecture

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1.2 My Dog Made a Mistake! Now What?

 

Dogs make mistakes.  It’s going to happen.  There’s no way around it.  So what do we do?

Knowing what to do in the moment is not always easy!  It generally requires some thinking about what happened and where the dog’s understanding of what you were asking fell short.  However, it’s hard to think in the middle of a session!  So what should you do?

Don’t Blame the Dog!

Most importantly, don’t blame the dog!  It’s rare that the dog chooses to blatantly disobey – and even if your dog did make that choice, some piece of learning history taught the dog that choosing not to do the behavior is more advantageous to the dog than doing it.

Generally dogs make mistakes either because of a lack of understanding or distractions/inability to perform in that environment.  The solution to both of these is more training!

The first is easy to discuss.  You ask the dog to lay down but you haven’t taught it thoroughly.  The dog doesn’t do the behavior because he simply doesn’t understand what you’re asking for.

More typically though, dogs don’t perform the behavior because the context is different.  That could be a distraction that the dog is struggling with, a change in the environment, or a change in the handler cues.

Let’s talk about an example.  You’ve taught your dog to lay down by luring him down with a treat.  He’s doing pretty well, so you decide to just say down and see what happens.  Your dog looks at you like he’s never heard the word in his life.

Or this scenario: your dog is so good at sitting for a treat in your kitchen, but when friends come over you can’t get him to stop jumping, let alone sit.

More Training?

In both situations, the dog needs more training.  For the down, you have to show the dog a down without the lure, then fade the hand signal, before you can simply cue a verbal down.  Sit needs to be taught in a variety of environments with different levels of distraction before you can expect your dog to sit during an exciting time.

I’m going to share a very important secret of good dog trainers – we don’t cue the dog if we aren’t reasonably sure the dog is going to perform the cue.  I mean, why would you want to cue come as your dog is chasing a deer out of the field?  Your dog will hear the cue, but probably won’t come, unless you’ve done quite a bit of recall training.  The only thing that teaches the dog is to ignore your cue.  This goes back to our first lecture, setting your dog up for success.

There are a couple reasons that dogs make mistakes that I didn’t cover.  Sometimes, just like us, dogs have off days.  Maybe your dog doesn’t feel well, or is tired.  He might know the behavior that you’re asking for, but because he’s not feeling 100%, doing that behavior might be difficult.  If you suspect your dog isn’t feeling well, take the day off.

Finally, if your dog is scared or fearful, it’s unlikely that she will respond to cues as she would normally.  For a scared or anxious dog, getting them into a situation in which they feel more comfortable takes priority over any training.

The majority of the time, we know that dogs who make mistakes need more training – either training the actual behavior itself or adding generalization and distractions to the behavior.  Just as we wouldn’t ask a complicated math question to a second grader, we can’t ask complicated behaviors of our dogs until we are certain the foundation for that behavior is understood.

Try, Try Again … Or NOT!

So, let’s think about this.  Dogs that make mistakes need more training, don’t feel well, or are scared.  In all three of these situations, repeating the failed behavior over and over doesn’t help anyone!  And yet, what is our natural response to a mistake?  Try again until the dog gets it right!

If we continue to repeat the behavior without changing something, both you and your dog will become frustrated.  In order to have a productive training session, frustration is something you want to try to avoid.

So what should we do instead?  Of course, that depends on the situation and the dog!

If your dog is happy and confident, and you’re fairly sure the dog knows the cue, go ahead and say it again.  If your dog responds, great!  Reward!  If not, the dog is clearly telling you he can’t do it in this context, so it’s your job to make it easier.  Go ahead and throw another reset treat while you think through what to do.

 

On your next rep, change something!  Even if I’m confident he knows it, I will change something to increase the chance of success on the next rep.  Continued failures aren’t good for you or your dog!

See if you can guess why the dog didn’t perform.  Are you in a new environment?  Are you in a busy room with lots of other dogs?  Are you trying to fade a body movement cue and get the behavior on a verbal?  Is your dog excited because you have a guest at your house?

In any situation, I want to break the dog out of the behavior and get him moving, so my go-to is to throw a reset treat.  If I have a sensitive dog that flattens a little when he makes a mistake, I will ask for a super easy behavior to reward before I try again, just so the dog can feel successful.  If you’re not sure how to handle any mistake, throwing a reset treat or asking for an easy behavior to reward is never a bad way to react!

