Practical Handling Skills
Develop your skills in teaching and handling dogs
Not only is each dog a member of a particular breed but they are also individuals, different dogs need different handling skills to really make the most of your communication and engagement with them. This course works on your skills as a dog handler following the most up to date scientific approaches.
Our dogs learn primarily by cause and effect. If our instructions, cues or gestures are not clear we can cause a lot of confusion or reduced engagement from our dogs. This course builds you foundation handling skills working on timing, fluency and clarity when working as a dog-handler team. This is a course working with dogs, however if you do not have a dog we will work with your teammates so that everyone gets to practice with as many different dogs as possible.
Who is this course for?
This course is for anyone looking to improve their skills handling their dog and others. This is applicable for dog-handler teams, those working in a canine related industry or looking to get into one. Ideally you will have a dog to bring to this course but if not there will be plenty of dogs there. The goals is to work with lots of different dogs to really hone your skills.
Note that this is not suitable for dogs who have significant fears or phobias or dogs who show reactivity towards people or other dogs (eg barking, lunging, snapping) nor is it suitable for currently unsocialised dogs, that is, dogs who cannot be within 30m of other dogs without getting over excited and excessively distracted.
This is a course geared towards teaching the handlers rather than the dogs.
What will you learn?
In this course you will learn about how best to interact with and handle a dog following the leading scientific evidence and advice. We cover a wide range of topics including but not limited to:
-
Reinforcement mechanics
-
Reward schedules & phasing out treats
-
Finding motivation and making use of non-food based treats
-
Luring, capturing and shaping as handling techniques
-
Dealing with distractions & proofing
While you are not expected to have a dog in class to work on if it doesn't suit you or your dog, you are expected to practice between sessions so that we can build upon what we have learned each week. Some sessions we will not have dogs, we will be working with people but you will be told which weeks are which.
Where and when is it?
This course starts on Sunday Oct 5th in our training field just outside of Prosperous. This is an outdoor course so please dress for the weather. We may have to move some sessions as the winter storms creep in, however we do train in most weather once the dogs are happy to work in that weather.
Sessions are at 1pm for 1.5 hours each week.