FF280 Empowerment
A Course for Expanding your dog's Personal Power! You can nurture your dog's natural curiosity and optimism toward the big wide world. There will also be a Teaching Assistant in the study group for this class to keep you on track as you progress. It's a busy and productive and supportive place! Work and play alongside other dedicated and creative minds!
Course Details
Can your dog use some help with the physical and mental challenges of your favorite sport? Would you like for your dog to enjoy more activities with you? Would you like for your dog to meet new environments and novel stimuli with tail wagging and head held high?
This class will help your dog choose to expand their world. In their own way and in their own time, dogs everywhere are surprising their owners with how they put these principles together and carry new confidence and optimism over into other areas of their lives.
There are many dogs who have learned to tolerate the challenges of their sport, but have not learned to love them. There is a world of difference between Tolerance and Empowerment!
Does your dog enjoy meeting new challenges? Does he need a moment to size up the effort, or does he charge in? Does he show curiosity and then need help with his coordination or his confidence? Does he investigate a physical skill with an open mind? Does he enjoy himself when he falls off the ball or the toy falls down with a crash? Does he do well with noise and balance and height and motion and pressure and space?
We will use the concept of “Shaping for Demand” to help your dog start using each of our games to make you notice and make you pay. A new mindset is possible!
The right kind of exposure to new elements of difficulty can make all the difference in your dog's future success. And your dog's success with one activity makes it easier for him to succeed in other activities. Your dog will make physical and mental leaps of progress in this class!
Any age or size or breed of dog can benefit from the games we will play in Empowerment. Every game will be adapted for a dog who comes into the class with more confidence or less confidence. We can enjoy any baseline level of ability. We are only here to make personal progress.
We will build brain power and personal power. We will enhance your dog's self reliance and sense of fun. We will help him enjoy going over, under, around, and through all sorts of contraptions. We will be making noise and problem solving in our safe spaces and then out in the real world.
You will not need much space and you will not need fancy equipment. This is a terrific winter project. We will be dealing in concepts, not just in obstacles. So you will be able to create homemade substitutes for any of the class obstacles, and the more creative the better! Creativity challenges will be part of the course discussions!
I use everything from bakeware to plastic bags and scrap materials of all kinds in my games for building confidence and coordination. I can think of a way to get into your dog's head with a start point, and from there we will develop a plan and begin seeing improvements. We are on a mission to create dogs who think that the unexpected in life is FUN!
Teaching Approach
This is a concept class rather than a skills class. We'll all be playing the same games, and the games are not complex nor difficult. But you will need to make adjustments for your own dog in every game! Several alternative choices will be mentioned to give you guidance. You will be asked to decide how easy or difficult you should make your own dog's version of each game we play. It is my goal that you learn a lot about your dog's personality and your own creativity.
Syllabus
WEEK 1
- Tolerance vs Empowerment
- The Power of Touch to Build Trust
- Games for Substrates
- Push Games
- Inclines: Up and Down
- Context Cues: Happy Place is Real
WEEK 2
- The Broccoli Principle: Push-Back Games
- Shaping for Demand
- More Substrates
- Fun with Tubes
- Inclines: Turning Around
- Using Motion and Energy
WEEK 3
- The Curiosity Principle: Visual Games
- Do You Like Surprises?
- Games for Between, Over and Under
- Games for Balance
- Games for Combining Substrates and Noise
- Causing Noise
WEEK 4
- The Sardine Principle: Space Games
- Games for Take Your Place
- Games for Hold Your Place
- Games for Combining Balance and Noise
- Using Rudeness, and Using Tact
- Relief of Pressure – Understanding the Quadrant of Negative Reinforcement
WEEK 5
- The Find-It Principle: Location Games for Things and Sounds
- Games for Dropping and Spilling
- Games for Combining Stimuli
- Finding and Nurturing the Dog's Competitive Spirit
- Using Noise: Apps and Friends and Strangers
- Using and Appreciating the Post-Reinforcement Pause
WEEK 6
- The Pressure Principle: Weight of the World
- Games for Falling and Sliding
- Games for Combining Your Easy with Your Difficult
- Reward the Effort, Reward the Question
- The Contrast Effect Revisited
- Keeping Your Dog Open: Body, Mind, and Heart
Prerequisites & Supplies
Sample Lecture
DEFINING LEVELS of EMPOWERMENT, by Julie Daniels
When we offer any sort of performance challenge to the dog, we can categorize the dog's responses into Levels of Empowerment. Here is a brief and general description of what might present at each of these three levels in this class.
