ACADEMY REPORT COMING, BUT FIRST – WOW, WHAT A WEEK!!!
Academy weeks are always interesting. On top of the fun of meeting and working with terrific trainers and would-be trainers, we’ve had cicada academies, stink bug academies, a solar eclipse academy and lots more fun stuff – but this past week wins the prize for variety.
Monday – as I duck over to the post office to pick up a package (2 miles away!) I manage to get in a wreck at Spielman Rd. and Sharpsburg Pike. Yikes! No injuries, thank goodness, and the couple in the other car were very nice.
Tuesday - right after our students have left for the evening we get a phone call from one of them (Brenda). She has just corralled a stray dog dragging a leash in the middle of the busy Sharpsburg Pike (she saw him almost get hit 3 times!). What should she do. Of course she should bring him back to PPaws. Our local Facebook Lost Pet page already had him listed with several previous sightings (and near misses) and information on his caretaker, so Max was quickly reunited.
Wednesday – My husband is out feeding horses while I’m preparing for the day's Academy, and my phone rings. Paul says, “There’s an owl on the ground in one of the pastures!” I hustle out and together we corner and grab a Great Horned Owl who is unable to fly. By the time DNR (Department of Natural Resources) gets here (in a record 20 minutes!) it’s clear that the owl is sick – sadly probably not going to make it.
Saturday – and then, after a couple of days of normal academy craziness, as students are leaving late Saturday afternoon, six stray cows turn up in our driveway. Paul coaxes them into one of our pastures with a bucket of grain (yes, luring works with cows too!), and despite calling everyone we know in the small community of Fairplay, no one seems to know where the cows belong. Finally, 24 hours later the owner shows up looking for them, and this morning he lured them back home with a bucket of grain while Paul provided some negative reinforcement encouragement from behind.
AND NOW - THE ACADEMY: 8 GREAT DOGS, 8 GREAT HUMANS
Call me old-fashioned… I still much prefer working hands-on with dogs and humans rather than doing remote work (with all due respect to the great webinars Puppyworks offers and the conferences and other learning opportunities that our other professional dog trainer organizations make available to much larger audiences via remote access!) So, while I could probably make a lot more money doing on-line academies, mine are still in-person courses – small class size, six days of very intensive learning, lots of individual attention.
Saturday wrapped up our last Level 1 Academy for the year (we still have Cognition and Behavior Modification to finish up in the next few weeks). This week we saw several students from local areas (Maryland, Virginia) as well as two from New York, one from Connecticut, and one from North Carolina. The week is tough, I admit, and I always admire our students for hanging in there with great attitudes even when things seem overwhelming.
First day we do introductions, a dive into operant and classical conditioning, and then students get to choose their dogs and take them for their first hike on our 80-acre farm.
We usually get all our dogs from shelters or rescue groups that we work with – this week we made an exception and had one four-month-old Lab puppy from a client whose senior parents were in a bit over their heads with puppy energy. The rest were: 4 from Frederick County Animal Control (3 Pit mixes and a wonderful Chihuahua mix) and 3 from Lab Rescue (Labs and Lab mixes).
Here are all the dogs walking their human students on Day One:
CLASS CURRICULUM
The Academy days are packed as we try to cram tons of behavior science into student brains (understanding the principles of operant and classical conditioning, and lots more!) while we also work to teach the academy dogs our entire list of behaviors from our 7-week Good Manners class. It never ceases to amaze me how many of our academy dogs are doing at least as well at the end of 6 days as some of our regular clients are doing at the end of 7 weeks working with their dogs. Of course, most of our regular clients don’t do three, hour-long practice sessions per day, so there is that…
Our Good Manners behaviors include:
· Name Response
· Sit
· Down
· Puppy Push-Ups
· Polite Greeting
· Leash Walking
· Come
· Touch
· Wait
· Trade
· Leave It
· Stand
And for Academy we add Walk Away and a little Shaping. Phew!
Level 1 Students get three open-book take-home study guides (we used to call them quizzes <G>) to narrow their focus of study in order to help them prepare for their written final exam (*not* open book) on Saturday. They also do a practical final on Saturday, where they demonstrate what they have taught their dogs during the week. So yes, we are all pretty exhausted by the end of the week…
But it’s always great to see what our dog and human students are able to accomplish in just six days, and I am already looking forward to next week’s Cognition Academy!!! It’s also gratifying to see the accomplishments of the trainers who have taken my academies over the past two-plus decades and then gone out all over the world and shared the benefits of our force-free training methods and philosophy. Thank you, students!!
Next up - Cognition Academy starts Monday... my favorite! Pointing Test; Object, Color and Shape Discrimination; Match to Sample; Imitation; Team Cognition Projects and lots more. You don't want to miss it!!! And hey - if you want to sign up for an academy, you can go to our website here: https://peaceablepaws.com/programs-services/
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Warm Woofs,
Pat