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OB195: Creating Confidence in Your Obedience Dog

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OB195: Creating Confidence in Your Obedience Dog

Course Details

Most dogs are not innately confident. Especially when it comes to obedience. A sport that is not inherently self-reinforcing. A sport where dogs must learn to perform complex behaviors under a lot of pressure. In this course we will explore what we can do to improve our dog’s overall confidence and confidence in the ring. This starts with clear, consistent communication. We must learn how to read our dog’s most subtle cues in real time and adjust our response. We must understand our dog’s learning style and structure our teaching accordingly.  We will look at how to create a training session where the dog has a high success rate while using a small ratio of errors to create resilience. We will play fun games with our dogs that empower them and teach them that they can overcome challenges. We will be working on YOUR confidence as well! We’ve all watched our dogs make mistakes and had no idea how to help them. Once you can read and understand your dog and their learning style, you will develop the skills to support them. 

In this course we will be focusing primarily on smaller behaviors to build a strong foundation of confidence. If your dog is more advanced, we can work towards more complex behavior chains. Our focus in this course will be on building overall confidence, more than on actual behaviors or exercises.  This course is beneficial for puppies through seasoned adults. Some work will be done at home or where you typically train. Other work requires novel locations with varying amounts of distraction (for example, parking lots, parks, outside strip malls, etc.).

Teaching Approach

This class will have written and video lectures each week.  Each lecture will be broken down into small pieces.  There will be video examples demonstrating all exercises.  Because everyone has their own learning style, I encourage students to move at their own pace. I understand that each dog and handler are unique and will do my best to accommodate their needs. Students will need to move around with their dogs as needed to work on the exercises/behaviors they choose to target in this class. It is highly encouraged for students to bring their dogs to different environments throughout the class.  A few of the games will require quick physical movement from the trainer for short periods and distances.

Petra FordInstructor: Petra Ford

Petra (she/her) graduated from Rutgers School of Health Related Professions 17 years ago with a degree in physical therapy and has experience working with an extremely varied caseload including pediatric through geriatric clients with a vast range of diagnoses. Her areas of expertise included in-patient rehabilitation, orthopedics and neurology. (Click here for full bio and to view Petra's upcoming courses)

Syllabus

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WEEK ONE:

What IS Confidence?

Assessing our dog’s current confidence level

Planning your training session – Get out that notebook.  Or a piece of paper…. AND USE IT!!

Cleaning up your Communication

What type of learner is your dog

Is my dog sensitive? All dogs care about errors

Empowering Yourself!  Holding yourself accountable

Clear criteria vs. shaping

Using props

Challenge yourself to problem solve

ALWAYS simplify

Analyzing Behavior(s) You Are working on

WEEK TWO:

Optimal error ratio

What caused the error?

Handling errors: I’ve changed how I do this!

Reading your dog…it’s complicated!

Rewarding for ego building

Matching reward to challenge

Don’t “Push” the dog; Let the dog push you

Creating a positive Conditioned Emotional Response (“CER”)

It’s the dog’s idea! Empowerment games

WEEK THREE:

How do YOU handle pressure? You must be the anchor!

What puts pressure on you?

What puts pressure on your dog?

Establishing a strong foundation

Mastering challenges

Get out there!! Generalizing empowerment games

Props are our friend!

WEEK FOUR

Reassessing You

Reassessing the Dog

Building on the foundation

         Stacking

         Or Combining Pieces

Backchaining for Confidence

Creating a proofing plan

Empowerment games with props

WEEK FIVE

WEEK SIX

Prerequisites & Supplies

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No prerequisites or supplies required for this course.

