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FF410: Cognitive Challenges: The Key to How Your Dog Thinks

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FF410: Cognitive Challenges: The Key to How Your Dog Thinks

Course Details

A creative class developed by Barbara Lloyd to test your dog’s ability problem solve.  This class is suitable for puppies and dogs all the way up to adulthood. For puppies in particular, this class would be a great to help build resiliency. Adult dogs will earn more confidence and thoughtfulness.

This class is made up of a series of cognitive challenges that range from easy to varying degrees of complexity. Challenges start out fairly simple with familiar things, then they increase in difficulty up to solving challenges that utilize mirror images. Your dog’s ability to reason through how to solve a challenge and access a reward will be the main goal of the class. 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 & 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 improve a particular problem solving skill and how to make this relevant in other areas of training. 

Teaching Approach: 

The format for this class will be written lectures released weakly on the concepts that the skills being tested that week will be on. Each lecture will break down the challenge and discuss possible reactions your dog may have to it. Further to that the lecture will also discuss how the different types of learner’s may respond to the challenge.

Videos will be released bi-weekly with the challenges, as well as with voice over on different dog’s performances to help you look at your own dog’s reaction to the challenge with understanding and encouragement.

Gold students will receive feedback that is specific to their submitted homework videos entailing my interpretation of what your dog was “thinking” as well as a commentary on how your presence in the challenge affected your dog’s problem solving abilities.  I will be able to highlight when you are bang on and helping your dog or when you are “over helping” your dog or what you could do to help your dog or how to further challenge your dog. Feedback will always be given in a non judgmental way to encourage discussion and further learning.

Silver & Bronze students will gain valuable information from the lectures, videos and video submission of the Gold thread participants. As well as get feedback on the FB Study Group headed up by our very talented TA Becca Hoffman. Becca is my teaching assistant and co - teacher in my in person classes, so she knows the materials very well and is often in the video examples with her two beagles.

Mastery of every challenge is not mandatory, but what you will definitely take away from this class is a thorough understanding of your dog’s strengths & weaknesses. The class will conclude with a BONUS Challenge that will put much of what you and your dog have learned to the test. This challenge will entail a chained behaviour using a tool to access a reward.


Capture Barbara      Guest Instructor: Barbara Lloyd                                 

Syllabus

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Week 1

  • What is your dog’s learning style?
  • Let’s test & Discuss your results
  • Break in Challenge

Week 2

  • Eye to Eye Challenge
  • The Nimue Box Challenge

Week 3

  • The Squirrel Obstacle Course
  • Undercover
  • Tents
  • Outa Sight
  • What’s Behind Curtain #1

Week 4

  • Seeing is Believing
  • The Round About
  • Which Hand
  • The Pipe, the Board & the Chair
  • What’s in your Cupps?

Week 5

  • Artificial Representation - The Mirror Challenge
    • 1. Behind Me
    • 2. What’s behind Curtain #1?
    • 3. The Nimue Challenge
    • 4. Undercover

Week 6

  • More Artificial Representation & Discrimination
    • 1. What’s behind Curtain #1?
    • 2. The Nimue Challenge
    • 3. Undercover
  • Bait one, will your dog go to the correct challenge?

Prerequisites and Equipment

Supplies:

  • A crate or kennel A box big enough for your dog to walk into
  • PVC pipe (a jump bar or weave pole)or other piece of PVC pipe 1” diameter and 3-4 feet long
  • A shoe box with a removable lid
  • A blanket
  • Tupperware/plastic medium lid
  • Cushion or soft dog bed
  • Mirror (mirrored closet doors or freestanding or one that can be propped up against something)
  • A piece of glass from a picture frame 12”x12” or a piece of plexi glass
  • 3 small pylons or plastic cups
  • A board that is about 3-4ft x 3-4ft
  • Approximately a 3x4 piece of cardboard

Sample Lecture

More

I think an important part of the learning process is having the confidence to make mistakes and learn from them. That means going ahead with a theory or idea of how to solve a problem, fail and keep trying.   

This is a key character trait in resilient people and dogs.   

Failure is not a commentary on intelligence or ability, however I do believe how one deals with failure is a commentary on mindset and beliefs.  What most people don’t realize is that the most successful people have failed more than most people have ever attempted anything.  

