Making Obedience A Way of Life

            (Private Lesson Course Outline)

Congratulations! You are about to learn the skill set needed to “make obedience a way of life.” In this document you will find your Private Lesson Course outline, tools needed, and goals we will meet lessons to lesson. The success of your program depends on you buying into your program. If you have any questions please email or text us right away rather than guess at what you are suppose to be doing. Making obedience a way of life is the key to having a dog that is the envy of all who see them.

 

There are considerable parallels between parenting a child/teenager and parenting a young companion pet or service dog. The skills you need to develop as a excellent parent can be applied to handling your pet. I encourage you to think more about raising and educating your new pet companion, and less about training specific behaviors or tricks. This perspective will give you a useful paradigm within which to consider any animal-related situation, whether the dog is a puppy new to your family or a young adult service dog that has been around for a while. Thinking this way will allow you to make the most complex companion pet issues easier to understand and solutions to common behavior problems more logical.

 

The idea of parenting your pet can help you feel more natural when educating your dog. With the skills we teach you and your companion, you will find it easy to incorporate this approach to your lifestyle with simplicity and brilliance. When your pet returns home from their stay with us you will want to be prepared to continue their education & manage their behavior development plan. You need to be informed of your pet stewardship responsibilities.

 

You will be taught how to continue, expand and solidify your companion pet’s temperament and social skills. As with educating an adolescent you should truly give attention to who should be responsible for their management, exercise, feeding and reinforcing of the lessons learnt in your program.

 

I have found that it is valuable to have a printed out copy of this form to study prior to the homecoming. This will help you stay on task and avoid any slipping back to any old habits you might have.

 

Program Orientation

I am sure that you are anxious and excited to start making obedience a way of life for your pet. Here are some tips to follow and preparations needed to be made prior to us getting started. Your success will be in direct proportion to your willingness to follow these directions.

 

1. Have your educational & training tools ready.

Make sure you have two (2) 6-foot leashes, one long (20-35ft.) line and a Vari-kennel, crate or cage ready to go. Prepare yourself, mentally, to keep your companion confined during all unsupervised time until they have earn the freedom to be restraint free. All tools are to be used consistently and properly in order to achieve our desired goals. Always remember our goal is to off leash all the time, training collar free and have willful consistent obedience.

 

2. Have a family discussion to determine who will be the primary person responsible for maintaining the pet’s educational program.

If it is going to be more than one person (no children) managing the program, make a schedule so that consistency is maintained at all times. Your pet is to be on leash and attached to the primary care giver or in its crate with no exceptions. This way there will be no room for error, misinterpretation of rule compliance and the reinforcing of our plan of allowing them to earn freedom through compliance.

 

3. Create a schedule for your pet.

From day one of your pet’s education at our clinic they found comfort in knowing that their life had structure and consistent daily rituals. You do not need to mimic our times and structure but you will need to create your own daily rituals and structure. Ideally this should be done prior to your companion coming home. From the moment that you wake -up till you go to work, what happens? How would you like that to happen? Write it down. When you come home? What would you like your routine and right up to putting them to bed a plan must be made of what is to happen and who is responsible for it. For most domesticate pets the quickest way to problem free living is the creation and execution of consistent rituals. Your pet's predictability is based off of these rituals.

 

4. Resist the impulse to constantly touching and speak in sentence form to your pet.

Your companion has probably experienced a flooding of conversational phrases and inappropriate coddling causing a lack of attention and willingness to follow. During your consultations/lessons with me you will learn the importance of conditioning your pet to pay attention and the value of earning appropriate praise. To continue these new skills you must only speak to your pet when you want them to respond to a specific word/phrase prompt. Followed by a heart felt reward when they have quickly and correctly responded. If you adhere to this rule, your pet will give you much more attention and well look for ways to please you especially in distracting environments or times.

 

This is one of the more important behavior modification techniques that you'll use. Remember that the goal is to mold your new family member into a respectful, educated and eager to comply to their family’s rules, social mannerisms and obey all instructions. This cannot happen if you are teaching them that your world revolves around them. You will not be asked to do this forever, but it is essential to the creating loyalty and commitment learnt during our 4 consultations.

 

Consultation Program Outline

You're on your way to a fuller, richer, more rewarding relationship with your pet. This 3 consultation session obedience program is designed to teach both your pet the life skills needed to be all they can be within their family and teach you how to maintain and manage the day to day, week to week imprinting the desired behavior. It is your responsibility to follow through with the structure provided and guidance received at your home. Without this structure your pet may feel they no longer need to follow or respect their new level of compliance opting for a more independent self- serving lifestyle. The choice is yours!

 

First Lesson

Responsibilities and Goals

As the benevolent leader your role is: To be consistent, provide effective/appropriate praise and corrections, be prepared, be credible, act natural and be committed. If you cannot provide all of these requirements put your pet away (crate) and bring them back out when you have time to do so.

 

1. Reinforce your pet's consistent response to all one-word commands (rituals):

A) Sit-Stay at all doors.
B) Down-Stay for feedings.
C) Remain at a Heal position on all walks. D) A one hour Down-Stay a day.

 

2. Reduce distractions.

Create situations for maximum chance of success. There are going to be times your pet is going to test you to see how consistent and committed you are. It will most likely happen around or in environment that it finds distracting. Lets create

a base of compliance and respect to develop your new relationship from.

A) Avoid crowded areas.
B) When possible, stay away from other animals.

C) Use the Down-Stay while you are distracted (while on the phone, cooking, talking to another family member).

 

3. Be responsible for controlling your pets energy level.

In an effort to fool you in to a play mode or to distract you from your role, your pet will increase its energy and try to start playing around putting you in the position of following, not leading. Do not reward this behavior by laughing and joining in. You are not an enabler.

 

4. Reduce daily corrections to 5 a day.

The sooner you stop your pet from challenging and fighting you for control the better you will be. The key to a smooth transition and quick earning of freedom off leash is to learn how to properly use the choose tools and your consistency.

 

Second Lesson

Goals:

1. Increase your indoor compliance from your 6-foot leash to a long line or  

2. Increase distraction level from low to medium.

3. Reduce daily corrections to three a day.
4. Complete all automatic responses. (healing, sit stay at door, etc)

 

Third Lesson

Goals:
1. Establish indoors off leash compliance.
2. Reduce daily corrections to two.
 

3. Establish long leash outdoor compliance
4. Pet may start sleeping outside of the crate.

5. Increase to normal everyday distraction level.

 

Fourth Lesson

Goals:
1. Address any special need issues.
2. Reduce corrections to fewer than 5 per week.

3. Start outdoors off leash compliance.

4. Suggestions for moving beyond the program.