In this course we will work with breaking down all the things you would like your learner to able to do, into single behaviors. We focus on developing multiple of the skills you and your learner need, to train exactly what you dream off.
We do this by shaping and capturing behaviors, and we work with them off cue, to make sure we get the exact behavior.
Pocket it! This course focus will be working without treats in hand and helping as little as possible. We give the learner the highest rage of choice we can, and teach the learner to actively take part in the training.

You struggle to groom your dog without having him mouth the brush ?

You can’t cut his nails ?

Your dog is running away as soon as you pronounce “shower” ?

Your dog stresses out so much at the clinic or at the groomer that he trembles, shuts down or tries to escape ?

You have to care for your dog and it’s complicated to do it alone at home ?

Your dog doesn’t like to put the collar, harness, muzzle or cone ?

You want your dog to be stressfree and cooperate with him in all sorts of care procedures ?

You want to improve the communication with your dog, develop a trusting relationship and give him more choice opportunities and control on his life ?

If you see yourself in one of this situations, this class is made for you !

Cooperative husbandry training aims to teach animal to assist in their own care.

It’s an ethical and pratical choice. It is used in most of zoological parcs to care for wild animals avoiding restrain, anesthesia and reducing stress. Husbandry training is part of daily enrichment programs. Through this training we give the animal the skills and the opportunities to give his consent. Giving them choice and control over their environnement improves their general welfare.

If we can draw blood from a girafe or an orca without using force…why not do the same with our pets ?

Empowering our dogs in their own care not only make it easier, but also enrich our life together.

Some of the topics covered in this course :

• Understanding and using science basics in husbandry training.
• Teaching consent positions.
• Empowerment : Understanding importance of choice and control.
• Behavior, consequences and functions : how to use them to converse with animals.
• Teaching your dog the consent concept.
• How to train your dog through various daily procedures such as : handling, grooming, bathing, nails care, ears and eyes care, teeth brushing, muzzle training…
• What to do when our dog is not ready and you have to do it. Consequences.

A second level course will be focusing on training the dog to third party care such as the vet, the groomer, the osteopath.

This course is a self-study auditors only!

We are very much looking forward to sharing this material with you all!

Approaching parenting and family life from an R + perspective is not a given in our culture and often not a part of the regular discussion of the topics.

In this course we’d like to share with you how you can approach your life as a parent and part of a family from this methodology. We’ll look into how you can be proactive rather than reactive, setting both yourself and your child up for success.

We’ll discuss how you can think about what skills to teach and how.

We’ll touch on the theory behind working with positive reinforcement and introduce the basis of TAGteach–Teaching with Acoustical Guidance. But this course is mostly based on our personal experiences with our own families and discussions we’ve had in different settings with other caregivers, teachers and coaches.

This course will cover topics such as:

• Skills for everyday life, such as brushing teeth, going shopping.
• Skills for care, such as taking medication and going to the dentist.
• Discussions regarding reinforcers.
• Discussions regarding children of different ages.
• Discussions regarding helping your child with an R + approach out in the world

This course is for you if you are in a caregiving position or in a situation where you deal with kids and families on a regular basis through work or hobbies

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Dogs olfactory abilities amaze us and what they manage to do with their noses is truly astounding.
Nosework is a sport that uses most natural, amazing dog’s abilities and develops them into perfection.

Nosework is one of the greatest dog sports, making its way to the top most popular canine activities. Inspired by working detection dogs searching for narcotics, explosives, nosework makes it available for everyone. Dogs are searching for essential oils hidden in vehicles, interiors, water, exteriors and containers and they love it!

“No limitations”
This sport is for everyone! It is a perfect activity for old, retired, or disabled dogs who want to stay in shape but can’t be physically challenged. Aggressive dogs are welcome too!
Pure breed, cross breed, old, young, slow, fast – it doesn’t matter what type your dog is!

During the course we focus on:

• what is nosework; rules reading
• classically conditioning odors
• building solid alert behavior using clicker training
• introducing discrimination between hot and cold objects
• introducing various odor holders
• introducing cardboard boxes
• generalization

There are 3 more nosework course stages.

