3 Day Dog Training Camp - Topics include behavior as well as the sports of obedience, agility, nosework, freestyle and rally. This is our sixth year offering this event and it has been approved each year by both CCPDT and IAABC. This years offering is very similar to content offered in 2017 / 2018 / 2019 approved events. Full camp website information is available here https://fdsatrainingcamp.com/ Instructor info: FDSA Training Camp 2020 - Instructor information for CEU Approval Purposes Instructor Name Minutes Hours Percentage Stacy Barnett 640 10.67 8.15% Melissa Breau 220 3.67 2.80% Sara Brueske 640 10.67 8.15% Dr. Amy Cook 640 10.67 8.15% Denise Fenzi 640 10.67 8.15% Julie Flanery 640 10.67 8.15% Megan Foster 310 5.17 3.95% Dr. Deborah Jones 640 10.67 8.15% Heather Lawson 200 3.33 2.55% Nancy G. Little 640 10.67 8.15% Loretta Mueller 640 10.67 8.15% Michele Pouliot 220 3.67 2.80% Chelsey Protulipac 100 1.67 1.27% Lori Stevens 190 3.17 2.42% Sarah Stremming 640 10.67 8.15% Nicole Wiebusch 210 3.50 2.68% Shade Whitesel 640 10.67 8.15% 7850 130.83 Stacy Barnett Degrees: Bachelor Chemical Engineering (applicable for scent theory) Other: Judge – AKC Scent Work (all levels). Judge - Performance Scent Dogs Titles. Achieved highest current NW Title available (NACSW Summit Level). Melissa Breau Degrees: Masters of Science in Publishing from Pace University (with a thesis on digital publishing business models), BA in English Manhattanville College, Hubspot Certification for Inbound Marketing. Sara Brueske Other: Karen Pryor Academy – Certified Training Partner Dr. Amy Cook Degrees: PhD in Pyschology (majored in dogs and animal behaviour) Other: CPDT-KA, CDBC, Certificate Counselling Jean Donaldson Academy Denise Fenzi Degrees: Bachelors Pyschology/Sociology, Masters Public Administration Other: Co-Author - Dog Sports Skills Book Series (4 books) – Multiple Winner of the Maxwell Award for Training and Behavior Book of the Year (Book 1 – 2013, Book 2 – 2014, Book 3 – 2015, Book 4 - 2016). Author – Beyond the Basics: Beyond the Backyard: Train Your Dog to Listen Anytime, Anywhere. Author – Train the Dog In Front of You, Author – Beyond the Basics. Julie Flanery Degrees: Bachelor Science in Sociology Other: CPDT-KA, Creator of Rally-Free Sport, Judge for World Canine Freestyle Organization Megan Foster Other: USDAA (United States Dog Agility Association) Judge since 2005. Dr. Deborah Jones Degrees: Ph.D in Pyschology, Associate Professor Pyschology Kent State University Other: Co-Author - Dog Sports Skills Book Series (4 books) – Multiple Winner of the Maxwell Award for Training and Behavior Book of the Year (Book 1 – 2013, Book 2 – 2014, Book 3 – 2015, Book 4 - 2016). Author - The Focused Puppy Heather Lawson Other: CCPDT-KA, KPA Certified Training Partner Nancy Gagliardi Little Degrees: Bachelor Mathematics and Computer Other: AKC Obedience judge for 22 years (judged 3 National competitions), 4 AKC OTChs, Numerous USDAA & AKC agility championships. Instructor for 22 years. Loretta Mueller Degrees: Bachelor of Animal Science Other: 2016 - current World Agility Organization Team USA Coach, 2014: IFCS Team USA Assistant Coach Michelle Pouliot Other: Karen Pryor Academy – Clicker Expo Faculty Member. International Seminar Presenter. Has produced multiple instructional dvds on freestyle and platform training. Lori Stevens Other: CPDT-KA, SAMP, CCFT, CPBC. Lori is a Senior Tellington TTouch practitioner for dogs, cats, and other animals. She is also a Certified Professional Dog Trainer, a certified Small Animal Massage Practitioner, a Certified Canine Fitness Trainer, and a Certified Parrot Behavior Consultant. Sarah Stremming Degrees: Bachelor Pyschology Other: Professional trainer 10 years. Titles in Agility and Obedience. Dog Behaviour Consultant specializing in performance dogs. Nicole Wiesbusch Other: Professional trainer and member of APDT. Many titles in obedience (OTCH), agility (MACH), Nosework (NW3) and Tracking (TDX). Canine Good Citizen and Trick Dog evaluator and is a field dog trainer for a service dog organization. Shade Whitesel Degrees: Bachelor of English Other: Professional trainer 20 years. Titled 3 dogs to IPO 3, 1 dog to IPO 2, 1 dog to IPO 1. AKC CDX on 3 dogs. IPO is Tracking, Obedience and Protection. DAY ONE MORNING SESSIONS Handlers with workings spots will select one morning lab. Dealing with Judge Pressure! Lab with Amy Cook: Experience level - All You’ve trained hard, have your heeling all set, your dog is engaged … uh oh. Where’d that judge come from? Why is he following us? Lots of dogs are proximity sensitive and aren’t comfortable with being directly approached, followed or crowded by strangers (especially strangers with clipboards and hats!). Some dogs want to rush to greet anyone within a 10 foot radius! In this class, we’ll go over things you can do to help your dog be comfortable with these “strange” judge behaviors and not feel the need to keep an eye on them, and help those greeters learn that judges are boring, and you are best! Start Button Behaviors Lab with Sarah Stremming: Experience level – All Understand consent-based training by producing a loop of reinforcement that involves an "opt-in" behavior from your dog. Learn about "consent to another rep" vs "consent to a ring routine" start buttons. Stand By Lab with Shade