Course Details
Adopt an Adult Dog: From Prep to Family Member AND
Enrichment for Dogs: Ditch the Bowl, Better Their Life! AND
Crate Training Dogs: Happy Crating for Life AND
Sit, Down, Stay: Basic Obedience for the Pet Dog AND
How to Train Your Dog to Come: Reliable Recall Training AND
Get Your Dog to Stop Jumping On People: Teaching Polite Greetings
Sara Brueske - Adopt an Adult Dog: From Prep to Family Member
Do you have your eye on a dog in a shelter or rescue organization? Or have you recently brought home a new-to-you family member? This course will cover what you need to know to properly integrate your new dog into your household.
This course is broken into three sections:
- 1. Before bringing your dog home: What you need to know
- 2. Bringing your dog home: The first 24 hours
- 3. Developing good habits:
The first two weeks It’s important to have your house set up and your supplies for your new addition ready before bringing your dog home. In this section, we will talk about what supplies are needed, what supplies aren’t really necessary and where they should be situated in your home.
The next section discusses Gotcha Day, the day you bring home your new dog. This includes the car ride home, introducing to new family members, showing them their new house and yard as well as how to tell if your dog is confident and happy. These first introductions are critical in building the life-long friendships that a dog can bring to your family.
The first few weeks are the most important when bringing home a newly adopted adult dog. During this time, your dog is getting to know you, your family and their new routine. Some dogs adjust quickly during this time while others may not show you their true personality until this period is over. Regardless of this, the first few weeks need to be carefully managed to ensure that your dog and you build a lasting relationship built on trust. This is also the time when new habits are being learned, we’ll talk about how to make sure that your new dog is learning good habits instead of problem behaviors that will need to be fixed later on.
Sarah Stremming - Enrichment for Dogs: Ditch the Bowl, Better Their Life!
Our dogs are thinking beings with agendas and opinions. Many behavior problems arise when we ignore this fact and attempt to treat them like fuzzy couch ornaments. Leveraging their simple caloric intakes needs is a great place to start in offering them the brain candy they so desperately need. Daily enrichment activities, like food puzzles and scent games entertain wild puppies and keep older minds active. Dog is destructive? Provide ample shredding opportunities that are appropriate, inexpensive, and enticing to save your shoes. Dog barks incessantly? Scent-based enrichment turns off the voice because scenting and vocalizing are simply incompatible. Enriching our dogs' lives helps them to engage in fewer undesirable behaviors, and it helps them live happier more fulfilled lives. It doesn't take a lot of money or a lot of time to provide your dog with the mental stimulation he desires on a daily basis. Food, scent, and novelty based enrichment plans are all here for the taking!
Sarah Stremming - Crate Training Dogs: Happy Crating for Life
Throughout your dog's life, there will be times when a crate is vital for his safety. A crate trained dog can easily travel, spend time at the vet or groomer, and be contained at home so that he can't get into trouble. But it is normal for puppies or young dogs who are not familiar with crating to be quite upset about the confinement. It isn't fair for you or your new dog to sit through hours of whining and barking, and you don't have to! With this program your dog can learn to see his crate as a cue to relax, a place to chew a bone, eat a meal, or take a nap. He can learn to seek out his crate as a good place to be. Traditional crate training approaches have relied either on allowing the pup to "cry it out" on his own, or on the heavy use of food "pacifiers" that can be hard to get away from. As a bonus your dog will learn to go into his crate when you ask him to, and how to release from the crate on cue, too, making things like unloading from the car much safer. With some dedication to the process, you can create happy crating for life for your dog!
Nicole Wiebusch - Sit, Down, Stay: Basic Obedience for the Pet Dog
Wouldn’t it be nice if you could tell your dog to lie down when the doorbell rings and know your dog will stay there while you grab the box from the UPS man? Or when you’re out walking and three dogs are dragging a disgruntled owner your way, you can step off the sidewalk and tell your dog to sit as you both calmly watch the dogs pass before you continue on your relaxing walk?
Instead, you find yourself desperately trying to hold the dog back as you answer the door. You feel your heart rate go up as you see those dogs coming toward you, knowing that your dog is going to lunge toward them to go say hi. You just don’t think your dog will ever understand how to sit or down and stay there!
Fortunately, with a little bit of thoughtful training, you CAN teach your dog to sit, down, and stay! This step by step training plan will show you exactly how to teach these behaviors to your dog. You will learn how to train your dog to listen to your cues in a variety of situations. You will be taught how to effectively add distractions and increase your dog’s understanding and how to introduce duration in those positions and teach a basic stay on a dog bed or platform. Finally, you will learn how to reduce the treats and incorporate other reinforcers.
Chrissi Schranz - How to Train Your Dog to Come: Reliable Recalls
Coming when called may well be the most important behavior your dog will ever learn: it'll keep your dog safe when she gets loose, it makes your life easier around the house and yard, and it'll allow you to give your dog greater freedom on walks, hikes, and at the dog park.
Chrissi will walk you through 6 training steps:
- 1. Choosing a "come" cue
- 2. Making it worth your dog's while
- 3. Paying for the behavior of coming
- 4. Making training fun
- 5. Taking the training games on the road
- 6. Transitioning from training to real life recalls
Each training step comes with an explanation about why it matters, and how it works. Chrissi will point out parallels in how dogs and humans learn, making her methods intuitive and accessible to the trainer. Since no two dogs are exactly alike, you will be asked to think about your dog's unique preferences and distractions throughout the webinar, ensuring that the rewards you use are tailored to the dog in front of you.
Four kinds of learning are woven into the practical training steps:
- 1. Understanding the meaning of sounds
- 2. Learning through behavior and consequence
- 3. Consistency, repetition, and generalization
- 4. Social and emotional learning
Elements of emotional learning strengthens the dog/human relationship with each training step. Practical training games are fast-paced, short, and fun, and lend themselves to be played by adults as well as children. Each interactive recall game is illustrated by a video to make sure you'll be able to replicate it with your dog.
Starting easy before making things difficult ensures your dog gets a strong recall foundation: you'll start training in your house, with no distractions present, before progressing to your yard, and finally to public spaces. Chrissi's recall ladder will help you think through what's easy and difficult for your dog before taking the leap from structured sessions to real-life recalls.
Nicole Wiebusch - Get Your Dog to Stop Jumping On People: Teaching Polite Greetings
Imagine having a dog that doesn’t jump on people. When you have guests over, you can let the dog say hi knowing that he or she won’t knock over your mom, or lick the little kids’ faces, or leave muddy paw prints on your friend’s beautiful ivory dress. When you stop to say hello to a neighbor while on your walk, your dog sits calmly as you chat.
Unfortunately, your reality looks a little different. You don’t even let people come to your house any more because your dog jumps so much and you are embarrassed. You cross the street in order to avoid other people on your walks. And when you come home from work, you feel anxious walking in the door just knowing that you will spend the next 10 minutes yelling at the dog to “get down! No!”
Thankfully, a little training can go a long way in teaching your dog not to jump! In this video, you will learn why your dog jumps on you and what to do about it. You’ll be taught how to teach alternative behaviors and how to reduce your dog’s arousal level, making jumping less likely. By the end of this video, you will have gained the understanding to dramatically reduce jumping for your dog.
Watch the Video Trailer with Sample Clips from All Presentations:
