Get Engaged Home Page

 Scroll down and use the buttons below to access each of the training modules.

At the bottom of the list is the button for the FB Group, if you have joined the main Academy Facebook Discussion group it will automatically approve you for all other groups, if you did not join the main group use this password when prompted when joining: HPA2023

Think of the modules as your text books for the Academy, a master reference where you can get written & video instructions for each other the exercises.

The Academy Classroom blog will be where you can find my suggested path working through the modules. I will be taking us through the exercises, taking bits from each class and helping you meld them together. But if you prefer you can work any module at your own pace. You can post homework videos and ask questions on any of the Facebook groups at any time during the year. You can set your own syllabus if there is a class you prefer to work without waiting, but I suggest not doing so if your dog is young, new to you, or in need of a more solid foundation. This is why you might see some of the exercises repeated, because there are some that overlap in all courses and I want to make sure folks get those if they are working on their own.

People all have their own best ways of taking information in, so you will see that each exercise is explained in writing, shown in video demonstration, with verbal explanations and then if you learn by doing you can upload videos of you and your dog doing the exercises for me to provide you feedback.

See the page on filming, editing and uploading tips for help on making that process easier for you!

If you are not in the Academy FB discussion group monitor the Classroom Blog and Zoom Room so you don’t miss updates and meeting opportunities!

 GET ENGAGED MODULE 1

ENGAGED FOOD REWARDS

Our first exercise is to look at how we reward our dogs and whether that process is increasing our dog's engaged relationship with US or just with the reward. We ultimately want our emotions to be the reward and the treats or toys to be the icing on the cake, so we want to look at how you give rewards.

Don't just feed, inject your emotions and energy into giving a treat or presenting a toy. So your first exercise is assess your rewarding of your dog for a few simple exercises like: sit, down, come. See how you can engage while rewarding!

Now here's a common theme in my classes, you try and do it like I show and find out that as soon as you reach for your dog to pet them, they walk away. Please keep in mind if your dogs are used to get immediate reward and not pets they might be put off at first. Don't be discouraged if your dog doesn't wag their tail or moves away from your pets, lots of dogs do during our first week of class ;)

I can help you a lot more if you are a part of the FB group where you can upload videos for me to see your attempts if you are struggling.

USING FOOD TO PLAY,

INTENSITY DIFFERENCES

This is a video showing you all two sets of litter mates to see how dogs differ in their natural intensity and focus. So as you are working on trying to get your dog more engaged and interested you need to understand this dance depending on which side your dog tends to fall on. So if you have a dog that is more like Navigator or Lucy in the video, the calmer more easily turned off dogs, your pressure to try hard to get them more excited can actually put them off and overwhelm them and cause the opposite effect. So you have to play around with how you softly build without overwhelming, you have to play with your body language, voice and motion to find that sweet spot. Conversely if you have the Lily or the Forrest, the bouncy happy waggy dogs that easily get too excited, that start nipping or jumping on you when you try to engage, you have to find the sweet spot of being energetic and engaged but also grounding and calming. It's not just energy we need, it's focused energy. So You might have to slow things down, move your hands more calmly, focus them on food when they get too aroused.

We will dive more deeply into these differences as we progress. So exercise number two is to play with your food. See if you can make your treats a toy! Try tossing it for them to chase, toss it for them to catch, make getting the food a little more interesting.

CALM HAPPY TOUCH

This video is for some of you who have the pups that get a little too out of control when you try to play with them without a toy. The dogs that start biting your arms or jumping on you as soon as you try and engage with them. This shows you how I work first on getting an excitable dog to remain calm and engaged during affection. It's a common idea that a dog has to be excited and bouncy to be engaged, but that's not the case, you need focus before you can get the engagement and engaged connection can be soft too. So when you have a very excitable dog you want to ground their energy during engagement. This work can also help dogs that are not overly excited but maybe are not sure they like physical contact during training or play, this is a great exercise for those pups too, to learn touch is nice.