Whitesel: Experience level - All We love that “breakthrough” moment, when the dog figures out that their motions make us click. Trainers get reinforced because it’s so cool when our dogs do that! And ... on and on, to shaping heaven, until you’re preparing to trial and there is a moment of stillness and suddenly the dog starts offering all the things! Join Shade as we teach our dogs the difference between verbal stimulus control sessions and offering/shaping sessions. We’ll teach them that stillness, (a stand by/stand and wait behavior), is a good thing, and how to add a cue to shaped behaviors without the frustration of waiting through an extinction burst of “all the things.” Agility Motivation Games Lab with Loretta Mueller: Experience level – All Motivation Games: In this session we will discuss some motivation issues, why it happens and what you can do about it. We will go over several games to help unleash your dog’s inner feral beast. Fun games = Drive! Tricks with Purpose Lab with Sara Brueske: Experience level - All Tricks aren’t just for fun anymore! This lab will focus on training tricks that offer more than meets the eye. Each of the tricks taught is specially picked for improving body awareness, developing critical thinking skills or for strengthening specific muscle groups. Sara will talk about looking deeper into behaviors traditionally taught for entertainment to see how they can help you reach your training goals. Join us and see what tricks are hidden up our sleeves, you won’t be disappointed! Nosework – Super Start Lines Lab with Stacy Barnett: Experience Level - Novice and above Did you know that searches are made or lost at the start line? How you approach the start line will have a massive effect on the ultimate outcome of your search. What's more, how you practice your start lines will have a drastic impact on each and every search you do in competition. In this lab we will determine your dog's natural arousal state and will work on diagnosing issues and modifying your dog's arousal state so that you will end up with the most effective search. Dogs in working spots should already be introduced to odor. Hocus, Pocus! Attention & Focus Lab with Julie Flanery: Experience level – All The things we need the most are the things we train the least. Without attention and focus (Yep! They are two different things!) it is more difficult to reach our performance and behavior goals. These skills are the cement that hold our performances together and can mean the difference between a rock solid performance and just getting by. In this session you will practice games and exercises that increase both attention to the handler and focus on the task. It's not magic, it’s training! Ring Confidence Lab with Denise Fenzi: Experience level - All If you don’t make a conscious effort to make the competition ring a fantastic place, it’s very easy to inadvertently teach your dog that outside the ring is where the food and toys are and inside the ring is pressure and stress! The purpose of this lab is to show you how to reverse that so that your dog is practically dragging you into the ring, ready and eager to begin work and play with you! Denise will also introduce the handler to several skills that they will want to teach to make their future in competition both productive and rewarding. Energy Games Lab with Nancy Gagliardi Little: Experience level - All Training and competing with your dog is demanding and can deplete energy and focus – even with dogs that have lots of energy. It’s important to be able to balance the precision and focus your dog gives you in training with games that keep them excited and energetic. In this lab, we’ll look at games that you can add to your training to help keep the energy level and focus at optimal levels in your dog. Reinforcement Strategies for Agility Lab with Megan Foster: Experience level - All Clean up your agility training loops! Rewarding from your hand versus on the line versus pre-placed at the obstacle makes a big impact on the dog's performance. Come learn how to teach the strategies, choose the optimal strategy, and how to progress each strategy from micro-skill to advanced coursework. Shaping Retrieves Lab with Deb Jones: Experience level - All This lab will focus on the process of shaping to introduce and improve your dog’s formal retrieve. Deb will be splitting the retrieve behavior into tiny parts to isolate any problem areas. Dogs at all levels of the retrieve, including the very beginning steps, are welcome. Dogs in working spots should be highly food motivated. Bring a retrieve object for your dog to work with in this lab. Fitness Foundations Lab with Lori Stevens: Experience level – All Fitness is important for your dog’s health and doing fitness exercises with your dog is fun and enriching for both of you! These foundation exercises increase muscle strength and improve performance, confidence, flexibility, focus, body awareness, and balance. We will focus on getting foundation behaviors for fitness and learning how to observe posture and encourage proper alignment. You will also learn how to introduce canine fitness equipment. DAY ONE AFTERNOON SESSIONS Handlers with workings spots will select one afternoon lab. Arousal Management Lab with Sarah Stremming: Experience level – All Dog is high