Life Skills

Life Skills Level One is a four-week guided study covering foundational skills. New teams start here and repeat the series until ready to advance to Level Two.

Learn to focus together, help your dog practice and respond to cues, and work as a team in a classroom with other people and other dogs.

Classes are 55 minutes long and meet weekly. Week One of class is humans only, then dogs join the fun in future weeks!

Level One covers:

• Positive reinforcement-based training and how dogs and humans learn
• Skills for successful group classes: smooth arrivals and transitions, settling at your spot, and bringing the right supplies and equipment
• Choosing and using reinforcers
• Helping your dog choose to pay attention to you
• The Trade Game: preventing resource guarding
• Introduction to luring, capturing, and shaping
• The Training Loop: a system for teaching new skills
• Hand targeting (nose to palm)
• Choosing and using cues to communicate with your dog
• The "3 Ds" of difficulty and how to adjust them for success
• Reading body language and using the FAS Scale
• Practicing your new skills outside of class and maintaining your progress in everyday life
• Preparing for Level Two, where teams build on these foundations to learn more complex skills

Throughout the course, teams also receive supplementary resources tailored to their dog's age and needs, including:

• Puppies: teething, housetraining, safe and successful socialization, preparing for grooming and vet visits, the importance of sleep and rest, and more.
• Teenage and adult dogs: puberty and hormonal changes, building comfort with alone time, maintaining healthy sleep and rest routines, recovering from socialization setbacks, expanding training and enrichment to meet growing intellectual and physical needs, and more.

Tuition: $45/class + 9% Sales Tax

Build upon your foundation to learn more complex skills with your dog as a team.

This class is ongoing and minimum enrollment is four weeks. Classes are 55 minutes long.

Skills/topics commonly covered in Level Two include:

• Name recognition
• Emergency U-turn
• Focus & Attention (eye contact)
• Sit, Down, Stand
• Come when called
• Go to bed/mat
• Greeting a friendly stranger (no petting)
• Drop it/Give
• Introduction to leash walking
• Stay/Wait
• Waiting at the door/crate/car
• Body handling, grooming, and vet visit prep
• Advanced luring and capturing
• The Shaping Game
• Intro to Nosework
• Intro to Agility
• Intro to Field Trips

... and more!

Tuition: $45/class + 9% Sales Tax

Enrollment coming soon