Thank you for having participated in this class of Snake Avoidance Without Shock. I hope you had a grand time and that your dog now knows what to do when confronted with the sound, sight or smell of snakes (or whatever critter you were working with).
There are many dangerous critters out there. Not all of them make sounds to frighten predators off, some of them are small enough that sight doesn't work as they may be just behind that chair leg. Some are not so much dangerous to our dogs, but to us and it would be great if our dogs could alert us to their presence.
Once you have done this full class with all the games over six weeks. There are six of those games that you can use for introducing a new critter to be aware of, to alert to, to avoid. You can also use these six games as a refresher once a year to keep the avoidance and alerting behavior alive and well.
You should play all six games, 5 minutes per game, every day for a week with the new critter. The games are sufficiently different from each other (different environmental and verbal cues) that playing all of them in a day should not confuse your dog. If 6 are two many, play 3 a day for two weeks alternating days (play 1 - 3 on days 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 and 4 - 6 on days 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14).
Here are the games:
1) Any introductory scent game to instill the scent in the dog's awareness
2) Hula Hoop leave it's with the scent, sight and sound of the critter in the hoop. Scent of course being the most important especially with animals such as spiders, centipedes, or scorpions.
3) Away!
4) Go Far Around That
5) Drunkard's Walk
and of course 6) Snake Alley the final test.
All the self control games, recall games and distraction work can be done at any time to maintain these skills. They are handy for much more then just critter avoidance.
I'd love to have y'all join me in Making Choices, Managing Prey Drive class in February and April (two part class). This class is an extension of Snake Avoidance and helps with OCD behaviors, phobias. hyperactivity and of course the need to chase !
NOTE: I started this in a class setting and actually refined it while it was still in the meat world not the cyber world. At first it was 2 games a day and the class was only 3 weeks longs. It worked with dogs who had a decent amount of training and weren't reactive or shy, but not the others and the humans were exhausted. I was trying to make it palatable for those use to the 20 minutes for shock collar training.
Then I changed it to 6 weeks, one game a day each day for 6 days each week. That worked.
The difference that I'm seeing here with y'all is that you are all perfectionists :) Most of the people I work with have barely done a puppy class with their dogs. So I told them "work one game a day for 5 minutes, if you're brave, do 3 sessions of that one game each session lasting 5 minutes". Most of them did it and despite never actually achieving perfection on any one game and sometimes not even close, they did get a dog who avoided snakes in the end.
I tried to get this across in this class, but you guys are all into perfection :) Which is NOT a bad thing ! But it's not what you're going to get in the pet dog world.
I would also suggest that everyone that does your class buy the book so they have written instructions for each game. This will be especially helpful if they ever want to work with something besides snakes later on. And that would of course help me and keep the brand alive :)
There are many dangerous critters out there. Not all of them make sounds to frighten predators off, some of them are small enough that sight doesn't work as they may be just behind that chair leg. Some are not so much dangerous to our dogs, but to us and it would be great if our dogs could alert us to their presence.
Once you have done this full class with all the games over six weeks. There are six of those games that you can use for introducing a new critter to be aware of, to alert to, to avoid. You can also use these six games as a refresher once a year to keep the avoidance and alerting behavior alive and well.
You should play all six games, 5 minutes per game, every day for a week with the new critter. The games are sufficiently different from each other (different environmental and verbal cues) that playing all of them in a day should not confuse your dog. If 6 are two many, play 3 a day for two weeks alternating days (play 1 - 3 on days 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 13 and 4 - 6 on days 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14).
Here are the games:
1) Any introductory scent game to instill the scent in the dog's awareness
2) Hula Hoop leave it's with the scent, sight and sound of the critter in the hoop. Scent of course being the most important especially with animals such as spiders, centipedes, or scorpions.
3) Away!
4) Go Far Around That
5) Drunkard's Walk
and of course 6) Snake Alley the final test.
All the self control games, recall games and distraction work can be done at any time to maintain these skills. They are handy for much more then just critter avoidance.
I'd love to have y'all join me in Making Choices, Managing Prey Drive class in February and April (two part class). This class is an extension of Snake Avoidance and helps with OCD behaviors, phobias. hyperactivity and of course the need to chase !
NOTE: I started this in a class setting and actually refined it while it was still in the meat world not the cyber world. At first it was 2 games a day and the class was only 3 weeks longs. It worked with dogs who had a decent amount of training and weren't reactive or shy, but not the others and the humans were exhausted. I was trying to make it palatable for those use to the 20 minutes for shock collar training.
Then I changed it to 6 weeks, one game a day each day for 6 days each week. That worked.
The difference that I'm seeing here with y'all is that you are all perfectionists :) Most of the people I work with have barely done a puppy class with their dogs. So I told them "work one game a day for 5 minutes, if you're brave, do 3 sessions of that one game each session lasting 5 minutes". Most of them did it and despite never actually achieving perfection on any one game and sometimes not even close, they did get a dog who avoided snakes in the end.
I tried to get this across in this class, but you guys are all into perfection :) Which is NOT a bad thing ! But it's not what you're going to get in the pet dog world.
I would also suggest that everyone that does your class buy the book so they have written instructions for each game. This will be especially helpful if they ever want to work with something besides snakes later on. And that would of course help me and keep the brand alive :)
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