as a kite before your run? You kind of want them like that but need them to rein it in? This one is for you. Keeping your excited dog's head on his shoulders before you go into the ring is important; come learn how! Foundations for All Sports Lab with Sara Brueske: Experience level – All This lab will cover the foundation behaviors that will help start your performance dog off on the right paw, regardless of the sport they are destined for. We will focus on teaching important training concepts that will create an operant dog that is fluent in training a variety of behaviors as well as improve their ability to learn overall. Topics include training the concepts of the three different types of operant behaviors, session structure for offered focus, teaching body awareness as well as introducing impulse control and duration. Location and Arousal Specific Marker Cues Lab with Shade Whitesel: Experience level - All Marker cues, what are they really? Well, I think we should rename them “collect reinforcement” cues, because that’s really what it’s all about. Making our reinforcement procedure as clean and clear as possible to our dog learners is my goal. Join me as I explain how to divide the clicker/yes from one general reinforcement to many different types, including food, toy play and where to go to collect those treats and toys. Working teams/auditors will have a chance to practice without dogs and working teams will then practice skills with their dog. Agility Extreme Commitment Lab with Loretta Mueller: Experience level – All This session will focus on getting your dog to understand once cued to a jump, they should stay committed NO MATTER WHAT. How awesome would it be to be able to have 100 percent confidence that your dog will never pull off a jump again? The Play Way: Playing without Toys Lab with Amy Cook: Experience level – All Play is your best stress reliever! Have you ever thought about what play would look like if you didn’t have a toy to play with? Have you ever thought about playing with your food instead of handing it over? Play, especially play that doesn’t involve toys, is often something we don’t explore with our dogs, but it’s really a useful skill for making your dog feel better! Developing a good personal play relationship with your dog will allow you to play anywhere and reduce your dog’s stress levels. Playing with food raises its value and introduces dogs unfamiliar with play to the idea. Come play with us! Nosework – Reading Your Dog Lab with Stacy Barnett: Experience level – Novice and Above Before you can call Alert, you need to know how to read your dog. Did you know that 95% of your dog's communication happens BEFORE the final response? Do you struggle to read your dog or is your dog subtle? In this lab you will learn how to decipher the Change of Behavior so that you can confidently call Alert. We will cover the Change of Behavior, In Odor Behavior and At Source Behavior. Dogs in working spots should already be introduced to odor. Joy of Heeling Lab with Julie Flanery: Experience level – Novice & Above What is your ideal picture of beautiful heelwork? It likely includes words like precision and accuracy. Does it go beyond that to include enthusiasm, energy, lift, spark and joy? These are the attributes that make heelwork beautiful to behold, exciting to train and yes! Fun for both dog and handler! By building animation, energy and enthusiasm as a separate piece from precision we can increase the rate of reward for each, creating value and joy in our heelwork training and performance. This session will focus on games and exercises that bring joy to your heelwork training and performance. Teams should have an understanding of heel position. Open/Utility Problem Solving Lab with Nancy Gagliardi Little: Experience level – Intermediate/Advanced Having a problem with an Open or Utility exercise? Do you need help with handling for Open or Utility? In this session, Nancy will help you one-on-one with any Open or Utility level obedience exercise. Engagement 2.0 Lab with Denise Fenzi: Experience level – See Description Do you feel like you’re working hard to make training exciting while your dog gives nothing back? Do you fight to keep your dog’s attention when you’re not holding a cookie or dangling a toy? Have you been told that you need to be “more exciting”? If this sounds familiar, then your team needs Engagement training; a process that transfers responsibility for the start of work from the human to the dog. Now, instead of talking your dog into working with you, your dog will talk you into working with him; no visible food or toys required! The solution to a distracted dog is NOT to be more exciting; it’s to change the power dynamic to one where the dog understands that work is a privilege! While this lab will be similar to Denise's prior Engagement training approach, she will introduce additional steps and concepts that will be useful for dogs that need more structure along with a lecture to address the advanced steps of Engagement. The final goal is to create a trial ready canine partner who will not explore the competition space before being asked to work there. To participate in this lab, your dog should have the ability to hold a short stay without reinforcement (example: 15 second down stay without cookies); in addition, if