BECOME A DOG TRAINER, THINK LIKE A DOG

Welcome to the Training Professional Dog Training Learning Programme.

This course will give you a new opportunity to pursue a professional career that can give you great satisfaction.

After attending the course and passing your test, you can decide at anytime to join the “Training Dog” Network and become one of our talented and motivated Dog Trainers. “Training Dog” does not offer you only a job, but a business that allows you to decide how you want to run it.

Prices, working hours, weekend sessions, puppy classes, boarding training; it all depends on what you want to do with your business and what you want to achieve.

During the learning experience, you will not only learn how to train dogs and deal with dog behavioural issues, but you will also learn how to run a business.

Becoming a member of the “Training Dog” team, you will be solely responsible for conducting yourself in an orderly manner, maintaining the high standards of service and success rate of all our other members.

Read the “Training Dog” Operations Manual.

“Training Dog” represents a new system of dog training techniques, initially created for city dogs, but it can be applied successfully to train or re-train any kind of dog in any kind of environment.

It is mostly based on positive reinforcement, which works for around 90% of the training schedule, but it also uses different techniques to correct unwanted behaviour. No pain, no cruelty, but discipline when needed and an effective way of communication, the one that dogs understand more easily is canine communication. and canine body language, including physical interaction. Yes, at “Training Dog” we speak Dog!

To help dogs understand what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, we boost and enhance our emotional reactions. If the dog is doing well, we don’t just say “Good boy!”, we give lots of fuss and adapting an excited tone to our voice, making sure you giving a lot of praise, and food treats. If the dog is behaving badly we don’t simply say “No!”, but make an unpleasant sound (Tshh!) and raise our voice making it clear that we are upset, phrases such as: “What did you do?” whilst having eye contact with the dog. It is not the words that have the impact as much as the tone of voice that makes clear to the dog that what he’s doing is not acceptable. It has just removed the smile from our face.

Dogs naturally tend to prefer having happy owners, and happy trainers around them rather than unhappy people, they tend to extinguish the behaviour that generates unwanted consequences and reactions such as positive punishment.

The fundamental feature of “Training Dogs” system is the bond. A trainer cannot work with a dog if there is no trust between them. This is extremely important to explain to every new client, as they are paying for the training sessions, and expect positive results. They need to be made aware that there is no way we can rush the way to gaining a dogs trust, we can only work at their pace.

Creating a bond can take a minute or several sessions. Sometimes even after several sessions the dog may only get used to dealing with the trainer, but the bond may still be weak.

Creating the bond is a very delicate task, and if something wrong has happened before the dog grants his trust to the trainer, within a second, the bond could become irreversibly compromised. If this happens, it is better not to proceed with more training sessions, but to explain and show the owner what is happening and that it would be wiser to pass the dog to a colleague Explain to your colleague what has happened to avoid creating the same mistake. These situations can happen with extremely sensitive and mentally vulnerable dogs.

At “Training Dog” we do use popular training techniques like “Clicker Training” and “Whistle Training”, and every positive technique learned by our trainers along their career.

For members, “Training Dog” offers the access of a PRO-website with all the material needed to run a business and deal with every possible situation that you may encounter in running your own business. As well as solutions for every possible behavioural issues, giving all trainers the opportunity to reduce as much as possible the response time to correct unwanted behaviour.

In the “HANDBOOK” section of the PRO-website, every trainer member of the network will also find all basic cues and the instructions to teach them, with the help of several video-tutorials.

If you want to join or you need more information, visit our website: https://trainingdog.co.uk/work-with-us/

MAIN TRAINING METHODS

In dog training there are two generally accepted types of learning styles, operant conditioning and classical conditioning. Depending on what you are trying to teach a dog, one style will be more effective than the other.

Classical conditioning focuses on the involuntary response to a stimulus. Russian psychologists Ivan Pavlov, noticed that dogs automatically began to salivate when in the presence of food. He wondered if he could get dogs to involuntarily salivate to something that previously didn’t cause this response. His experiment was simple, but it completely changed the way most get trained nowadays.

Before feeding the dogs, he rang a bell. Over time the dogs began salivating at the sound of the bell, even without the presence of food. Pavlov had successfully conditioned the dogs to have an involuntary response to a neutral stimulus.

Operant conditioning is a more common way of dog training and it is based on the association between behaviour and response. There are four quadrants in operant conditioning:

• positive reinforcement

• positive punishment

• negative reinforcement

• negative punishment.

1. Positive reinforcement adds a reward to increase a behaviour. It’s as simple as giving a dog a treat for sitting when you give the command.

2. Negative reinforcement means an adverse stimulus is activated by the dog, and the adverse stimulus stops when the behaviour adjusts correctly. For example, a dog pulls and the choke chain collar engages. The only way to stop the chocking is to stop pulling.

3. Positive punishment adds an adverse stimulus to decrease a behaviour. For example spraying some water in a dog’s face (not recommended) or when you use the Pet Corrector which makes a loud unpleasant sound, adding an adverse stimulus to stop a behaviour.

4. Negative punishment removes a positive stimulus to decrease a behaviour. For example stop playing with a puppy when he starts using his teeth and becomes too rough. The only way for restart playing is is to calm down.

The four quadrants of operant conditioning help you transition smoothly when training a dog. It also allows for development of your mental flexibility. This does not mean you are constantly trying different ways to help they pup interpret the task. The pup still needs consistency when trying to solve a problem, but you should be able to help him without changing the entire equation. The dog is doing the best he can with the training that he had and the information you are giving.

You should balance the use of classic conditioning and operant conditioning in order to achieve better and quicker results.