Upcoming Events at Crossbones

Saturday, August 23rd: Location & Arousal Specific Marker Cues
Sunday, August 24th: Reducing Reinforcement
9AM-5PM each day

Attend one day or both – the choice is yours!

Working Spot: One day for $275 or both days for $425. Click here to register.
Auditing Spot: One day for $100 or both days for $150. Click here to register.

***CEUs pending.***

Saturday: Location & Arousal Specific Marker Cues

Reinforcement drives behavior, right? What if your dog cares what type of reinforcement they get and likes some more than others? What if specific types of reinforcement carry different arousal/excitement and you can take advantage of that in your training, whether sports skills or for general behaviors? And in the meantime, how about adding clarity to where and how to collect the reinforcement, something that highly motivated toy dogs could definitely benefit from.

We’ve all been using a clicker or a verbal word like Yes to mean “collect reinforcement” to our dog. Now let’s think about slicing up that clicker and making it more concise and clear to your learner dog. Having verbal cues that tell your dog where to collect reinforcement and what exactly that reinforcement is can be so mind blowing and complicated for the handler, but it clears things up and makes things so much simpler for the dog! The dog can devote their entire concentration to listening to you and performing the behavior skills instead of watching your physical motions as predictors of where and when the reward is coming.

A side benefit of teaching and using this concept is that it incorporates “switching reinforcement” and also teaches “no”. If yes means “food from the hand”, it also means not food on the ground, or the ball on the chair, or that other dog over there, extending all the way up to “Not that deer”! Teaching your dog this concept with reinforcement you control can only benefit your training in sport and real life skills that often bring about interactions with reinforcement you cannot control.

What you can expect in this seminar:

We’ll have our presentation in the morning and get out 3 times, once with each other and twice with your dogs in groups to practice some marker cues.

Then in the afternoon, we’ll learn and practice offered focus in groups. This will be followed by a one-on-one session with each team where you get to work on one behavior, strengthening it with what you have learned in the morning.

Sunday: Reducing Reinforcement

This one day seminar covers some of the subjects explained in my Spaces in Between and Cutting out the Cookie-Reducing Reinforcement classes from Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. I constantly see dogs that are excellent in their trial skills but get tired and unsure in those “in between” places. And then because they are tired, it affects their trial performance. We need to put just as much time teaching those transitions, the start and end rituals and systematically reducing the reinforcement so that come trial day, the dog isn’t surprised and frustrated.

Some of the concepts we might cover:

• Stays […]