your dog has some play with you then that will be helpful, but it is not required. Start the Ball Rolling: Intro to Treibball Lab with Melissa Breau: Experience level – All Want to build your distance control and connection with your dog while participating in a great new sport? Or maybe you’ve always been fascinated by herding, but don’t have sheep. Check out Treibball! Sometimes called “ball herding” or “urban herding,” treibball is a cross between billiards and soccer that you play with your dog. It’s perfect for a dog who is retired from other sports, dogs new to the sports world, or reactive dogs (since most venues restrict access to the competition field). We’ll cover the basic rules of the game and the foundation skills to get you started. Come learn about this relatively new dog sport! Zen Games Lab with Deb Jones: Experience level – All The purpose of zen games is to teach our dogs that self-control can be fun! In this session we will set up a series of games with increasing levels of difficulty. Once we review our foundation work with markers we will work through a series of three games with three levels of challenge (Novice, Advanced, & Masters). Dogs at all levels of experience are welcome to participate! Get Connected for Rally with Nicole Wiebusch: Experience level – Novice and Above This lab will focus on navigating a course while staying connected to your dog. You will have the opportunity to walk a mini-course, run through it with your dog, and receive immediate feedback. You will then be able to complete the course a second time incorporating the feedback you received. You will be able to choose between a Novice course and an Excellent course. You and your dog should be familiar with the Rally skills and signs but your skills do not need to be refined. DAY TWO MORNING SESSIONS Handlers with workings spots will select one morning lab. Disc Foundations Lab with Sara Brueske: Experience level - All Does your dog love toys? Let's turn that toy drive into disc drive! This lab will focus on the foundation skills needed to compete in a disc dog competition. You will learn how to properly throw a disc, how to teach your dog to bring the disc back as well as flat work for strategy games and freestyle. Come get your disc dog on and see what one of the fastest growing dog sports is all about! Reinforcement Games for Opt-in Performance Lab with Julie Flanery: Experience level – All Most training issues can be resolved by assessing and adjusting timing, criteria and reinforcement. While we often work hard to increase our timing skills, observation and communication of criteria, it’s reinforcement that drives behavior. Being able to recognize whether you are providing “free food” or reinforcement, creating an increase in the quality or frequency of behavior is essential to efficient and effective training. Understanding how we may be adding or diminishing value in our rewards allows us to use reinforcement that increases motivation, attitude and criteria while speeding the learning process. In this session you will learn both fun games and reinforcement strategies that increase the quality of our dog’s learning experience, creating an opt-in attitude as well as how to avoid some of the more common reinforcement mistakes that can hinder our dog’s progress and affect emotional states during training. Pocket Hand Heeling Lab with Denise Fenzi: Experience level – All Pocket hand is a way of teaching heeling that allows your dog to use the angle and position of your hand to develop and maintain an exceptionally precise heel position. You’ve heard people talking about "pocket hand” for heeling, and now you get to see it in action! This technique will work just as well for retraining a 10-year-old dog as starting an eight-week-old puppy. If you’d like to learn more about using pocket hand, join Denise in this lecture and lab and have your dog heeling with finesse in no time! Agility Getting Ahead Lab with Loretta Mueller: Experience level – Novice and Above Are you always behind? Do you need to work on trusting your dog to do their job so you can move onto the next obstacle? In this session we will work on plans to not get behind so we can direct our dogs around the course efficiently. Are there skills that you need to teach your dog that will help you not be so far behind? We will identify those things that keep you from staying ahead of your dog. Mind Your Beeswax Lab with Sarah Stremming: Experience level - All Hyper-social dog? Maybe a little worried about people or other dogs? Teach your dog the vital skill of default handler-attention in the face of social pressure. This skill is Vital for managing dogs in tight show spaces, hotel hallways, and just real life! Emotional Caretaking: Predict and Prevent Stress with Amy Cook - Lecture only Fitting a dog into a human world sometimes requires that we look out for the places where what dogs want and what humans want may clash. With clash comes stress, and we can prevent all that! What are some of the key places where being proactive can make a big difference? Come learn new ways of thinking about socialization to the world and to people (puppies and adults!), fear prevention, and importantly, how to soften the blow when you can’t give them the choices they want! Let’s be the best emotional