It’s very important that you understand when a dog is consenting to the touch and enjoying it. Many dogs are not welcoming of being touched in certain situations and you have to move slowly to help teach these dogs the touch is good. So if your dog is pulling away from your touch, making them take it is not going to create a desire to be touched. You have to work on changing up your approach, try different positions, sit down, etc, but don’t force contact just because i’m saying you need it. We have to build it naturally if it’s not there.

MAKING FOOD TOYS

Here is a video showing you some DIY ideas for making toys that hold food so you can bring some food drive into your play for dogs that are more motivated by food then toys.

Also, if you have a dog that likes toys but is very independent with them, food toys can help build more cooperation and interactive play as they need your help to get the food.

These are just a few ideas, you can likely even find something you already have at home to use. Show me your best ideas!

If you have a dog this really helps you with, you may have seen me using the toys I buy that I use for this kind of training on my IG stories. I will be sharing even more ideas and videos on using food toys as class moves along, but this is a way you can get started even before you buy a toy if you decide to.

TOYS

Ok, now let's talk about play with toys. If you are in the FB group I would love to see 30-60 seconds or so of you playing with your dog using toys. If your dog doesn't play with toys you can try using some food in something your dog needs some help getting the food out, like the sock example in the previous video with the terriers, or you can see in this video me using a baggie of food with Nick.

If your dog plays with toys, but doesn't bring you the toy back you can see the examples in the video I give using two toys to play.

 GET ENGAGED MODULE 2

FOOD TOYS TO BUILD PLAY DRIVE

Another example of making a food toy. This time using a simple closing yogurt container. The more ways you can build upon the idea my thumbs can open up a world of tasty fun for you the better!

Pay attention to how I set up a successful station by placing myself next to his bed where he naturally wants to take things to investigate them. This is what starts setting up the retrieve, he's not coming to me, but to the bed and I just happen to also be there...

DEALING WITH DOGS WHO DON’T RETURN WITH TOYS

LECTURE UNDERSTANDING PLAY MOTIVATIONS

ADDING ENGAGEMENT CUES

One of the secrets to taking all our hard work building play and enthusiasm is being able to take that engagement and apply it to training and getting focus in the real world. So we want to build a language to it so we can use that language to get our dog to engage with us on demand once we have built a strong play bond.

Details, timing and specifics it what separates your success far more than your dogs natural drives. I can often get way more from a low drive dog than many folks can get from their high drive dogs because I know how to shape the games into an interactive exchange and know how to effectively communicate with dogs.

So the details are: are you clear and consistent so that every single time you play with your dog you are pairing a tone and word that means fun? If you are those words and tones become conditioned to your dog and can be as powerful as picking up their food bowl or leash is. Does your energy and mood match what you are asking for? Are you genuinely having fun and connecting with your dog during your engagement work or is it an exercise you have to tick off your to do list? Dogs feel energy and if this is just a means to an end for you and not an actual desire for deeper connection your dog will see right through you and feel your control rather than feeling your fun. I can almost any dog to play with me, because I want to play with them and it's one of my favorite things to do. Timing: when I first begin I need to set the dog up for success and play when they want to, then as we get more and more connected I begin to ask for it when I want it, if we push too hard too fast we can turn dogs off.

People often struggle with this step. You have one cue that means - I want to play with you and have something you want. For me that is "ready". Then you have another cue that is paired with giving the reward, for me that is "Yay". This is NOT praise, it is a specific cue. You can add praise in after you cue it and as you reward but you first want to lay down that association. So the Prompting "ready" cue then can be later used to grab a dog's attention, so I am walking along and see a cow on the trail, I say to Nick get "ready" he looks happily at me ready to play, then I can either immediately reward or once my behavior is solid enough I can ask for more things and keep his focus and reward after some duration. Then my Bridging "yay" cue that is associated with a reward can be used to mark at a distance to begin the reward process before the dog reaches me, which can hold my dog's focus as it executes a command. So for example I see a deer, I call "Nick come" he looks at me and I mark the look with my "yay" as he is running to me which tells him the party is coming.

