Practical Dog Trainer Course for Trainers & Behaviourists

Why Immersion?

You can understand learning theory, behaviour and training systems and still need more time actually training dogs.

Knowing how dog training works and being good at physically doing it are different skills.

And sometimes the dog does something that makes your beautifully written training plan completely irrelevant.

Immersion gives you time to work through that.

You will plan behaviours, train your dog, review what happened, receive coaching, make decisions and go back into the next session with a clearer plan.

The aim is simple.

Become better at the actual job of training dogs.

Phase One

5-Day Practical Dog Trainer Immersion

Everyone starts here.

You bring your own dog and spend five days developing the foundation skills that will be used throughout the rest of Immersion.

This is not five days of sitting in a classroom talking about training.

You will train.

You will also plan, observe, film, review, coach, make mistakes, change things and train again.

The Training Loop

A large part of Immersion comes back to the same process:

1. 01What am I trying to train?
2. 02What is my current criterion?
3. 03What actually happened?
4. 04Should I make it harder, stay where I am or make it easier?
5. 05What am I changing next?

Then you test your decision.

The objective is to move away from guessing and towards training deliberately.

Planning Behaviour

Before you train something well, you need to know what you are actually trying to produce.

You will practise taking a finished behaviour and breaking it into trainable criteria.

We will use systems including:

• —SPLIT
• —Push, Drop, Stick
• —Three in a Row
• —Distance, duration and distraction

The aim is not to memorise another training formula.

It is to become better at making decisions while the training is happening.

Communication

There is no compulsory marker system that everybody must use.

Instead, we will look at different ways trainers communicate with dogs and what those systems actually do.

That can include:

• —Clickers
• —Verbal markers
• —Release cues
• —Single-marker systems
• —Multiple-marker systems
• —Binary feedback
• —Accidental body cues
• —The effects of trainer movement and emotion

The aim is to understand what information you are giving the dog, deliberately or accidentally.

Reinforcement and Play

Good training depends on more than having food in your pocket.

You will work on:

• —Food mechanics
• —Reinforcement placement
• —Tug
• —Two-toy play
• —Engagement
• —Switching between reinforcers
• —Changing arousal through reinforcement
• —Finding effective reinforcers for the individual dog

Most importantly, you will practise finding out what actually works for the dog in front of you rather than deciding in advance what should be reinforcing.

Observation Before Intervention

Before changing behaviour, you need to see what is actually happening.

You will work on:

• —Establishing baselines
• —Engagement and disengagement
• —Changes in arousal
• —Reinforcement preferences
• —Environmental influences
• —Accidental prompts
• —Recognising deteriorating performance
• —Knowing when to stop

Part of good dog training is knowing when another repetition will help and when it will make things worse.

Film. Review. Change.

You will film your training and use My Canine 360 to review what actually happened.

You can then look back at:

• —Timing
• —Reinforcement placement
• —Criteria
• —Body language
• —Accidental cues
• —Missed information
• —Where the session started to change

Video has an annoying habit of showing you the difference between what you thought you did and what you actually did.

That is exactly why we use it.

At the end of each day, you will come back to four questions:

Your dog will not train all day

Five days of practical training does not mean five days of constantly working your dog.

That would be a terrible idea.

Dogs need rest.

Training is broken up with:

• —Planning
• —Observation
• —Video analysis
• —Lectures
• —Coaching exercises
• —Practical drills that do not require your dog
• —Rest periods

Part of becoming a better trainer is recognising when more repetitions will help and when the right decision is to stop.

Your Instructors

Nando Brown and Dean Nicholas

Phase One in Bristol will be taught by School of Canine Science founders Nando Brown and Dean Nicholas.

The focus throughout the five days is practical coaching.

Phase Two

14-Day Rescue Dog Immersion

Your own dog is familiar.

You know their history.

You know what they like.

You know what usually works.

Phase Two changes that.

You work with unfamiliar rescue dogs with different:

• —Training histories
• —Motivation
• —Confidence
• —Reinforcement preferences
• —Learning speeds
• —Environmental sensitivities
• —Strengths
• —Training problems

The training principles remain familiar.

The dog does not.

You may begin training a behaviour before handing that dog to another trainer.

Later, you may inherit somebody else's unfinished training.

You receive a factual handover, assess what is actually in front of you and decide what should happen next.

Training may include:

• —Loose-lead walking
• —Recall
• —Muzzle training
• —Cooperative veterinary care
• —Scent work
• —Confidence building
• —Stationing
• —Settling
• —Handling
• —Kennel and doorway skills
• —Play
• —Environmental confidence
• —Habituation
• —Desensitisation
• —Counterconditioning

The exact training depends on the dogs and the needs of the rescue organisation.

Phase Two is where we start asking a much more important question than:

“What technique should I use?”

We want you asking:

“What is happening with this dog, and what should I change?”

FAQ

Could Immersion come to your venue?

Bristol is the first confirmed Phase One, but it will not be the last.

We are looking at future Immersion locations in the UK and internationally.

If you run a dog-training venue, facility or organisation and think your location could work for a future Immersion, drop us a message.