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.