Reactive Dogs – The Science and Art of Set Ups and Use of Live Decoy Dogs to Achieve Success with Yvette Van Veen

On-Demand Webinar: Watch as soon as you register

Webinar Description

Owners often struggle to develop skills to help their dogs overcome reactivity. Set ups and decoy dogs can help owners as they develop skills. This can create safer training sessions and increase productivity. However, many dogs do well in set ups, yet fail in real life. This webinar will look at the details that can undermine a dog’s progress and show how to remove walls and obstacles to success.

Learn how to create effective set ups that mimic real life. Avoid common pitfalls of blocking and overshadowing. Set up your set ups for long-term gains. Learn how and when to use decoy dogs, including advanced set ups to address problems such as sudden environmental contrast.

Learning Objectives:

•  Differentiate between leash reactivity and anxiety. Learn to choose which strategy to employ when addressing both.
• Hallmarks of an effective setup. Understanding how small changes in execution offers clarity to the dog & helps keep the dog under threshold. Use of latency in counter-conditioning and addressing rate of reinforcement/position feeding for positive reinforcement.
• Taking down the walls that prevent success. Preventing blocking, overshadowing and undesired cues. Ensure the dog is learning what we set out to teach.
• Creating clean associations. Faking the rushing dog, working on sudden environmental contrast, factors to consider when creating training plans that go from easy to difficult.
• Fast initial results versus long-term gains. Steps to take to achieve more stable results.
• Identify what makes a good decoy dog. Is your dog suitable? What are the ethical considerations of asking dogs to do this task? Which tasks can they do? Insulating against potential problems.