caretakers we can be! The Business End of the Dog: Marketing101 with Melissa Breau - Lecture only Do you run your own pet-related business? If you’re a dog trainer, groomer, or another pet professional with your own business and you struggle with marketing, this session is for you. Whether you’re new and trying to figure out where to start, have been marketing your business for a while and just aren’t seeing results, or have enjoyed a ton of success but need to figure out what’s working and what’s not, in this lecture/lab we'll cover where most people go wrong, evaluate what's working for you now (and what's not), and discuss new ideas for improving the effectiveness of your marketing efforts. You'll walk away with a better understanding of how marketing works and new ideas for bringing in new clients. Handler Choice Lab with Deb Jones: Experience level - All Focus, Zen, Cooperative Care, Tricks, Retrieves, Rally, Obedience or whatever you would like! Join Deb for some one-on-one time to work on whichever skill you need. Heeling Handler Choice Lab with Shade Whitesel: Experience level - All Working spots will work one-on-one with the instructor to improve their heeling skills. Advanced Luring with Michele Pouliot Lab: Experience level – All When clicker training first began spreading throughout the dog training community, the idea of luring behavior was considered a “no-no.” It was felt that “true clicker trainers” never used Lures. Presently, more trainers are realizing the power available in well applied Lures. Effective Lure use and an organized process for omitting the need for a Lure can become a power tool for any dog trainers’ toolbox. Michele will demonstrate the skills involved for effective Luring in a positive reinforcement program, including the Advanced Luring Skills every dog should know. Agility Walking the Course Lab with Nancy Gagliardi Little: Experience level - All Do you walk courses and find that you don't execute those handling decisions when you run your dog because you are not in position or you mistimed a turning cue? Then this session is for you. Learn how to use those 8 minutes of your walk through to develop a plan that you can successfully execute. Teams will then have a chance to run the course with feedback. Progressing Your Dog’s Fitness and Conditioning Lab with Lori Stevens: Experience level – All You will learn how to progress fitness exercises safely and effectively. Topics and activities will include reinforcement strategy, position resets, getting and keeping proper alignment, and how to empower your dog during fitness training. Lori will coach working teams through hands-on exercises that will include assessing and improving your dogs’ alignment and how and when to progress the exercises. Join Lori as she teaches you how to get your dog fit. Nosework - Building a Thinking Nosework Dog Using Memory Lab with Stacy Barnett: Experience Level – Intermediate/Advanced Using the way dogs think is the next frontier in training search dogs. In this lab, teams will understand the role that memory plays in making searches more efficient and will learn how to avoid pitfalls when the role of memory is TOO strong! Teams will learn how to strike a balance between memory and the nose. Dogs in working spots should be confident in finding multiple hides in novel search areas. Concept Training with Heather Lawson - Lecture only Does your dog really know his left from his right? How about finding a matching object? Can he even count? You bet he can. If you’re Interested in elevating your training game, introducing new ways to use foundation skills or in finding a way to stretch your dog’s brain, then come join Heather on an adventure into the realm of Concept Training. You’ll be amazed at how your dogs can grasp what are seemingly, at least to us, the very difficult concepts of Matching To Sample, Modifier Cues; understanding left/right, large/small, and even, yes, Counting also known as Quantity Recognition. You’ll be amazed at how transferable skills learned through concept training can help you in other dog sports. DAY TWO AFTERNOON SESSIONS Handlers with workings spots will select one afternoon lab. Heelwork to Music Lab with Julie Flanery: Experience level – Novice & Above Heelwork-to-Music combines all that you love about heeling, with your enjoyment of music! It showcases the precision, connection and teamwork you strive for with transition freestyle behaviors and sequences that help maintain position, increase flow and ease of movement for your dog while having fun and moving to music! Come learn about this fun sport! Teams should have an understanding of heel position. Obedience Problem Solving Lab with Denise Fenzi: Experience level – Novice and Above Having a problem with an Obedience exercise or part of an Obedience exercise? In this session, Denise will address any Obedience handling or training issues that you might have. Handler Choice Lab with Sarah Stremming: Experience level - All Working spots will work one-on-one with the instructor on the skill or problem of their choice. Agility Distraction Work Lab with Loretta Mueller: Experience level – Novice and Above Does your dog get easily distracted during agility? Are you not exactly sure how to train distractions without overwhelming your dog? This session is for you! We