Before we start teaching our learners complicated behaviors and advanced concepts, we need to teach them how to learn. This course focuses on building one of the most important skills our dogs need in training; focus. We cant’t teach them anything if they are not with us during training session. In this course we will cover:

• how to start the training session
• how to end the training session
• focus behaviors operationalized
• clean focus loops from the start
• wait for cue behavior
• building easy to more complex training scenarios
• training loops
• backward chaining
• antecedent arrangement
• trainer’s mechanics
• multiple exercises for building focus behaviors

This course is a prerequisite for Let Me Want It.
One of our previous student of this course and before and after:

This course’s focus is the first part of the retrieve exercise in obedience trial, we will work on grab, hold and movement with dumbbell. Before we go into details, accessories, first exercise, we need to go through the rulebook.

Rulebook for FCI obedience consists guidelines and point system for each exercise.

We will analyze what need to do to score 10/10 for retrieve exercise in class 1.

For the upcoming six weeks I want us to focus on:

• Shaping “calm” and “strong” grab and hold behavior.
• by calm I mean: one movement of grabbing and closing mouth on an object. What we don’t want is: chewing, correcting grip, loving dumbbell in mouth (rolling with tongue).
• by strong I mean: with strength that makes impossible for a handler to move dumbbell while the dog is holding it.
• Shaping grab from variety of dumbbell positions:
  – our hand
  – both our hands
  – nose height
  – ground height but with handler holding it
  – on the floor
• Building distance
• Variation in handler position
• Adding movement to grab and hold behavior (final behavior heel set-up)
• Object generalization
• Delivery and release to hand
• Adjusting correct reinforcement protocol for your dog and retrieve behavior
  

Obedience; distance control exercise, position changes with front anchored.

Position changes are one of my favorite exercises from the obedience ring. Starting in class 1 all the way to Elite class (class 3) there is always something we can focus on when doing position changes. This exercise is a perfect combination of precision and speed which equals fluency! Distance control is also perfect exercise for behavior/precision nerd like myself! There is a lot of focus on those micro movements, tiny weight shifts that change the whole process of learning.

The course will cover:

✔️ front anchored positions

– sit from stand

– sit from down

– stand from down

– stand from sit

– down from sit

– down from stand

✔️ building precision in each movement

✔️ adding distance

✔️ adding cues

✔️ adding duration

✔️ trial variations

Rear anchored positions will be covered in different course.

Prerequisites:

– clicker training foundations.

This course is designed to create the necessary building blocks for effective communication between you and your dog.  It will teach you how to train your dog a repertoire of core behaviours, as well as the skills in how to then effectively apply and progress them.  On completion you will have strong, solid base to progress your training from.

Essential Foundation Behaviours is suitable for dogs of any age, stage and can be an important refresher to assist overcoming any training glitches you may encounter.

We will cover:

• Training Mechanics
• Attention
• Touch
• Mat/Bed/Crate
• Down
• Settle
• Follow me
• Recall
• Drop
• Feed retreat

This is a self-learn course aimed to cover the main topics related to the dog’s sense of smell.
In recent years science has focused on many areas that may be useful to those who work with the dog’s nose. Today we have more knowledge about the physiology of smell, scent perception, theory of learning, and how odours behaves.
During the course we will try to combine theoretical knowledge with dog training.

What to expect 

• Self learn course
• Forum and Facebook group where you can discuss and interact
• Six weeks of lesson

Topic 1: scent and scenting dogs

• Scent and scenting dogs
• Dog cognition: drives and motivation
• Theory of learning
• Memory
• Odours: an overview
• How the nose works
• Perception

Topic 2: dogs that works with human scent

• Human scent
• Theory of scent
• Dogs that works with human scent (mantrailing, tracking, scent ID, air scent, rubble, detection)

Topic 3: dogs that works with other smells

• Detection dogs
• Tracking and trailing dogs

Topic 4: A bridge between theory and practice 

• Learning theory and scent training
• Training phases

Do you work at a Dog Rescue? Are you volunteer at a Dog Rescue? Do you Love, Care, or Work with Rescued Dogs? Would you like to learn more about their Training? Would you like to know how to Help them more? Would you like to know how to work with them Successfully?

If you answer to any or all of these questions is Yes, then this course is for YOU!

“Working Successfully with Rescued Dogs – The Blueprint, Part 1” will cover several topics to get you started on the path of Training and Educating Rescued Dogs!

In this course, you will learn about:

• How Environment affects Dogs’ Behaviour
• What is Stress; How to recognize it in Dogs; And how to reduce it
• The power of Trust
• Dogs’ Needs and their Well-being
• How Dogs Learn
• Dog Training Equipment: What to use and what not to
• The Basics of Dog’ Body Language
• How to Approach Rescued Dogs Successfully
• Clicker Training
• How to Train Rescued Dogs: Practical Exercises

These are the main topics that will be covered in detail throughout the course.