LECTURE ON DRIVE, INTENSITY AND ENERGY

TROUBLE SHOOTING COMMON ISSUES

First you can see how I approach it if the dog gets too excited and chompy at my hands if I play with their food too close to them. You can see how I keep the food active but don’t have my hands so accessible and use more treat tossing, as I work in some more eye contact to help an excitable dog to focus more.

I show the examples of using a little rope on toys to be more enticing to a dog who wants to keep the toy and chew by themselves. Then for many of you with similar issues where the dogs want to keep the toys and are slow to let go I show some games you can play mixing the two toy game with food tossing to get the play more interactive. This is also a good one for puppies as it helps keep the play a bit more focused and the food can help keep the dogs from becoming over aroused by the toys. The last game I’m playing with Nick where I toss the ball and he drops it and I toss a treat for him to catch is a good one for dogs who don’t want to let go of the toy and don’t want to trade for a different toy. Notice how long I keep tossing treats once he is taking the food, I don’t trade him for the toy, I get him hooked on the new catch a treat game. Dogs are very wise to being tricked so if you just give a treat and steal the toy they will likely not fall for it again if they like toys more than food. It’s the fun of catching the food that gets you into the play brain. Also notice the first tosses I'm putting the food right at his toy so he doesn’t have to worry about me taking it. If he didn’t let go after the first treat I would toss another. Once they see it’s not a trick they will eventually mop up the treats.

 GET ENGAGED MODULE 3

WORKING IN NEW PLACES

It’s important you set your dog up for success and start your work in places where you dog can succeed, like your yard or living room. Working in new places doesn’t just happen after you get engagement in one place. When you are training a dog and want to build your engagement it's important that you systematically introduce your dog to the concept of working in new places. Because of the way dogs struggle more than humans to generalize a behavior to a new environment you have to have a plan of how to help them be successful. Watch this video to get some pointers and ideas about taking your engagement game on the road to new places!

USING A TUG AND TREAT TOY

Many of you have seen me using that food holding toy on my IG stories. Here is a video showing how I introduce the toy and build my steps to working on fetch with it. It’s such a GREAT toy for helping dogs that have either low toy interest or dogs that don’t want to share their toy with you. They need your help to get the food so it creates partnership add the emotion and you create connection.

MORE ON TOY POSSESSION

Here you can watch me work through severe ball obsession and possession with a ball. if you take a high drive dog and consistently take things away from them when they don't want you to, you can end up with a dog that won't play with you with the toy. Prior to this lesson this dog's owners and a group of people spent a couple hours trying to get her to come home once she got a hold of a ball. They could not catch her no matter what they tried as she was so wise to all the ways someone would trick her out of her ball. She even tried leaving and the dog was like "k- bye".

It only took me a couple sessions showing her I share nicely for her to love to play WITH me. You both create possession, so first you have to address your behavior around toys if your dog is possessive. Slow yourself down and work on connecting with the dog and know once you get that the retrieve part is easy.

SNEAKING TRAINING INTO YOUR ENGAGEMENT GAMES

So all of our engagement building gets to start help us build a connection so we can teach them obedience exercises in a way that still keeps them engaged and happy to listen to us! Keep your sessions SHORT and FUN! More play than training. Stay under 5 minutes! Don't risk losing their focus.

BRINGING IN FOCUS FOR EASILY OVER AROUSED PLAYERS

This exercise is for our players, that maybe get too excited, bitey, jumpy or over excited by play that need a little help staying in a working engaging frame of mind even when excited. Don't play this yet with toys if your dog is still building a desire to play at all, for those pups you want to keep building drive before you put in any rules.

So homework for my good toy players: build excitement with your engagement cues, while maintaining a sit before the release!

 GET ENGAGED MODULE 4

So as we approach the end of the 4 week class I'm including a video to inspire you to see how you can keep taking these principals to keep your training fun and get some really fun advanced training. You just keep building with the earlier exercises and keep gradually increasing the difficulty level of your exercises.

BUILDING YOUR PLAY INTO FETCH

LOOKING AT TIPS TO KEEP TUG ENGAGING AND NOT POSSESSIVE

THREE KEY ENGAGEMENT POSITIONS

These are three games to work on getting your dog to connect and hold focus in these commonly used obedience positions.