will work on layering challenges, how to work thresholds and what to do in different scenarios. Bombproof Behaviors Lab with Sara Brueske: Experience level – All Ready to conquer real world distractions with your dog? This lab will go over a step by step process for determining when a behavior is ready to be subjected to distraction, how to properly introduce different distractions as well as what to do when your plan fails. The world is a crazy place, let's make sure those trial behaviors are ready for it! Trial Management Techniques with Amy Cook: Experience level – All Need your dog to be able to navigate busy, high arousal environments? Need some mental-game techniques to keep your dog able to cope with high stress situations? Join Amy to learn some tricks to traverse crowded areas with connection and some sequences to recover a calmer state. Advanced Platform Training Lab with Michele Pouliot: Experience level – See Description You know all about platform training with pivot bowls, position platforms… But are you up-to-date on all the creative ways trainers are using them? Join Michele Pouliot to go beyond basic platform training. Competition dog sports challenge trainers to develop very precise behaviors in a variety of scenarios. Platforms can provide a communication tool that puts clarity in our training conversation with our dogs. This presentation assumes a basic knowledge of using raised platforms (both 2 paw and 4 paw platforms) for training foundation skills. Although some fundamentals information will be included, this lab will focus on more advanced and creative ways of applying the platform tool in training and problem solving. Figure Eights Lab with Nancy Gagliardi Little: Experience level – All This lab will be an intensive focus on the Figure Eight exercise found in Novice and Open obedience, and all levels of Rally. Nancy will discuss and refine the skills necessary for a focused, precise, and joyful performance. Both handling skills and dog skills will be covered. Nancy will show you how she strategically builds the exercise once dogs have mastered good heeling skills. She will not be covering heeling foundation skills, so working teams should have good heeling fundamentals before attending. Advanced Toys Handler Choice Lab with Shade Whitesel: Experience level – See Description Working Teams will work one-on-one with Shade to problem solve the toy play subject/step of your choice. Working teams must have taken either an in-person toy seminar or Shade’s online toy class to participate. There will not be a lecture. Focus Games Lab with Deb Jones: Experience level – All Focus! Everyone wants it, but how do you get it? This lecture and lab will lead you through the general concept of focus and the importance of specific games as the basis for teamwork. The games are designed to help you and your dog develop a fun and enjoyable working relationship. The different categories of games will encourage you to explore interactions with and without food, with and without toys, using and changing energy levels and intensity, and with social physical play. Working teams will have a chance to practice selected games and get feedback for ways to customize them for the best result. Nosework – Honing Your Handling Lab with Stacy Barnett: Experience level – Novice and above In Nosework Handling, you can either handle with teamwork or you can accidentally trigger a finely tuned false alert. In this lab you will explore how your movement can either help or hinder your dog during a search. Learn when and how to thoughtfully apply your cues so that you don't unintentionally cause a false alert. Dogs in working spots should already be introduced to odor. DAY THREE MORNING SESSIONS Handlers with workings spots will select one morning lab. Handler Choice Lab with Julie Flanery: Experience level - All Working spots will work one-on-one with the instructor on the skill or problem of their choice. Are You Ready for Obedience Competition? Lab with Denise Fenzi: Experience level – See Description Ring readiness isn’t just about the exercises. It includes getting into the ring, setting up and waiting for the judge, moving between exercises, handling the loss of food and toys in competition and a plan for leaving the ring. In this lab, each team will complete a formal “run through” for the individual Novice or Open exercises. However, the focus of Denise’s feedback will not be the actual exercises; instead she will focus on the unjudged elements that can make or break a team’s run. For example, Denise might comment on the need for more connection entering the ring, along with some simple ways to get it, rather than providing advice on improving the team’s heeling skills. This lab is appropriate for teams that are close to being ready to compete at either the Novice or Open Level. TEAM Platforms, Cones & Targets Lab with Heather Lawson: Experience level – All TEAM uses these items throughout their levels to teach basic foundation skills but they needn’t be limited to just the foundations. Come and learn how to use these simple props to convey and create an understanding of distance work & holding positions to your dog. Plus learn how to inject FUN using the equipment and how to use Strategic Reward Placement for setups and maintaining rhythm to gain consistency