Petra Ford, Faculty
Main info
Petra (she/her) graduated from Rutgers School of Health-Related Professions 25 years ago with a degree in physical therapy and has experience working with an extremely varied caseload including pediatric through geriatric clients with a vast range of diagnoses. Her areas of expertise included in-patient rehabilitation, orthopedics and neurology. Petra attended the Canine Rehabilitation Institute in 2007 and is a certified Canine Rehabilitation Therapist. Petra raced bicycles at the professional level and participated in international events. She is now an avid runner, practices yoga and meditates daily. Petra trains and trials her Labrador Retrievers in obedience, agility and field. Her black Labrador Retriever, Tyler, has the distinction of being the 2008 and 2009 National Obedience Champion and First Runner Up in 2010. In 2012, Petra and Tyler became the first American team to win the Obedience World Cup (they placed second in 2010). Petra’s dogs have earned field titles (MH, QAA). She competed in Masters with Zaidan, who is now retired. She is currently competing in obedience with Zeal. Zeal is the winner of multiple Regional Qualifiers, won the 2018 Obedience Classic and has earned 10 Perfect 200 scores. Following in his father’s pawsteps, Zeal is the 2020 National Obedience Champion. Zayna won the Novice Division at the 2019 Obedience Classic, placed second (to Zeal) at her first Regional and recently finished her OTCH. Zesty is the newest family member. He is quite the clown! He loves dressing up and learning new tricks. He is becoming quite social media star. He is also training for competition obedience. Petra has written several articles on canine conditioning, canine injury prevention, competing with your dog and more. She has been published in a number of magazines including Clean Run, Front and Finish, and Whole Dog Journal.
Pronouns: Petra goes by she/her.
Petra Ford's current and upcoming courses
Optimizing Arousal for Learning and Competition
Understanding and managing your dog’s drive state/arousal level is a critical component of training and trialing successfully. It is very difficult and uncomfortable for a dog to learn and compete in a state of arousal that is too high or too low. We will start this class by learning how to recognize your dog’s various drive states and how your dog moves between them. With practice, you can learn to quickly recognize subtle signs that indicate your dog’s mental and emotional state.
Energized Engagement
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.
Competition Heeling Part Two
Heeling requires significant concentration and sustained focus to maintain position, focal point and engagement. Heeling is easily the most difficult obedience exercise. When trained properly, it is a beautiful dance between dog and handler that is a joy to watch.
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