Course Details
Once your dog understands behaviors and exercises, the next step is building confidence and resilience. In this class, I will show you how to create thoughtful challenges your dog can win. By setting up problem-solving scenarios that ensure success, you’ll teach your dog to think, adapt, and thrive under pressure.
Many trainers think of “proofing” as setting the dog up to fail and correcting mistakes. But this old-school approach often creates anxious, hesitant dogs. Instead, we’ll take a mindful, light-hearted approach to proofing — one that makes learning fun and builds confident, problem-solving dogs. You’ll learn how to add complexity and variety in a way that strengthens your dog’s understanding, focus, and commitment to the exercises. In this class our dog will learn to solve challenges, recover from mistakes, and approach new situations with enthusiasm.
Dogs will make mistakes. And that’s ok!! We will teach them not to worry about it! We are teaching them to relax and become problem solvers. All dogs are different! I will provide you with different challenge levels so that the worrier is not overwhelmed, and the confident dog is not bored. Proofing can and will be fun for your dog and FOR YOU!!
Dogs taking this class should be fluent with behaviors or chains for the Open class. They don’t need to be ring ready. But if they are not fluent with behaviors, they won’t be able to find the answer to win the game which is not fair. They don’t need to be ring ready. They just need to have a solid understanding of the principal parts of the exercises.
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 is required for open and utility exercises. I will work with you to modify the exercises to your abilities. A few of the games will require quick physical movement from the trainer for short periods and distances.
