In this seminar, Virginia will focus on honing both the trainer’s skills and the dog’s skills.
She will be presenting ways to build strong behaviors so the dog can perform in a reliable and polished
way, no matter what activities one is involved in, and despite the distracting environments one may
choose to work in. In addition to a review of the basics of clicking and treat delivery, we’ll learn
the importance of reinforcement variety and choosing the right reinforcement for specific training tasks.
Improving shaping and targeting skills and setting your team up for success will put us right in line
to discover all about cues. What are the real cues for your dog? How can you get rid of the extraneous cues?
When and how should a prop be a cue?.
We’ll investigate fluency – the core component for building rock-solid behaviors. Some of the components
of fluency are precision, latency, self-control, distractions – including making even the toughest distractions
work in our favor.
Having attained fluency, how best to make use of your new skills to combine behaviors into behavior
chains and producing some fabulous tricks along the way? Virginia’s experience in print advertising, commercials
and video training materials will enrich our repertoire with our own dogs.
This seminar will be structured to allow participation in activities for not only the working
teams but also for the auditors.
Maximum number of working teams: 20.
Maximum number of auditors: 20.
One of our goals in hosting the Oregon Education Series is to bring the utmost of consistency
to the presentation of clicker training seminars for the Pacific Northwest. Tools for coaching
each other taught to us by Steve and Jen White in the April 2010 seminar will be utilized such as the
Training Triad for learning to coach others. This seminar will be an excellent opportunity for those
who currently teach clicker training classes or are planning to teach others how to train using
clicker training.
WORKING DOGS
Working dogs in this seminar must be socially appropriate with humans and other dogs and not stressed
in a seminar environment. They should have a basic understanding of the clicker and be willing to eat
treats in a novel setting. They should be able to pay attention to their handler, know a few simple
behaviors (sit, down, come for example) and know how to touch a target stick with their nose.
