Course Details
Discover how Opt-Out Stations will improve your bond with your dog with Kim Palermo! Allowing your dog to opt out from a training session or an activity can build motivation, empowerment, and the desire to learn. It will give you useful information if your setup isn’t clear, your mechanics are messy, or you’re creating confusion. For sensitive dogs, you’ll learn how many reps they can handle, what’s making them walk away from training sessions, and how to provide a learning environment that they will embrace. And for the dogs who you don’t think would ever consider opting out—watch and learn how they’ve used work to mask their feelings by giving them the chance to walk away and process what they’ve learned and their environment.
The end result? Your training sessions become an opportunity for you and your dog to have a conversation together. You get to know their likes and dislikes and how they prefer to learn. And they begin to see training not just as an opportunity to earn reinforcement, but as a way to connect and spend time with you.
Kim bases her Opt-Out Stations on the applied behavior analysis concept of degrees of freedom and its successful application to human learning, as well as plenty of anecdotal evidence and examples. Her Opt-Out Stations will also have the influence from ACE Free Work by meeting the individual dog’s physical and emotional needs. Take your bond with your dog to the next level with Opt-Out Stations!
About the Instructor:
Kim Palermo CPDT-KA (she/her) is a Certified Control Unleashed Instructor and ACE (Animal Centred Education) Practitioner. She specializes in teaching Control Unleashed and ACE Free Work with private clients, teaches a high volume of in-person CU classes, and incorporates CU into all of her membership-style group pet dog classes for her dog training business, BlueDog, located north of Boston. In 2008 she began offering dog walking and soon grew and managed a large team of staff and introduced dog training services. She’s been working with dogs professionally for over 20 years and has been an avid dog owner and sports enthusiast her entire life. She has a fondness for helping dogs with big feelings, and uses compassion and kindness with every animal and human that she works with.
Kim’s passion is to help others pursue their dream of training dogs and she continues to expand her business in a way that supports growth, mentorship, and opportunity for her team. She is a mentor for Control Unleashed certification program, the CATCH dog trainers program, and for local trainers. She has spoken in conferences, teaches in-person workshops, and presents for her local community.
Kim is a true dog sport dabbler and dog lover, trying everything she can with her five dogs to learn as much as she can! Currently she’s training her two Collies for herding, obedience, agility, conformation, and scent work. She also competes in Rally and Obedience with her miniature poodle. Kim is the vice president of the Collie Club of NH and a member of the Collie Club of America and is actively working on expanding performance options for Rough and Smooth Collies. During her free time she likes to escape to the woods to hike, is a beekeeper, raises a flock of chickens, ducks, turkeys, and guinea hens, and dreams of the day when she has a farm.