Yes, please read that again:  What most people don’t realize is that the most successful people have failed more times than most people have ever attempted anything.  

As children we fail all the time, especially when we are infants learning everything for the first time.  How may times does a baby fall before they learn to walk?  How many times does a baby miss their mouth with the spoon when they are learning to feed themselves?  The list is endless……………..but they don’t give up, they may get frustrated, but they don’t quit and they don’t have beliefs or judgments about all the failures, they learn from their mistakes and move on and build on their successes.  And in this process they become resilient and develop grit.  

Grit is a form of determination that is strengthened by failure and it will cultivated a desire to succeed.  And this is where I want to lead you and your dogs, into developing Grit via Cognitive Challenges.  

The purpose of the challenges is not for your dog to nail them the first time around, the goal of the challenges is to test your dog’s ability to solve problems independently.

Once you set the challenge up and observe your dog, if your dog nails it……..that is excellent.  It means your dog has understood the challenge and has the ability to act independently towards the solution.  Then we can confidently increase the difficulty of the challenges. 

If your dog struggles and fails, now you have just been given important information about how your dog thinks and I’m here to help you figure out the best way to offer the minimum amount of help to your dog to gain the maximum amount of success.

I would encourage you to think about your role in these challenges as the “Set Director”

You set up the Challenges for your dog in the same way a Director “sets the stage” for an actor to do their job.  Your role as Set Director is to create an Optimal Concentrating environment for your dog, whereas your dog is the Main Actor and needs the stage to do their job.  

HOMEWORK 

Our first Challenge is called “Break In”

This challenge is designed to test your dog’s ability to interact with something familiar to them, their crate/kennel and access a reward

The set up

You will need a Crate/Kennel, large pieces of food.

1.  Get some fairly large pieces of food that your dog absolutely loves
2.  Let your dog know you have the food and walk over to the crate 
3.  Make sure the crate door is slightly ajar 
4.  With your dog watching throw pieces of food through the slightly open front door
5.  Step back and let your dog figure our how to get the crate door open to access the food inside.
6.  Observe your dog with a neutral mindset, try your best to be a silent observer.  
7.  Once your dog has opened the door enough to get the food, toss more in from the side  

Possible scenarios and trouble shooting

Your dog does not attempt to solve the problem because they are trained to wait for a release cue or start work cue ~ if that is the Optimal Condition for your dog to Solve the Challenge, please incorporate that into the exercise, then step back and observe

Your dog approaches the crate to sniff and accidentally closes the door more and will not attempt to open the door because they believe it is closed.  Open the door slightly and let your dog see you throw a few pieces of food in the crate close to the very front and then step back 

Your dog approaches the crate but is so over aroused they start barking and can’t think.  In this case, throw a food scatter behind your dog to divert their attention and while they are eating the food scatter, open the door enough so they can get the treats with little to no difficulty.  

Repeat the procedure but each time close the door a little bit more so eventually your dog knows they can problem solve and use their paw, head or nose to open the door by themselves.  

Your dog is sensitive and will not open the door even though they want the treats, in this case, open the door wide enough so their head will clear, and then make a treat trail into the crate to a jackpot in the front of the crate.  With each successive repetition close the door just a little bit, almost so that it is unnoticeable to your dog 

As your dog works through this Challenge and is solving it with confidence, to increase difficulty, leave the crate unlatched but the door almost completely shut.  

I would strongly encourage all students to video all the challenges with you and your dog in the frame.  This will be very valuable for proper evaluation.  

Gold students please post your videos in the homework thread for feedback and Sliver & Bronze, remember, we have a TA to do video evaluations too.  

 

Testimonials & Reviews

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New class and instructor for the February 2023 session.

“I am SO excited about this class! I absolutely love how Barbara thinks and approaches dog training. Her insight into and understanding of dog behaviour is profound, and her approach to raising and training dogs is paradigm shifting. My dogs love her cognitive challenges and I love how my own brain gets challenged—in all the right and fun ways—when learning from Barbara. If you want to expand your understanding of what good training is all about, learn new ways to think about dog training, and bring your relationship with your dog to new heights and greater depths, don’t miss this class!”                ~ FDSA Instructor Helene Marie Lawler

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 10:00am Pacific Time.

 

FF410 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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