In this six-week online course, we will delve into the crucial skill of focus in training. Before diving into complex behaviors, it’s essential to teach our learners how to learn, and focus is a key component of that process. Throughout the course, we will explore what focus entails, how to define and measure it, and how to incorporate it into errorless training sessions. By building a solid foundation of focus, you’ll enhance your ability to teach new behaviors effectively.
Who would benefit from taking this course?
If you find that your dog often gets distracted, fails to respond to cues, or engages more with the environment than with you during training sessions, this course is tailored to address these challenges. Whether you’re a caregiver or a handler, this course will equip you with the necessary skills to teach your learners how to maintain focus and engage in productive training sessions. This course is suitable for participants with dogs of any age, breed, or training level, as well as those interested in training other species.
What will you learn from this course?
Throughout the six-week journey, you’ll gain invaluable insights into:
- Starting and ending training sessions effectively.
- Operationalizing focus behaviors and establishing clean focus loops.
- Cultivating wait-for-cue behavior.
- Constructing training scenarios that progress from simple to complex.
- Implementing training loops and backward chaining techniques.
- Arranging antecedents to optimize focus.
- Mastering trainer mechanics for seamless communication.
- Exploring multiple exercises to build focus behaviors.
This course serves as a prerequisite for the advanced course, “Let Me Want It,” where you’ll delve further into enhancing your animal’s motivation and drive. Moreover, participants have the opportunity to work with multiple animals within the weekly time frame, with up to twelve minutes of video submission allowed per week.
Join us on this transformative journey to develop the crucial skill of focus, laying the foundation for effective training and strengthening the bond between you and your animal companion. Regardless of the species you work with, this course is designed to empower you to achieve remarkable results.
Course Testimonials
I would highly recommend this course for anyone looking to build their technical skills. As a learner, I had a very enjoyable experience. It was the perfect combination of confidence building while also really challenging me. I work in the zoo community, and I’m leaving empowered with exercises that I’ll use with exotic species at work and with my pets at home. (I took it with my cats!)
June 30, 2023
Jax is a lovely dog to work with but his joy is even more noticeable now than before the course and I am thinking more about how I set up sessions. Admittedly, it has also crept into other parts of my life, the other week I had some clean laundry to fold and as I decided to do just a few items every night to make it easier to overcome the boredom of it I thought to myself: “small approximations towards the end goal of all the laundry being folded and put into the drawers”… And I have started to set up everything I need for a workout session beforehand, very neatly, making it easy to get started when it is time, just like any dog training session!
June 30, 2023
3 months after taking the course I couldn’t be happier with how the training with my rescue dog Tobi has developed. Not only can we have regular focussed training sessions now that are fun for both of us and feel like something we’re engaging in as a team, but also has Tobi’s behavior improved in a variety of everyday situations. I already worked with +R marker training before the course, but only now that I learned more about behavior analysis and structure my training it’s really starting to be effective. Introducing elements of choice and clarity has totally changed the game for Tobi and I feel empowered now to take responsibility for my training rather then blame his character for something not working the way I hoped.
I recommend this foundation course to anyone – at first I wasn’t sure whether it would be the right course for us, but it was definitely the course we needed!
June 30, 2023
Great course. My dog and I have struggled with focus and motivation and have “read all the books” but couldn’t crack the code on our own.
At the end of the course I have a dog, that is happy to start work and has even started to initiate it himself when out and about.
Course material breaks it all down in manageable steps and that plus instructur feedback has given us a foundation and tools to move forward.
June 30, 2023
Great course with excercises for building engagement in training session. Also, nice introduction to ABA in animal training. I would probably have better experience as a Premium student but even as an Auditor I managed to improve my training after this course.
June 30, 2023
An awsome basic course! I took it as an auditor, but practiced all of the excercises with my dog. The perfect step by step instructions, a perfect combination of written and video instructions helped me build my skills and in turn also a perfect attention of my dog in challenging environments. Highly recomend!