Level 1) The dog comes forward and investigates the object. He might nose touch the item. He might put a paw on the object, but his weight is shifted back, away from the object, rather than forward over the object. He has tolerance for the obstacle, but would not enjoy any push-back games. Does not like broccoli here.
Level 2) The dog shows attraction for the obstacle. He wants to interact with the obstacle and earn reinforcement by using the obstacle. He might enjoy a bit of push-back. He might like just a little taste of broccoli.
Level 3) The dog feels in command of the obstacle. He shows enjoyment and pride as he is using the obstacle to earn reinforcement. His center of gravity is forward and he is ready for push-back broccoli games. He pushes back happily to get more interaction with the obstacle. He loves broccoli!
This is a subjective assessment which you can make with each challenge you present to your empowerment dog. It is useful in a case-by-case objective look at what your dog is showing you. And your dog may well be at Level 3 on one game and Level 1 on another as we progress through the class. This would be quite typical! This assessment can be applied to a game of surprise, a game of substrate, or push, or any obstacle contraption you have designed. It can also apply to games of sound as well as games of action.
The levels of empowerment are there to help you see more in your dog's behaviors, and also for you to be able to name what you see. These would be very good points of discussion, as they will present quite differently in various kinds of challenges.
GETTING TO LEVEL 1
Here is a quick review of a dog in my in-person Empowerment class being invited to work with multiple metal substrates. This is Trevor, who is doing fine playing other games in our class. But for some reason he is having trouble with this one. In this first short video, Trevor shows no desire to investigate his pile of three items. His classmates are happily at work. You can hear all the clanging going on around him, and Trevor is not visibly upset about their noise.
How can we help Trevor with the metal substrates? We are not afraid of luring, so do we try to lure some level of interaction to help Trevor get started?
Trick question. NO! Don't fall for that! You will lose, can you see that?! This is not a situation where you should lure the dog, because he is not even close to being ready. Take a look. What would you do?
Trevor Metal Substrate Challenges
HOW TO WIN: GET OUT, AND CHOOSE ONE THING
Well, here is what we did. This will work. This is what I mean when I say to “ditch it and get out.” We got rid of two-thirds of the challenge. We went down to the one cookie sheet alone, and then we let Trevor think and move about, and we bought anything he thought of to do with the single substrate. He was able to put a different mindset to work.
If you are able to hear the video as well as watch it, you will hear me remind Trevor's dad not to feed Trevor from hand. This is an important distinction. We do not want to create a passive game. We need to drop the cookies onto the metal cookie sheet, because we want that cookie sheet to pay! You will also hear me remind Trevor's dad to move occasionally, because motion is our friend. Motion allows Trevor to feel the relief of leaving the metal. Then Trevor gets to decide whether to return and cause the cookie sheet to pay him again. If we can just get to Level 1 Empowerment with the cookie sheet then Trevor will soon take over. Once he feels his personal power he will begin to own the game and use it to make the cookie sheet pay again and again. He will not waste time asking his dad for cookies. He will know how to activate the cookie sheet to pay him.
Trevor Cookie Sheet Level 1 Empowerment
What is different? We can't say that Trevor is fully empowered – far from it – but he is on his way. We went all the way back to one metal substrate, and it seems clear that we can build from this. Trevor is willing to interact with the metal and he learned how to make it pay. That means he will look at that cookie sheet differently next time. Trevor was able to make the leap to level 1 empowerment on his cookie sheet. That's enough for today! Tomorrow we'll review and then move on to the next step.
Does your dog enjoy all the different games and substrates so far? Most dogs, like Trevor, find that one or another of the challenges is more difficult than the others. How can you break the game apart and set up an operation which will allow your dog to get to level 1 empowerment? Let's talk about it! It's so much fun for both of you when your dog begins to feel his own power over a 'scary thing' in life! We'll meet him right where he is, and we'll design the right game to get your dog to Level 1 Empowerment in each of our games. That's our paw in the door. Broccoli is in your future!
Julie Daniels
Deerfield, NH
Instructor
Julie Daniels
Faculty
Julie Daniels (she/her) won her first award for writing in the fourth grade, and she was training dogs long before that. Today Julie Daniels is one of the foremost names in dog agility in the United States. She was one of the early champions of the sport and helped many clubs throughout the country...