in your training. Agility Transitions Lab with Loretta Mueller: Experience level – Novice and Above Do you struggle with getting your dog to turn? In this session we will work on how to go from extension to collection. What exactly is the perfect turn? And how to teach your dog that turning is FUN! Cue Clean Up Lab with Deb Jones: Experience level - All Confused about cues? Not sure how or when to add them? Have a cue that isn’t working the way it should? This session will cover that and much more! Cues are defined as any stimulus our subject can perceive that is consistently associated with a behavior. A cue tells you what to do to earn reinforcement. With a consistent reinforcement history, responses to cues become fairly automatic. We will consider the different modalities of cues: Verbal (hear), visual (see), tactile (feel), and olfactory (smell). Sometimes these overlap and you end up with unintended cues! How to effectively add cues initially and how to add a second cue or change a cue will be covered. We will also consider when it might be best to change cues that are “poisoned”. We will test your best cue and see how well it holds up! Ring Tips with Nancy Gagliardi Little - Lecture only Become better prepared for your ring performances with this lecture. Nancy judged AKC obedience trials and National Obedience tournaments for 20+ years. In this lecture, Nancy will cover some of the more common mistakes that handlers make in various exercises and what you can do to avoid these errors. Learn some things that can help you improve your performance. Hear some tips to improve your ring experience. Raising a Well Adjusted Dog with Amy Cook - Lecture only 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! Reinforcement Rituals Lab with Sarah Stremming: Experience level – All Producing a ritualized reinforcement procedure is vital for ring-sustainable behaviors. Give more power to the payoff so that you get higher quality work. Stays For All Occasions Lab with Nicole Wiesbusch: Experience level – All Stays are critical for dog sports, whether it’s an active stay like an agility start line or an obedience recall, or a relaxed stay while you set up training sessions or talk to your instructor. During this lab, we will discuss both types of stays and how to teach them. We will cover adding duration, distractions, and distance and what to do if your dog makes a mistake. We will also discuss when and how to reduce reinforcement and how to teach your dog that the ultimate reward for staying is getting to work, which leads to reinforcement. Handler Choice Lab with Shade Whitesel: Experience level - All Working spots will work one-on-one with the instructor on the skill or problem of their choice. Seeking Solutions: Weave Pole Training Lab with Megan Foster: Experience level – See Description In this lab, Megan will discuss common entry and exit struggles and show how she breaks these skills down into manageable pieces to train systematically that does not require weaving all 12 poles! This lab is suitable for dogs that are already weaving, this is not a "how to" for training the skill of weaving, but a problem-solving lab. Wait Your Turn! Lab with Sara Brueske: Experience level - All Have more than one dog that wants to work? Or a dog that doesn’t want to wait its turn at class? This lab will cover how to manage working multiple dogs at the same time by using perch stays. Not only will your dogs learn to wait for their turn, but they'll learn impulse control, patience and commitment to their stay! Nosework - Building a Thinking Dog Using Problem Solving Lab with Stacy Barnett: Experience Level -Intermediate/Advanced: Using the way dogs think is the next frontier in training search dogs. In this lab, teams will understand how to set problems that help the dog to think about the search space in three dimensions and how to use hide placement patterns in order to create a more methodical search dog. Dogs in working spots should be confident in finding multiple hides in novel search areas. Building Endurance with Chelsey Protulipac – Lecture only You’ve taught some excellent dog sport skills and have mastered foundations such as engagement and even working through distractions. You are starting to think about how you will connect these concepts to build a strong performance that you will be excited to show off! So, what do I mean by building endurance? We should think about endurance as durability: stable, resilient, robust, reliable. All characteristics we would want to use to describe our performance before we enter a competition. So how do we get there? We are going to discuss simple changes to the structure of your training – from planning to application - to make sure you are systematically and efficiently working towards this trajectory. DAY THREE AFTERNOON SESSIONS Handlers with workings spots will select one afternoon lab. Toy Play Lab with Denise Fenzi: Experience level - All This lab will help you develop excellent toy play with your dog. Denise will introduce both the mechanics and the qualities of the dog-human interaction that can make toy play either highly enjoyable for both parties or an absolute misery. Toy play is not simple! It is fascinating and complex and subtle and, best of all, it can be learned! Whether your dog shows absolutely