June 30, 2023
Great course that sets ground for systematic and positive approach to the training session you always dreamt about! This course is not “simply” about getting the attention of your dog during training, it’s about looking at yourself and discovering all the little and big mistakes that you do as a handler and that don’t allow your dogs to develop their learning skills. I should have done this course years ago! I’m amazed with the results and despite my journey just began I already see how much my dogs (and of course myself) changed their attitude towards training.
If you’re taking this course be aware that you’ll need matt, kongs, several places with & without people/ dogs/ smells where you can record and train with your dogs. During Covid 19 I struggled a bit to find good/ legally open and safe places where I could train – even for such short sessions. The teacher was very supportive and provided very constructive feedback at all times.
This is the first time I find a teacher who truly understands mutts and rescues and who respects their timing.
June 30, 2023
I trully recommand this course!
Fredzio is my first dog and as a novel handler, my main goal was and still is to build close, thoughtful relation with my dog…but actually I didnt know what doesit mean tome and how to make this “beautiful relation” happen. We were “loosing” each other on every walk, I did not understand “why my boy is ignoring me?
On “attention please” we were working on building our relation in ethical and systhematic way. Step by step from session to session we we were getting closer to each other. Course was very individualuzed. You do not need to rush to follow the program, Agnieszka adjusted exercises to our needs and level so we keept progressing from first to last day of the course. After 6 weeks we really keep in touch during walks…I did not expect that
June 30, 2023
Everyone will agree that attention is one of the most important components in a communication channel between two individuals, irrespective of species, or task. Funnily enough, it is also the skill that we tend to gloss over, because there are so many other *shiny* things that seem more important to work on. I think a big reason for this is that the concept of attention has a certain je ne sais quois, and it is hard/intimidating to motivate yourself to work towards a vague goal.
What I loved about this class how is thoughtfully Agnieszka has planned it, starting with helping you define exactly what “attention” means for your individual goals and then outline skills that can serve as building blocks to get to your definition of attention. There is a wonderful balance of these exercises and cleverly inserted theories of learning that help you make better choices for your team in terms of planning for efficiency, clarity and setting up for success. You have the option to go as deep or wide with your skills, and her excellent and pointed feedback helped me iron out some wrinkles that I was struggling with for a while, or did not even realize I would hit 🙂 My newly adolescent dog loved going everywhere and trying the basic exercises, and by starting with this simple ask of attention and nothing else, training has started becoming something he looks forward to! Im really glad I took this class with him, and think it is a fantastic place to spend some time with your team mate, irrespective of where you are in your training journey.
Thanks Agnieszka!
June 30, 2023
This course is absolutely awesome and I had a great learning experience. Former question marks has been answered and it helped me understand some of the geekier details of foundation training. It is an in-depth foundation course and Agnieszka is a very good teacher who makes the material easily accessible and creates a safe place to learn. I highly recommend tis course.
June 30, 2023
I audited “Attention Please” with my cat Percy as our first-ever Tromplo course, and we loved it! Both Percy and I really enjoyed following along with the exercises on our own, while I also learned a lot from the individual feedback that the premium students received. I’ve been doing clicker training and R+ with Percy for a while already, but this course really helped to significantly improve our foundations, which in turn improved all our training. Even though the target audience of this course seems to be predominantly dogs (/dog-parents), I can wholeheartedly recommend this course for cats (/cat-parents) too, regardless of prior R+ training experience!
June 30, 2023
This course changed my thinking on a lot of things, including past advice I’d gotten from other R+ trainers. It made me much more aware of the way I interact with my dog, even when we’re not training. Some of the big takeaways for me were: eating is an operant behavior, to watch out for extinction, and to let my dog say “no” to training sessions rather than working harder and harder for his attention. However, my dog is a bit unusual when it comes to food reinforcers, and we’re still at square 1 with focus when we go outside. It’s going to take a while to see this class pay off during our walks and outings, but I’m hopeful. Agnieszka was very patient with us and helped tailor the class to where we were.
June 30, 2023