Make sure to sign up for Premium if you would like to get my full support throughout the course.

Do you work at a Dog Rescue? Are you volunteer at a Dog Rescue? Do you Love, Care, or Work with Rescued Dogs? Would you like to learn more about their Behaviour and Training? Would you like to know how to help them more? Would you like to know how to work with them Successfully?

If you answer to any or all of these questions is Yes, then this course is for YOU!

“Working Successfully with Rescued Dogs – The Blueprint, Part 2”  is the continuation of the course where you will learn all you need to get started on the path of Training and Educating Rescued Dogs!

In this part of the course, we will focus mainly on behaviour modification techniques and other necessary concepts to be able to take a step further on helping these Dogs.

Make sure to sign up for Premium if you would like to get my full support throughout this course.
I am sure you will have several questions to clarify!

Thank you,

Dog Behaviourist Ricardo Ministro

When was the last time you practiced your handling skills? How much time do you spend working on your timing, mechanics and control in relation to the time spent on your dog’s skills? Do you know that your dog’s skills are reflection of your own? Very often we forget how important it is to focus on our own preparation before even working with dogs. Being able to mark in time, properly delivery reinforcement is not a something extra, it’s our obligation as a trainer! Very often we expect from our dogs much more than from ourselves.

Trainer’s toolbox is a foundation course focusing on scientific approach to dog training. We will cover ABA (applied behavior analysis) principles and how they resonate with what we do with dogs, we will cover mechanics and techniques of teaching behaviors!

• clicker training mechanics
• skills for trainer
• chaining
• adding stimulus control to behaviors and
• luring
• shaping
• structure of training session
• concept of fluency
• frustration and errors
• raising criteria
• moulding
• concept of loopy training

This course is must have for anyone interested into diving into depths of scientific dog training. If you want to be the handler your dog deserves – join me for 6 weeks of great learning.

Building up on skills we covered in stage one, we will continue our preparation to exams. ORTs and first trials. Our primary focus will always be precise and clear training loop, and clarity in search criteria.

We will start where we left with stage 1 and focus on:

• start line routine
• introducing search patterns
• duration of search behavior
• handling
• building clarity in cues during search pattern
• generalization of locations
• task analysis of searches
• basics of scent theory
• increasing complexity of puzzles
• planning your own training

Self-study course! Auditors only! (No premium spots in this course)

Positive reinforcement training is about setting up for success and making sure desired behaviors are followed by reinforcers, which strengthen the behavior in the future. In this course you get to join the Swedish duo Eva and Emelie as they zoom in on the small but important details that make up a training session, from one reward to the next. What happens right after each reward? What happens within your reward procedure? And why does it matter?

In “Seamlessness – from one reward to the next” you will learn learn how to work deliberately with small but significant details, paying attention to all the parts of the training loop and using them to create seamless training sessions. The material in this course will help you develop your own training sessions further.  Your planning will get better, your training will become smoother, and both you and your learner will enjoy the process even more than before!

Course syllabus:

Week 1
Lesson 1 – Introduction to the course
Lesson 2 – The underpinnings
Lesson 3 – From one reward to the next – overview
Week 2
Lesson 4 – Training session fundamentals
Lesson 5 – The reward ends
Week 3
Lesson 6 – Criteria
Lesson 7 – Mark
Week 4
Lesson 8 – The reward appears
Lesson 9 – Take the reward
Lesson 10 – During the reward
Week 5
Lesson 11 – The reward ends (again)
Lesson 12 – Criteria not met
Week 6
Lesson 13 – Putting behavior together
Lesson 14 – Flowcharting your training session
Lesson 15 – Summarizing seamlessness

This is a 6 week self-study course. New lessons will be presented each week  (a total of 15 lessons) and you will have continued access to the material after the course finishes.

We have so much material we wish to share with you on this topic – in this course, we put it together in a comprehensive yet extensive form. Our goal is to provide you with a lot of information and ideas from which you can extrapolate the aspects you currently wish to work with in your own training.

The course is auditors only,  allowing you to digest the material at your own pace and consider how it relates to your own training.  There will be follow-up courses with practical training and feedback from us, we just wish to have everyone on the same page first…   There are so many aspects to consider – it literally takes us six weeks to get from one reward to the next!