DAY ONE: Development of Behavior Issues AM 9-10:30am The Genetics of Canine Personality - Jessica What do (and don't) we know about how genetics affects canine personality? How much of canine personality is due to genetics and how much to environment? How do researchers track down genes related to personality? Have any such genes yet been found? Can we expect a genetic test for dog reactivity any time soon? In this session, Jessica will particularly address examples from human literature about traits that are similar to reactivity in dogs, and will discuss the difficulties inherent in studying traits like drive and environmental versus handler focus, as well as possible solutions to those problems. 11am-12:30pm The Management and Training of Behavior Problems - Amy Avoiding rehearsal of behavior issues is an important part of their resolution. Most people are working at stopping the display of undesirable behaviors while they're happening, but the best way to do this is to practice all the skills they'll need out of context! Management is a skill unto itself, and has to be addressed separately from the specific behavior change needed long term. Training that applies to behavior problems involves finding and motivating incompatible behaviors, and changing the underlying emotions that can give rise to those problems in the first place! Let’s talk about the ABCs as A-B, and B-C! PM 1:30-3pm The Biology of Socialization - Jessica Socializing your puppy at a young age is critical to how she will respond to strange people, places, and dogs later in life. But why? What is different in the brains of puppies younger than 3-4 months that makes them such sponges for learning? Jessica will talk about what we know about exactly what's happening biologically in the brains of very young puppies during this critical time in their lives. 3:30-5pm Raising a Well-Adjusted Dog - Amy We would all like to think raising dogs is a simple matter of including them naturally in our lives, raising a mentally healthy dog often means anticipating and preventing common problems, and seeing the challenges through their eyes. While some dogs handle life with us just fine, others do have predictable stress from living in our human world. The good news is that we can predict the areas that are most likely to inspire behavior problems for dogs and prevent them with a little forethought! In this talk we’ll cover the areas that can be potentially stressful for dogs as they grow with us, and you’ll learn strategies for navigating those rough spots! DAY TWO: Understanding and Addressing Behavior Issues AM 9-10:30am The Biology of Stress - Jessica What happens in your dog's brain and body when something scares her? How long can you expect her stress response to last? In this session, Jessica will talk about the stress response in dogs. She will explain the original evolutionary purpose of the stress response; what the hormones involved in it (like cortisol) do in the body; the difference between acute and chronic stress and the different effects the have on dogs' health; and what we know about how long it takes the body to clear those hormones. You will definitely learn some cool stuff about how the brain works and what that means for your dog's ability to recover from a stressful situation. 11am-12:30pm Reading Stress: Beyond Body Language - Amy All animals experience stress, and dogs are no exception. Knowing when a dog is feeling pressured, scared, upset, or anxious is an important part of being their caretaker and teacher, and you need to know when a dog is in a good emotional place for learning and when they aren’t! Dogs show how they’re feeling through their body language, but it’s not the only way! Their emotions also can show in their active behavior! In this module, we’ll look at the common signs of stress in dog body language, but then we’ll go deeper into common behavior changes that you can be on the lookout for, and so that you know when to take breaks or make lessons a lot more fun! To relieve stress you need to be able to identify it! PM 1:30-3pm Epigenetics - Jessica Maybe you've heard the word "epigenetics" and know it's something cool and new and sciencey but aren't quite sure what it means. Maybe you know it has to do with DNA and how the environment influences traits (including behavioral traits) but don't know it it applies to your dog. Or maybe you just like hearing about what's new in the realm of science! No matter where you're starting from, you will learn something in this session about epigenetics, explained the perspective of what it means for our dogs. 3:30-5pm Working with Sound Sensitivity - Amy Fear of sudden or loud noises is a common problem facing dogs. What may start out as a little startle response when an unusual noise happens can turn into a phobia very quickly in certain dogs, and fear of one sound can generalize to fears of related sounds before you know it! The key to preventing an issue from forming is to teach dogs that sudden sounds are actually predictors of fun! Teach your dogs that sounds have a happy meaning so they don’t attach their own, negative meaning! ABOUT THE PRESENTERS: Dr. Amy Cook Ph.D. has been training dogs for over 25 years, and through Full Circle Dog Training and Play Way Dogs in Oakland, CA, has been specializing in the rehabilitation of shy and fearful dogs for almost 20 years. She is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant through the IAABC, a longstanding professional member of the APDT, and was one of the first trainers nationally to become a Certified Professional Dog Trainer through independent evaluation. She is a graduate of the SFSPCA academy for dog trainers and has attended all 4 "chicken camps" in Hot Springs, AR, taught by Bob Bailey. Amy also owns the "shy-k9s" list on yahoo, a 4000-member group dedicated to the rehabilitation of fearful dogs, and has moderated there since 2001. Amy has worked for the Berkeley-East Bay Humane Society, the San Francisco Animal Care and Control, and has provided behavioral evaluations for shelters and rescues throughout the Bay Area of California. She currently works with the anti-cruelty team at the ASPCA doing behavioral evaluations and psychological enrichment of the dogs seized in dog fighting, puppy mill, and hoarding cases. Amy returned to school in 2006 to get her Ph.D. in psychology from UC Berkeley. Her research focused on the dog-human relationship and its effect on the problem solving strategies dogs employ. She has also studied causal inference in dogs and toddlers with Anna Waismeyer and Alison Gopnik, and currently works with Lucia Jacobs on dog olfaction. She has extensive experience as a graduate student instructor, having taught sections of Introductory Psychology (both in person and online), Human Emotion, Developmental Psychology, Social Psychology, Stigma and Prejudice, Statistics, Animal Cognition, and has taught Fundamentals of Psychology and Developmental Psychology as a full instructor. Her dogs have trained, participated, and titled in rally, competition obedience, agility, flyball, nosework and barn hunt, and her young whippet loves agility best! Dr. Jessica Hekman DVM Ph.D. is a postdoctoral associate at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, where she researches how genetics affect behavior in pet and working dogs. Jessica received her Ph.D. in animal sciences (genetics, genomics, and bioinformatics) in 2017 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she studied canid behavioral genetics. Previously, Jessica graduated from the Tufts Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in 2012 with a dual DVM/MS degree. Her Master's work was on the behavior and cortisol responses of healthy dogs to being hospitalized overnight. She also completed a shelter medicine veterinary internship at the University of Florida Maddie's Shelter Medicine Program. Jessica lives in Marlborough, MA with her husband and two dogs: Dashiell, an English shepherd who does agility, parkour, and rally; and Jenny, a shy mixed breed dog who does parkour. Website: www.dogzombie.com

Sponsor:Paws Abilities Dog Training
Speaker(s):Drs. Amy Cook and Jessica Hekman

Contact: Sara Reusche
 Email: paws4umn@gmail.com
 Phone: 507-624-0190
 Web: https://tinyurl.com/PawsAbilitiesMN