Okay, here's a recap of my class. First, this class was 4 hours long and to be honest, I didn't like having to "bait" my dog to stay in his crate and be quiet. Koji was NOT happy. He went through a 12" 3-braided bully stick, a bone filled with a TON of PB (imho, maybe to much, I thought pb wasn't good for them in big quantities), a TON of food....and this was to just keep him quiet.
And then she told us, she'll be covering the very basics of only a small portion of the book. Ugh! Why am I hear again?
Here's the list of things we were supposed to learn, I'll give you my feedback on it.
1. training a damage control response (get ot of dodge) for you to use to get out of a triggering situation
I don't think we did this, I cant even think of what this might have been.
2. watch me command
This we did, and we definitely need to work on this. We also learned this in puppy training.
3. look at that: the ability to look at triggers w/o an aggressive response
This is mainly what I wanted to work on and learn in the correct way. i think this will be very useful. I know I was working on it at home, when I go walking, and it's helped a bit, but knowing how to do it correctly and how/when to click/treat is even better. This was one of the things I really wanted to work on. I'm glad she put a lot of time into it.
4. self control exercises
Koji needs this. I'm not sure which exercise this was supposed to be, now that I'm thinking back.
5. teaching owners how to read their dog (I soooo need this)
Now THIS was excellent. In the beginning of class (after a bit of a lecture part), she had us individually take our dog out of the crate, and walk him to a large penned off area, WHILE she narrated what the dog was feeling. She was reading him, telling us what to look at, look for, and what the dog was telling us. i.e. I didn't realize when a dog came out of a crate and shook, he was shaking off any stress. I jsut figured he was stretching or fixing his fur. lol. My dog came out, started pulling to go right at her and she said, "well, this is interesting". we went into the pen, and she said, "oh, i didn't realize Mr President was with us today". ohmigod, hilarious! She did point out to me thta when Koji's ears went forward, and he stares, even for a second, that THAT is what i need to look out for, and to not allow. Yup guys, my dog thinks he's the present aka it's all about me. but this was great. I learned a lot about dog behavior that i had no clue about.
6. targeting exercises for attention
She told us that dogs put "training" into to categories. tricks and commands. targeting, for some reason is always in the tricks category, so they love to work for it. we worked on targeting our hands (which i do for agility, so he's got that down pat). but she's right. Koji will touch almost anytime for any reward, versus me trying to get him to sit, or stay, etc. so keep that in mind. she said her dog had ran off, refused to listen to her recall, but then she yelled touch, the dog came screaching back to her to touch her hand. lol. this is also why dogs love the "go to your mat" commands.
7. relaxation techniques
she gave us a very short massage relaxation technique to help calm our dogs. although Koji refused, later in the class, it really helped a Shiba. So, obviously it works.
8. training the human to be proactive rather than reactive to triggers
I think this goes more along the lines of reading your dog. teaching them to pay attention to you, so they dont' react as fast.
9. go to your mat (and stay)
I'm sure we all know what this is. Self-explanatory. On the upside, at the end, she helped me with Koji. He'll go to the mat, lie down, but as soon as I reward, he stands up. She showed me what to do so I can teach him to stay down until I release him
10. crate games
I don't think we really did this.
Okay, to a point, I was disappointed because we did things I already do (touch, go to your mat, look at me - not that), but thankfully since most of us knew it, we didn't spend a lot of time on it. The ONE thing I really took away from this, was "framework". She talked about how we need framework, so when we go to new places, we always have that to fall back on, and the dogs are like, "oh yeah, I know this stuff" and it helps them relax in new places.
So, for us, our framework went like this.
1. When coming out of the crate (or whatevers) reorient to me, meaning, don't go walking off already, come out, look FOR me. Koji likes to just pull and wander off. This will be great for him.
2. When they do that, now look at me (make eye contact).
At this point, if they cant' do any of that, for whatever reasons, that's when you use the "go to the mat" or the "relaxation techniques", etc. We didn't get it until the VERY end of class.
Remember the pen? Well she had us one at a time, take our dogs out of the crate, reorient to us, then walk to the pen. when walking over, she'd have us stop, wait until the dogs reorient to us again, and keep going. Remember the Shiba? It was so nervous. It was done eating (prolly too much food, wouldnt' even eat cheese whiz). so, the instructor told her to sit on the ground and do the relaxation technique. she did and after a few mins, stood up, the dog shook (off it's stress) and was a lot more relaxed. another dog, couldn't stand still, until the owner told the dog to go to the mat. the instructor was using her dogs to do the distraction, to work on "look at that". it was amazing! in that short of time, the dogs were doing a great job.
So, overall, I felt I learned a handful of great things. She said she's going to have a CU advanced class. I think I'd like to get these commands down first. I will buy the book however, to learn more about CU. I guess, when you're the President of the United States, you're not used to having people tell you what to do (lol, that so fits my dog).
Oh, lastly, I wasn't sure about her teaching the class, but she said she knows Leslie, has worked with her for years, has worked with her training staff for a long time, etc. So that made me feel better about the class.
Now, we're just dealing with Koji's day of diarrhea. Like I said, he had a LOT of junk. and high value rewards. gross. i hope it's over, the poop. cuz then I can start training with the normal things again.
If anyone has any questions, go ahead and ask away. I'm glad I took the actual class, as I'm sure the book will make a lot more sense. I don't feel like we really got any 1-on-1 time and that too many people were asking questions about their dog, so instruction at times was spotty (like she wasn't paying attention because she was answering back to back questions, or we had to wait to start an exercise, while she answered more questions). since it was stated, 6 people maximum, and there were 10 of us there. I was really disappointed, EVEN though there were 2 instructors. Having only 6 would've made a HUGE difference in what we did and having more time to ask questions.
