December schedule

Many dogs begin their agility careers with a solid start line - only to see that behavior slowly unravel over time. Why does a reliable start line hold up for some dogs but not others? Why do some teams struggle, even when the dogs were trained the same way and handled by the same person?

Whether your dog is having problems in the ring or struggling in daily life, the key to addressing problematic behaviour can be understanding and improving the dog’s emotional state. That's where counterconditioning and desensitization (CC&DS) come in. CC&DS can help dogs get into a better “headspace” – and that can mean more engagement and focus when it really counts.

Does your dog seem uncomfortable with men? Is she afraid of the teeter, plastic bags or enclosed spaces? Does he seem stressed out? Many performance dogs (and companion dogs, too!) develop challenges like these, and solving these issues positively will hinge on your understanding of the fundamentals!

Anyone who has a fearful dog needs a thorough grounding in basic behavior modification concepts before attempting rehabilitation. How does desensitization work in real life? Is it ok to comfort a fearful dog? In this course we will go over the fundamentals of fear in dogs, what we often do as owners that makes it worse, and modern approaches to fixing it. This will be a Silver and Bronze level course only, with lecture and discussion, and is a pre-requisite for the Practical Applications course. 

The Dopamine Dive

Ready to take your CU skills on the road? Welcome to I CU in the Real World: Advancing Your Control Unleashed Skills! This class will build on all previous CU classes. Gold students will have the opportunity to address challenges specific to their own dogs to work on throughout the 6 weeks. We will also dive deeper into CU concepts, start to bring patterns together to build routines, decrease reinforcement, and dive into advanced concepts like Voluntary Sharing, Requested Approach Training, and LATTE (Look At That, Then Enrichment.) This class is ideal for any team who has already taken a previous CU class and is ready to bring their skills into the big wide world!

Is your dog worried about the noises around her? This class is for you! Whether the issue is in your house with your dog barking at the sounds outside, or you have a dog that can't go out because buildings creak and doors slam, this class can help. If your dog barks at what he hears and stresses up, or shakes and withdraws and stresses down, we can work to make him feel more at ease. Noise issues tend to get worse if we don't step in and help, so dogs really need us to have a solid plan to intervene and help them through this emotional challenge!

In this class we focus on dogs who react in an active way to aspects of the environment (e.g. joggers, other dogs, cars, unfamiliar people, bicycles, children, skateboards, prey animals, etc.) or to the environment as a whole (e.g. become over-stimulated when first arriving at the park / beach / hiking trail, or when in a class or trial environment).

Most fitness classes follow a "follow-the-leader" format where every dog performs the same repetition at the same time. Sync & Select breaks that mold. This is a "Handler’s Choice" curriculum designed for those who want to move beyond cookie-cutter routines and build a fitness program tailored specifically to the dog at the end of their leash.

Senior dogs are the best, aren't they? Mature, skilled, and in tune with us! But, this is also the life stage when a bit of worry starts to creep into our thoughts. Are they strong enough? Am I doing enough to keep my older dog fit and happy? How do I know if my dog's aging is progressing normally? If you find that you are asking yourself any of those questions, this class may be for you!

Core strength is essential for absolutely everything that we, and our Canine teammates, do. From sitting, or standing still, lifting and moving limbs, to more complex whole body movements. The core musculature controls it all. This means that the core strength and mobility of both you, and your Canine teammate, can have a huge impact on functionality in life, and ease and success in sports and dog training related activities.

Did you know that you can now title your dog in Tricks?! Tricks aren’t just for fun anymore and this isn’t just another tricks class! Tricks have so many purposes including teaching your dog to enjoy training, sharpening your skills as a trainer and improving your working relationship with your dog. This class will help guide you through teaching all of the tricks needed to achieve your Trick Dog Novice, Trick Dog Intermediate and Trick Dog Advanced titles.

The tricks in this class are broken into six different categories. We’ll start by focusing on the novice-level tricks for each category and work on building those into the tricks needed for the intermediate and advanced levels.

There is an option for Gold students to earn AKC Trick Dog Titles at the end of this course (additional fee paid to the AKC required).

Your dog does not need any prior training knowledge for this class, but it is very helpful that your dog is food-motivated.

Ready to build a dog who loves working with you — no matter what’s happening around them?

Engagement is the most challenging skill to achieve in dog training. It’s also easily the most important. An engaged dog is actively involved in the learning process and pushing you for more. When a dog is offering engagement, the environment fades away and all their focus is on you. No more begging or bribing our dogs for attention. Establishing a strong foundation for engagement sets you up for future success both when training and trialing. In this class we will cover acclimation, how to teach your dog to offer engagement, what to do when we lose engagement, and how to best utilize our reinforcers. We will look at how to maintain engagement when the dog is in front of us, next to us and away from us.

Do you have a dog that plays great at home but ignores the toy in public? Is your dog lacking confidence in tug or gets distracted in fetch? Or a dog that gets too excited about toys and struggles to focus on work or shift back to a food reward? Maybe your dog has invented their own game of keep away and just won’t bring that toy back. All of these are common problems when developing toy play and are often due to a lack of motivation or an unclear understanding of the game.

Shaping is the art of teaching by reinforcing small, incremental steps toward a final, goal behavior—letting the dog take the lead in the learning process. It builds problem‑solving, confidence, creativity, and true engagement. When we shape, we’re not just teaching behaviors; we’re teaching the dog how to learn, how to experiment, and how to trust that their ideas matter. It’s one of the most powerful tools we have as trainers.

Open IS fun!! In this class, I deconstruct all the exercises into manageable pieces. Each piece is taught and maintained like a trick. This makes the exercises accessible for us and the dogs. Your dogs will understand the exercises and perform them with joy and energy. As we put the pieces together, we will maintain that light attitude. We will use backward chaining and forward chaining to pull the exercises together. All while maintaining the quality of the pieces that make up the chain. This approach makes it easy to problem solve and “fix” pieces within an exercise.
We will look at games that teach dogs how to handle pressure in a positive way. We will also look at games that maintain drive, especially for behaviors that are in the middle of the chain.

Want a strong, motivated retrieve of the dumbell and a good foundation for utility exercises? Join me as I teach you how to create a firm hold, the end skill in the complex retrieve chain. Our basic goal is a dog who thinks that holding skill is the best part of the whole thing, and hurries to get there when we ask for a retrieve. Importantly, we'll also be covering how to create a dog that starts the action and demands the opportunity to hold the dumbell, a crucial part of achieving total "buy in" from your learner dog. Teaching a hold is hard and sometimes we as handlers need that information from our dogs.

Have big obedience dreams, or want to dip your toe in and give obedience a try? This class will give you an excellent set of foundation skills for AKC, CKC, FCI obedience, or freestyle and it will help you prepare to earn your TEAM 1 title!

Have you ever watched a breed ring dog show and thought, “That looks easy! It’s just walking in left handed circles and standing still”? Well, my friends....there’s actually a lot more to showing a dog successfully. In this class, you’ll learn the specialized skills that make a confident, polished handler: proper handler mechanics, techniques for teaching your dog how to show, and conditioning exercises designed specifically for the breed ring.