Relationship building 2016

Relationship building

This class suits dog owners who wants to develop a great relationship with their dog. You can join with a puppy, a young or adult dog of any breed. A great relationship is the foundation that makes both everyday life and (training for) trials fun and easy.

Dog training and ownership is so much more than just training behaviors. Training behaviors is part of it and is quite easy in an environment without distractions. A great relationship makes it so much easier to have success even in more challenging situations.

What is the perfect relationship like?
There are as many answers to this question as there are dog owners. To me, the perfect relationship includes:

• A dog that loves to work with me
• A dog that is under control, both in everyday life and trial situations
• A dog that chooses to stay with me, play and work with me, even with distractions like other dogs, people, or around birds, squirrels or deer.
• A balanced dog that can relax, walk on a loose leash or stay close off leash, listen to a stop cue and come when called.
• A dog that trusts that I take responsibility in situations too difficult for the dog to handle on his own.

Subjects:
1. Changing your dog’s behavior starts by changing yours. That’s the hardest part! 🙂

Therefore we will focus on the roles we play in our dogs life.
What is required of us?
Your attitude
Understanding your dog (but not rationalizing)

2. Building great rewards and make them work in real life

3. Defining your personal goals

4. Troubleshooting with timing, criteria and reinforcement
Timing is more than just clicking the right moment
Setting criteria, defining clear criteria and maintaining them
Reinforcement – more than treats and toys

5. Habits and structure in everyday life
Building good habits
Realistic expectations
Identifying potential reinforcers and challenges

6. Structure and plan your training sessions
How to start and stop your sessions
The two phases (work and reward)
Planning the transitions

7. Skills like:
Sit stay
On/off and relaxation
Switching between different kinds of rewards (or behaviors)
Self control and distractions
Stop signal
Loose leash walking
Recalls
Retrieving (toys) to hand

8. What is positive reinforcement training?
Rewards, not bribes
Choice, value and control

9. What to do when the dog doesn’t listen or shuts down?

Thomas Stokke has been clicker training for dog sports for 15 years and has trained gundogs (spaniels, setters and HPR’s) for hunting and trials for 10 years.

He has offered positive reinforcement foundation classes for gundogs the last 8 years. We discovered how well-mannered these dogs have become in everyday life and how much faster progress they had in other dog sport classes compared to the dog and handler teams that hadn’t gone through this program. Now we offer this class online for all breeds.

Class will consist of nine lessons, with two weeks in between lessons, for a total of 18 weeks. Class starts January 4th.
What you need to sign up:

Computer with good internet connection
To read and write in English
If you want to work with your dog in the class, you’ll also need:

Video camera and a video editing program
YouTube-account where you upload your videos