Course Details
Welcome to the The Social Approach! I’m so happy to introduce you to the project I've been been working on for more than a year now with Josefin Linderström of Canine Consilience! She and I have been exploring blending the magic behind Play Way with the amazing way she trains, developed from Swedish low-arousal approaches to behavior change, and her experiences working with children in the school system. We wanted to bring a sample of these new ideas to the FDSA community first, and we really hope you love them!
Dogs are inherently social, and your dog is no exception. Just like humans, dog are a social species, and in many ways we were made for each other! Indeed, social connection is a biological need, and meeting this need is our responsibility, as important as food and shelter.
Unmet social needs are the source of more of your training and behavior issues than you may realize, and this isn't solved by doing more: more toys, more training, or more enrichment. What's often missing is the social element. Attunement and social responsiveness can make all the difference.
Or, more simply put: being social changes everything.
In this class you will learn just how much you matter. Your own physical movements and social signaling affect almost everything you do with your dog, from training and performance, to hiking, walking, and everyday living together.
Social signaling is the way your body language talks to your dog. When your body misaligns with your intentions, your dog can get confused and frustrated, and your dog's way of trying to tell you can be easily misinterpreted. Let's get on the same page!
This class is a sampler of some of the concepts belonging to The Social Approach, a new system developed by Josefin Linderström and Amy Cook, PhD, who will introduce you to elements aimed at relieving common conflicts that arise between you and your dog, smoothing out communication.
We will show you our essential concepts, each of which will teach you how to listen and respond with social competence, and give you practical skills that meet their social needs meaningfully. And you will have fun doing it!
In this class, you will learn:
- how space bubbles affect almost every interaction you have with your dog
- how to say with your body what you're saying with your words
- how to "listen in dog," and know what to say back
- how to rely your dog's strengths, and see them in a new light
- how to tell a joke your dog will laugh at!
Come explore The Social Approach with us!
Teaching Approach:
This class has two instructors and you will get the benefit of our combined expertise throughout the class. We (Amy and Josefin) have developed this system together, and are collaborating in teaching it to you throughout the term. We may vary who types the answer to you, but you can rest assured that the answers you get are from the both of us, discussed ahead of time. You may ask us specific questions about technique and timing, but we do hope you'll want to engage with the underlying concepts as well and will welcome discussion around the foundation of this approach.
We will release lectures throughout the week, and there will be assignments with video support for you to follow. Some of those videos have a voiceover, but they also have captions. The videos get you started, and we fine tune in the gold threads. Each week will also have lectures without assignments, for us to expand on certain concepts we want to highlight.
Our feedback to the golds will be detailed and supportive, and broad enough for others to learn from, thus we highly encourage that to get the best from the class that you make time to read at least the feedback on all the gold threads. We have both indoor and outdoor exercises, some leash walking and long line walkng if possible. There will be food used mainly, though toys are welcome and can be included in most instances. Some of the exercises are done on the floor or bed, but for most you will be standing and moving and going on walks.
This class does not have a TA as this is new material and it lives in Amy and Josefin!
