Well where do I start?
I mean I love, love, love teaching these classes. I guess one of the first things that strikes me, is watching the dogs do something they so easily succeed at and watching how that changes the emotion of both the dog and handler. These are amazing moments.
If you’ve read my blog post 'Let Them Choose', you’ll know how strongly I feel about training by encouraging the dog to make the right choices in order to prevent them from making the wrong ones.
Well, sniffing is such an obvious and easy choice for a dog to make, one that is innately satisfying, natural, and motivating to them. The search itself is rewarding to a dog - so they get rewarded for being rewarded!! How great is that?
Dogs love to sniff, we all know that and we see it constantly. It is how they gather information and how they see the world, so to train them to utilise this super power of theirs has so many benefits.
Many of the essential elements of basic dog training get incorporated into UK Sniffer Dog classes. It’s so much more than just letting your dog sniff. By teaching them to search for and indicate on a specific scent, we use classical conditioning, we then move on to operant conditioning - another essential tool in dog training.
The 4 'D's'
We use all the important D’s of dog training: distraction, duration and distance.
Not only will your dog learn, but hopefully you as a handler will learn loads too:
- You’ll learn about reward delivery and timing and how to effectively use your marker
- You’ll learn to observe your dog’s body language and how to recognise subtle signals
- You’ll learn how to deal with the distractions as they occur and how to get your dog back ‘on the job’
Although it is your dog doing the sniffing, make no mistake this is teamwork. The handler has a job to do and you will learn to do it well. You will learn when to leave the dog alone and when the dog needs some guidance.
It is you that will be teaching them to ‘search’, although they do it so naturally, you will be able teach them how to search on cue for a specific scent, ignoring all the distractions around them.
SO… why do I love teaching these classes so much?
If it’s not obvious by now, to summarise; I adore the success of the dogs and handlers, I love watching the confidence of both grow and grow, I love seeing the smiles and sometimes whoops of joy as people watch their dogs succeed and truly enjoy the reason they’ve succeeded.
I love watching the dogs and handlers bond and understand each other better and I love seeing the dogs being given a job that is mentally and physically, challenging, relaxing and easy for them in equal measures.
So thank you to UK Sniffers Dogs for making these wonderful courses accessible to all and any pet dogs, and thank you to all my clients, past, present and future that join me on one of these courses…it is an absolute pleasure to teach you.
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Lynne :-)