This past week I’ve been busy teaching my 10 day professional dog trainers course. We are a week into it, and I wanted to share a few reflections.
We started the week with 6 students and a variety of dogs to work with. Most of the students brought either their own dog or a clients dog, plus we had several of our training dogs in residence to work with. On day one, none of the dogs were e-collar literate. They had little obedience, no off-leash reliability, and a couple were highly reactive to other dogs and people.
A week into it we’ve been on outings to the park, in group classes with 15 plus other dogs, and teaching these dogs how to co-exist peacefully in the world around them. We start out with e-collar conditioning exercises in a fairly non-distracting environment, teaching the basics of moving toward the handler, away from the handler, and holding stationary. After the dogs show comprehension of those concepts, we begin to increase the distractions present and move on to generalizing the behavior in a variety of environments. The speed of progress impresses everyone.
I’ve always told people to give it 72 hours of genuine effort and commitment, and you’ll see a change in the dog, and it holds true time and time again. That is not to say that all problems are eliminated or fixed with the e-collar training, but it does mean you will see that what we are doing works and we’re moving in the right direction. A direction of having more control, less stress, and a more balanced and happy dog.
Here are a few pictures I snapped at our Saturday outing to the park.
As for the human students; they tell me they are learning a lot and impressed with the versatility of this tool. I can tell that is true. The immense progress they are having with the dogs says it all!