What Not to Err: Training Mistakes that Create Headaches for Dogs (Saturday all day and Sunday morning) There’s no shortage of advice available to anyone attempting to train a dog, as a profession, as a hobby, or as an integral part of living with a well-behaved pet. Websites, books, television, dog advocates and well-intentioned friends offer suggestions for basic training and for solving behavior problems. We’ll review ten errors, both general and technical, that crop up in otherwise beneficial positive-reinforcement programs. Topics include ineffective cues, backward sequences, poisoned reinforcers, misunderstood training transitions and more. Understanding how to avoid or resolve these snags will make training fairer for our dogs and more fun for everyone. Kathy has taken this popular one day seminar and expanded it to offer more insights and additional solutions for professional dog trainers and dedicated dog lovers. Plenty in Life is Free: An Alternative to Rank-based Training Models (Sunday afternoon) Much modern dog training has evolved from older methods laden with physical coercion. Though the dog-training profession has made enormous strides in improving methodology over the past two decades, remnants of that dominance-based paradigm are still common. From the hackneyed advice that owners should be “alpha in their pack,” to the emphasis on leadership, to the ubiquity of “Nothing in Life is Free” (NILIF) protocols, the concept of hierarchy is integral to many trainers. Though this framework can sometimes lead to helpful training procedures, the explanations often go beyond a straight-forward scientific perspective by integrating superfluous concepts such as rank and deprivation. We’ll consider an alternative framework that provides a more equitable approach to effective training.

Sponsor: Let's Talk Dogs, LLC

Speaker(s): Kathy Sdao

Contact: Dorothy Turley
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 Phone: 360-556-6857
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