The purpose of this introductory six week course is to help you develop a strong, positive training relationship with your puppy or young dog. Training behaviors is one thing; instilling a love of working with you is another. The key to consistent success in the ring is to help your dog develop into an enthusiastic and confident working partner. The concepts, ideas, and exercises presented in this class are designed with that goal in mind. Once you have raised a happy and focused puppy, you can take your training in any direction you choose in the future. My goal is to help you build success on success in your pup’s early training experiences.

This class will be based on the book “The Focused Puppy” by Deb Jones and Judy Keller. This book is a clear and complete guide that we will follow in our class format

For answers to frequently asked questions about online learning, please visit our FAQ page.

This course will help participants learn to create excitement and interest in heel work with their dogs. By increasing their attractiveness as a ‘heeling partner’, external reward schedules can be decreased at the same time that natural attention will be developed.

Obility 1 is your introduction to Obility, a fast paced and exciting way to teach obedience!  In this class, we will introduce the basic obility commands (fly and thru) and demonstrate how to use them to teach any dog several fundamental obedience exercises.  All dogs will be introduced to the obility method of teaching the broad jump, high jump, recall, directed jumping, and gloves ( no retrieves required!).  Dogs who enter the class with more obedience skills may also be introduced to the obility method of drop on recall, retrieve on flat, and the signal exercise.  We'll work with the skills that you and your dog possess, and add a few new ones to keep you busy!  This class is appropriate for any dog or puppy with or without fundamental obedience skills. Only requirements are a a basic off-leash recall and a safe environment for your off leash dog to practice!

This is an excellent choice for obedience dogs that aren't having much fun with their training, and provides a nice introduction to the concept of obility.

This class may be repeated as often as desired until the student feels ready to progress.

Designed for dogs with all of the skills expected of a dog trained through Utility obedience with Obility movement skills from earlier obility classes. Emphasis on balancing speed with control.  Sequences in this class will be a longer and more complex and will emphasize a much thinner reinforcement schedule.  Short stretches of formal obedience work will also be incorporated.

Advanced heeling picks up where Precision Heeling and Heeling Games leaves off

In this course, you will learn how to solve common problems related to heeling, and better yet, discuss how to prevent them in the first place!

This course will help participants learn to develop precise heeling through placement of food reward, platforms and discs, "pocket hand" and activities that teach you and your dog exactly where heel position is located. Static position (as opposed to movement) will be the primary focus.

Many dogs lack precise heeling because they have no foundation – they do not understand how to use their bodies with accuracy, and their trainers don’t know how to fix heeling mistakes when they occur. This class will give you specific tools that you can use to develop your heeling foundation, without using a leash, special collar or any compulsive techniques.

All of the techniques will be introduced at one time, so you can select the level of challenge that your dog is ready for, and then Denise will provide extensive video examples to help you apply that concept. This class will cover the details of precision rather than the “game” aspect of heeling. Because of this focus, the class can be taken even if you have no access to training grounds outside of your own home!

Since enthusiasm in heeling and precision are two sides of the same coin, this course is a prerequisite to the “heeling games” course. If you wish to take a gold or silver level spot in the heeling games class, please take the heeling precision class at the bronze level or higher.

Teaching tricks can lead to huge and long- lasting benefits for your competition work.  Far from being silly and inconsequential, tricks can be the building blocks for more advanced work.  Trick training helps you form a strong and mutually enjoyable working relationship with your dog.  Teaching tricks gives you valuable training practice.  It allows you to practice a variety of training techniques (shaping, luring and targeting),  improve your timing, and set criteria appropriately.  And most importantly, trick training is fun!

The tricks we will focus on in this class will have direct application to competition training and showing.  Left and right spins, hand touches, backing up, weaving between your legs, sitting up, paw touches, chin rest, take a nap,  go to bed, and play dead are some of the tricks we will work on.  In addition to teaching these tricks we will talk about how they can help improve your dog's focus, lower his stress level, and make teaching competition behaviors much easier.

Students will work at their own level and their own pace.  If your dog already knows the basic trick behavior we will add more challenges and work on distraction and stimulus control.  Appropriate for dogs of all ages (puppies through seniors) and at all levels of training.

This course introduces the team to the basics of footstep tracking, with an emphasis on track scent over air scent and imprinting the dog to find value in each footstep. Scent boxes, circle tracks, serpentines and straight line tracks are covered in detail, along with details to the handler on how to lay successful tracks. The handler learns proper line handling techniques, along with some exercises designed to help the dog’s understanding of information via the tracking line.

How to teach proper article indication is also covered, along with some article games as a prerequisite to adding them to the track.

Prerequisites: None