PET DOG TRAINING
Pet dog training is one of the most complicated, challenging, sometimes frustrating, yet most thoroughly rewarding of endeavors. Pet dog training differs markedly from teaching competition or working dogs, from training marine mammals, and from computers autoshaping rats and pigeons in laboratories.

In all other fields of training, the syllabus is finite, and the handler knows both the rules and questions before the examination. With pet dog training, there are no rules, the questions are unknown, and the syllabus is infinite—comprising all aspects of a dog’s (and owner’s) behavior, temperament, and training.

In all other fields of training, time is seldom an issue; knowledgeable, experienced, and dedicated handlers will train for weeks, months, and years to perfect a desired behavior. However, before you can even start training pet dogs, you must first, attract, teach, convince, and motivate the owners, most of whom (just like their dogs) are novices. Pet owners are not dog trainers; they seldom have the education, experience, expertise, or inclination. Consequently, pet dog owners need to be taught different training techniques that a trainer might use to train their own dog.

Pet dog trainers have an enormous responsibility to bridge the gap between sound scientific principles and best-possible training scenarios (e.g., an experienced trainer taking lots of time to train a specialist dog for a specialist function) and the realities of training pet dogs and owners. Hence, the endless quest for the quickest, easiest, most effective, most enjoyable, and most expedient ways to produce equipment- and gizmo-free, reliable, off-leash distance control.

However, many pet dog trainers are still struggling to achieve an optimal balance between education and experience, between the use of rewards and punishments, and between making training fun yet still producing precise and reliable results in timely fashion. None of these variables, techniques, or goals need be mutually exclusive. Indeed, Dr. Dunbar’s four-day seminars will present a comprehensive training program that provides the quickest and easiest route to produce a good-natured, well-behaved, and mannerly pet dog. The secret is playing games. Games are motivating for dogs, owners, trainers, and onlookers. Games bring out the best performances.  Most important though, playing games is the least intimidating way to objectively assess both the reliability and precision of performance and the effectiveness of training techniques (in terms of “time and trials to criterion”).

Thursday: PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF THEORY

• The history and future direction of pet dog training. Who are we? Where have we come from? And where we should go from here.
• How to uphold dog-friendly ethical/ moral/ methodological standards and still produce reliable results in a timely fashion.
• Separating what we know (scientific fact and behavioral observation—the indisputable) from what we think (about other trainer's methods and the dog's perceptions of training methods — the arguable)
• Necessary criteria for successfully applying learning theory in the real world
• Five ways to play The Training Game—a practical approach to the quadrant
• Business management, marketing and promotion—applying the principles of learning theory to breeders, veterinarians, and ultimately, to pet dog owners

Friday: DOG FRIENDLY DOG TRAINING DONE RIGHT

• Pros, cons, and application of the most commonly used reward-based training techniques: Lure/Reward Training; All-or-None Reward Training; Progressive Reward Training (Shaping), Autoshaping via environmental management, and Physical Prompting
• Temporarily using tools for training or management and how to phase them out, so that off-leash control is equipment-free

Saturday: TRAINING ADULT DOGS

• The big differences between teaching adult dogs and puppy classes
• Controlling the dog’s energy and enthusiasm—putting problems on cue
• The essential things to teach—what the owners want
• Test-Train-Test—how to monitor improvement and produce reliable results
• Ruthless objective quantification of performance—games for objective assessment of speed, reliability, and precision
• The ultimate challenge—The Sit Test

Sunday: PUPPY CLASSES

• Protocols for constructing a class syllabus
• The most urgent things to teach: household etiquette and home alone skills
• The most important things to teach: bite inhibition and socialization to people
• Cardinal Rules for puppy classes
• Playing games to motivate dogs, owners, onlookers, and trainers
• Games, games, games, and many more games...

For more information about the seminars please email driandunbar@yahoo.com or telephone 510 845 8503