Let me share one more secret.  Dogs don’t go into a training session thinking “I’m not happy with my mom so I’m going to blatantly ignore everything she says today just to make her mad.”  Sounds ridiculous when we put it that way, doesn’t it?  And yet, what are we thinking when we say things like “he KNOWS this!”?  We are assuming that the dog knows the behavior, is completely capable of performing the behavior, and is choosing not to in order to spite us or make us mad.  Dogs just don’t think that way!

 

Examples

Let’s discuss some examples.

Your puppy sits great in your living room, but at puppy class she stares at you like she doesn’t know what the word means.

This is likely a generalization and distraction problem.  We have to teach our dogs that sit means sit in different environments, not just in the living room.  Also, the other dogs are likely distracting the pup, compounding the problem.

I would not re-cue the dog in this case.  I would get high value treats and move as far away from the other puppies and people as I could.  When you hold a treat, most dogs are likely to offer a sit, so I would reward a few offered sits, then away from the distractions I would cue the sit.  If she did it, I would reward and praise, then repeat once more before I went a bit closer to the distractions.  If she did not do it, I would stop asking her in that session and brainstorm how I could further break down the environment and distractions to help her be successful, while I put some more reward history on the behavior at home.

Your dog misses the down signal during a training session.

The first thing that I’m going to do is help my dog be successful by following the signal with a verbal.  I will then reward and reset the dog.  While I’m doing this, I’m going to ask myself, does the dog really know this cue, in this situation?  If I think the answer is yes, I will try again.  If the dog is successful, awesome!

 

Sometimes, especially when they are further away from us, dogs get unsure.  They don’t want to make a mistake, but their confidence is low.  In this case, many dogs will resort to freezing rather than make a mistake.  If you feel this describes your dog, it’s important that you increase confidence.  Getting closer to your dog, giving the verbal and signal at the same time, and moving to a less distracting area are all good choices!

Your dog is at a training class for the first time and is very shut down and will not take food.

Your dog is likely overwhelmed and scared, and is not in a state of mind for learning!  Go sit in a quiet corner of the room and let her acclimate.  Don’t attempt any training until your dog is comfortable enough to eat food.

Your dog is just acting off in a training session.

If your dog is not his normal happy self, and has delayed responses to cues he typically knows well, it’s likely he is not feeling well.  It’s time to quit the session and try again another day.

Always End on a Good Note – Or Not??

One phrase I’ve heard over and over during my 20 plus years of training dogs is “always end on a good note.”  Many people take this to mean that you need to keep cuing the behavior until the dog gets it right.  Repetition over and over without success is detrimental to most dogs.  I will never allow more than 2 mistakes in a row without changing something to ensure my dog can be successful.

Sometimes, especially if you suspect that your dog isn’t feeling well, it’s best to just walk away from that session.  It’s okay to quit.  You will do far less damage to your dog walking away after a failed attempt than trying to repeat the behavior over and over until the dog gets it right.

Remember that your goal is a happy confident dog, so set your dog up for success as much as possible!

Testimonials & Reviews

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A sample of what prior students have said about this course ...

I love watching Nicole’s demo videos of her own training. It’s a great visual of clean and timely training techniques, ones I aspire to.      


Nicole is knowledgable, approachable and wonderful with her courses! I really enjoy learning what she has to offer!       


I love all of Nicole's classes and this one was also great!         

 

Registration

There are no scheduled sessions for this class at this time. We update our schedule frequently, so please subscribe to our mailing list for notifications.

Registration opens at 11:00 am Pacific Time.

FF160 Subscriptions


Gold

Silver

Bronze
Tuition $ 260.00 $ 130.00 $ 65.00
Enrollment Limits 12 25 Unlimited
Access all course lectures and materials ✔ ✔ ✔
Access to discussion and homework forums ✔ ✔ ✔
Read all posted questions and answers ✔ ✔ ✔
Watch all posted videos ✔ ✔ ✔
Post general questions to Discussion forum ✔ ✔ ✖
Submit written assignments ✔ ✖ ✖
Post dog specific questions ✔ With video only ✖
Post videos ✔ Up to 2 ✖
Receive instructor feedback on
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Find more details, refund policies and answers to common questions in the Help center.

 

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