No pictures with the kids. Here is my pretty puppy!
Last Thursday we went to talk to a group of local boy scouts about pet training. As always, I went in with a plan but I was also ready to quickly change the plan depending on their interests and how the conversation went. The leader had prompted me to talk about training different kinds of pets and ways dogs help people.
We started with a short talk about needing to “know your learner” – identifying happy and unhappy animals and appropriate rewards. I used the Be A Tree dog bite prevention safety kit and posters in the kit to help talk about dog body language. I really like the way the kit uses photos from the same dog to demonstration safe vs unsafe – and how the same dog can be safe or unsafe depending on the situation.
Our next part was to practice some clicker training mechanics. The kids were maybe a little too young to really understand everything – but they do like hands on activities so I knew it would at least be keeping them engaged. We did clicker games with clicker timing and moving beans after a click (hands to “home base” in between).
The most exciting part was probably when we brought in Tonks and worked on teaching her to go through a hoop via hand targeting. The demo took a little longer than I anticipated – she was actually a little worried about the tire. It did mean we were able to rotate out kids – someone to click, someone to hold the tire (or two!) and someone to do the hand. I think everyone or almost everyone ended up with a turn before we stopped – and we were able to get her through!
The last part was talking about how dogs can help people – the kids had many clever ideas (some right and some very incorrect!).
We haven’t been doing as many public demonstrations due to time restrictions -it was great to do it again. I also really love the experience for my dogs – if they can focus and respond in that kind of environment, everything else only gets easier.