Sample Lecture

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What is confidence?  Confidence is created. We can argue that some people/dogs are born with more innate confidence than others. But true confidence, especially in a skill, is learned. Confidence can be built up by those around us or eroded. Confidence can be improved by the experiences we have in life, or they can cause us to become insecure. When it comes to our dogs, it’s up to us. We control everything in their environment and their training experience. We can take an innately confident dog and make them insecure and anxious. We can take an innately insecure dog and make them confident. Yes, it can be done. Zeal was unbelievably insecure and nervous. It took enormous amounts of patience, time, and lots of hard work. But eventually he gained enough confidence that he went on to compete at the highest level, in the most challenging environment (the National Obedience Championship) and end up on top. How? That’s what we are going to learn in this course. First and foremost, we must hold ourselves accountable.  We must learn to put ourselves in our dog’s paws. Think about a skill that you are completely and utterly confident in. Can be something like driving, your job, a hobby, a task around the house. Why are you so confident in it? Would you be so confident if you learned it with an incredibly high error rate? Or if your teacher was always pointing out your mistakes, telling you what you are doing wrong and rarely rewarding you for being right. I doubt it.  Because failing repeatedly will erode your confidence. Having a teacher/instructor/boss that gives you confusing instructions and expects everyone to understand them can erode your confidence. I’m sure that if we take a moment, we can all think of examples in our own lives. I remember that when my mom tried to teach me how to drive, she was so nervous that all she did was bark rapid fire instructions and critique my driving. I wasn’t learning much. Any confidence I had that I could learn to drive quickly evaporated. And I sure wasn’t enjoying the process. Then my uncle took over. He was calm and reassuring. He told me I was doing a good job. He made suggestions periodically. I was able to process them and apply them. I learned quickly. And it was a pleasant experience. After a few lessons with him, my confidence increased. Was I fully confident when I got my license?  Not completely. I knew I could drive around my neighborhood. But I still needed practice driving on highways, with traffic, etc. And I sure had to concentrate!! But with practice, and time, I’ve become extremely confident. Why? Lots and lots of practice. So much practice, that I don’t have to consciously think about driving. It just happens. I’m confident that I can drive in the snow, rain, even sleet, that I can drive city roads, country roads and highways. Why? Because I’ve driven in all of it…many times, successfully.  When working with our dogs, WE create…or erode…confidence. We must give them very clear instructions. That THEY understand. That’s why there can’t be just one method of training. Because different dogs learn differently. We must adjust our training to meet the needs of the dog in front of us. We must help them achieve a high rate of success. Otherwise, it’s just demoralizing. We must be consistent with our information and criteria. Inconsistency is confusing and stressful. It will certainly not build confidence. We MUST learn to read our dogs. They ARE always talking to us. We just aren’t listening. Because our dogs don’t communicate with words. They don’t communicate like humans. We must learn to understand HOW they are communicating and what they are saying. Listening and responding is empowering. For the dogs AND for us! That builds confidence. Dogs must practice a skill over and over…CORRECTLY…for them to truly understand it. If we practice routinely, but a certain percentage of the time the dog is doing it wrong, we are not building confidence.  We must understand that when we CHANGE THE PICTURE in any way at all, it’s DIFFERENT for the dog. Dog’s think and process in pictures. Not in words!! In pictures!! Often something changes in training, the dog struggles, and handlers get frustrated. What’s wrong with my dog? They should know how to do this! But we’ve changed the picture. And that’s extremely meaningful to them. They need our help. Yes, dogs must learn to generalize behaviors and adapt to different pictures. BUT only when they are ready. And when we do, we need to help them, so they understand what we want, and they can be successful. 

Is your dog confident?  We are going to look at confidence with respect to certain trained behaviors. You can choose a behavior(s) or chain of behaviors. Don’t overthink it. Just pick something your dog knows or you are working on. This is not a test. No right or wrong. Just a starting point for our learning. Decide whether your dog is confident with that behavior(s). Pick something you think your dog IS confident in. AND pick something you think your dog is NOT confident in. Then film it. Look at the film. Do you still agree with your initial assessment? Try to be objective, not emotional. Throw out any preconceived notions, ideas or labels. Be a detective. Observe and gather data. Again, this is not a test. If you have a Gold spot, let me see the videos. This way we can analyze them together. This course is going to work a LOT on US as trainers. Why? Not only so you can help your dog…but so you can help them when I’m not around!  It’s great for my ego to be needed…but not great for your dog….because I’m not training them…you are! As an instructor, nothing makes me happier than watching students problem solve without me! 

Remember, we are focusing on trained obedience behaviors. Your dog may be incredibly confident in life, but not confident in training. Zayna is like that!! She is downright cocky at home, at work, or when she is just being a “pet dog”. But when it comes to training, she is incredibly sensitive, very error averse, and the second she doesn’t understand something…she freezes! I struggled with her for a very very long time because I ASSUMED (oh so wrongly!!!!) that because she was confident in life, she was confident in training. Zesty is just all around confident. However, he still doesn’t like making mistakes. And that will quickly dull his work. His signs are incredibly subtle and can be easily missed. I could erode his confidence in the blink of an eye. Without being aware I was doing it. By the time it was obvious, we’d be in a pretty big hole. The point is, don’t let how they are in life skew what you see in training.

Testimonials & Reviews

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

New class for the April 2023 session.

Registration

Next session starts: April 1, 2023
Registration starts: March 22, 2023
Registration ends: April 15, 2023

Registration opens at 11:30am Pacific Time.

OB195 Subscriptions


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Tuition $ 260.00 $ 130.00 $ 65.00
Enrollment Limits 12 25 Unlimited
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Post general questions to Discussion forum ✔ ✔ ✖
Submit written assignments ✔ ✖ ✖
Post dog specific questions ✔ With video only ✖
Post videos ✔ Up to 2 ✖
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