no interest in toys or is a rabid tugger who simply refuses to return to re-engage, Denise can improve your game. Heeling Handler Choice Lab with Nancy Gagliardi Little: Experience level - All Working spots will work one-on-one with the instructor to improve their heeling skills. Connected Ring Transitions Lab with Amy Cook: Experience level - All Moving from exercise to exercise in the ring without deflating your dog’s energy and losing connection or ricocheting them up into the stratosphere can be a real challenge! This is your time to stay connected and move together while keeping your dog ready to work. From leash off to leash on, don’t know what your dog needs? Come learn your options! Agility Handler Choice Lab with Loretta Mueller: Experience level - All Join Loretta for some one-on-one time to work on whichever agility skill you need. Please note that contact equipment will not be available for this lab. Shape Shifters Lab with Deb Jones: Experience level - All Shaping is an incredibly valuable and versatile training technique. It can also be confusing and challenging for both trainer and dog. In this session Deb will present her favorite approaches to shaping that sets the team up for early and frequent success. We will talk about the best way to start a shaping session, the ideal length of a session, how to encourage your dog to be active in a session, how to encourage your dog to be creative, and how to use shaping combined with other techniques such as luring and targeting. We will cover free shaping as well as more structured and directed shaping approaches. Trainers will practice and improve their observational skills, timing, and rate of reinforcement. All dogs are welcome in this session, from one who has never shaped before to one who is finishing up a complex behavior. Bring plenty of small soft treats. If you’d like to shape your dog to interact with a prop feel free to bring it along! Fabulous Fronts Lab with Julie Flanery: Experience level – All Have you been trying to get that fabulous front forever? A sitting “front” for obedience and a standing “center” for freestyle are deceivingly difficult to build and maintain with precision and accuracy. A mistake often made is training the sit and the front position in relation to the handler at the same time. Come learn fun games, exercises and reward strategies to build value and muscle memory in crafting fabulous fronts and spectacular centers! Handler Choice Lab with Sara Brueske: Experience level - All Disc dog freestyle, Tricks, Distractions, Obedience and secondary obedience for protection sports or whatever you would like! Join Sara for some one-on-one time to work on whichever skill you need. Cookie Slingers Anonymous: What Was THAT cookie For? Lab with Megan Foster: Experience level – See Description Dogs love their rewards & humans love handing them over! However, once we get into the competition ring, bye bye cookies! If your dog is struggling to give you high quality work for delayed reinforcement, this lab is for you! In this lab, Megan will walk students through introducing delayed reinforcement concepts to your dog's work and increase the amount of work your dog can give before earning their reward. Suitable for any level/sport as long as the team has 3-5 well-known behaviors to use during working time. From Here to There in the Trial Environment: Considerate Control Lab with Shade Whitesel: Experience level - All Have a dog that pulls so hard to get from the car to the training facility that they are rearing up on their hind legs? Barking and screaming? Highly motivated dogs have “big feelings” about getting to the THING that they want to do, whether this is the diving dock, the tracking flag, the agility arena, the protection field, etc. The problem is all that wasted energy, the fighting between the handler and the dog to hold them back, and is that really the mindset we want them in when we reach the destination? Join Shade as she teaches you how to get “moving impulse control,” the elusive loose-leash walking, the non-sexy part of sports training. Bonus? This has applications for teaching pet people loose- leash walking as well, which is one of the most common skills for which correction tools are used. Errorless Impulse Control Lab with Sarah Stremming: Experience level - All “Impulse control” is just a set of behaviors that make the handler’s life easier. Join Sarah to teach our dogs to wait for reinforcement with a positive reinforcement procedure, rather than a more traditional negative reinforcement procedure. Nosework – Blank Rooms Lab with Stacy Barnett: Experience level – Intermediate/Advanced Blank rooms are often one of the scariest aspects of moving up the levels for many teams. In this lab we will learn how to confidently call blank rooms by reading what our dogs look like when they aren't in the presence of odor. We will compare and contrast our dogs' behavior when in odor and when in the presence of no odor. Take on those blank rooms with confidence to call Finish! Dogs in working spots should already be introduced to odor.

Sponsor:Fenzi Dog Sports Academy
Speaker(s):Stacy Barnett, Melissa Breau, Sara Brueske, Amy Cook, Denise Fenzi, Megan Foster Julie Flanery, Deb

Contact:
 Email: fdsa.training.camp@gmail.com
 Web: https://fdsatrainingcamp.com/