The Advanced Clicker Training Workshop 
A Workshop with Kathy Sdao, MA, CAAB (associate)

• San Francisco Bay Area - pending for fall 2008
• September 13 & 14, 2008 in Wyndmoor, PA

The Advanced Clicker Training Workshop is designed for the experienced clicker trainer that understands and can apply this dog training technique. Created as a follow-up to Kathy’s highly successful “Know Way, Know How” workshop, the “Advanced Clicker Training Workshop” will further your knowledge and training skills, offer insights and guide you to the next level of skill. Participate with your clicker-savvy dog or come to watch and help these dogs solve problems and learn new skills. Lab Assistant/Auditors at all levels of skill are welcome.

Expect lots of dog training, and demonstrations as well as Kathy's well presented topics using lots of visual aids.

Kathy will discuss:

• The Core of Clicker Training – learn to maximize the power of this training philosophy by clarifying the fundamental principles. What is essential and what is optional?

• Shaping with Purpose – review how to create a shaping plan that is proactive and flexible while maintaining your training goal. Which path will you choose and why? How can you adjust your plan when things don’t proceed as you’d expected?

• Technical Breakdowns – our dogs often don’t understand what we want them to do, so they get stuck. Maybe there is a flaw in the method, an unintentional learning block or miscommunication inherent in the set-up. Learn about “win-stay, lose-shift” and other strategies your dog will try so you can better evaluate your teaching.

• Adding the Cue – how to get your shaped behaviors on-cue in a direct way your dogs will understand.

• Reliability – learn why many trainers fail to get a reliable and eager response

• Advanced Concepts Dog Training – Take the challenge! Have fun while applying the information presented in the lecture sessions. Train your dog to solve an advanced behavioral puzzle: how to select the specific item you request by name (i.e., object discrimination). This is one example of training a general concept rather than a specific behavior. While attempting to train your dog to understand that objects can have names, you will need to apply all your best planning skills, your creativity, and your knowledge of clicker-training. This process will occur during seven sequential training sessions over the course of the two days.
  
  Kathy will also discuss increasing your dog’s vocabulary, broadening her behavioral repertoire, and the concept of matching-to-sample.

Tentative Schedule:

Day 1

Welcome & Overview
Core Competencies & Speed Bumps: Part 1
Dog Exercise Object Disc. 1
Core Competencies & Speed Bumps  : Part 2
Dog Exercise: Object Disc. 2
Core Competencies & Speed Bumps  : Part 3
Q & A about training exercises
Dog Exercise: Object Disc. 3
Shaping plans: Depth & breadth & slivers
Dog Exercise: Object Disc.

Day 2

Q & A/homework review
Ways to get behavior; Implications; Seeing
Dog Exercise: Object Disc. 5
Cues Control, with demo
Dog Exercise Object Disc. 6: Cue discrimination
Behavior Chains
Object Disc. 7 – Matching to Sample
Videos & demos
Reliability: what about when he doesn’t do it?
Wrap-up

 

WAYS TO PARTICIPATE:

Dog Training for Working Participants (limited - 36) 

Put your training skills to the test with a full weekend of training for you and your clicker-savvy dog! Working Participants must sign-up for both days.

You and your dog will be paired with another handler/dog team during training exercises on cueing and discrimination. You and your training partner will take turns working your dogs and being a lab assistant. The working sessions will be short so you and your partner will have multiple turns and time to quickly reevaluate your strategy after each trial. When you are not working with your dog she/he will be crated or in an ex-pen so you are free to help your partner. As the lab assistant, you will help set-up the training environment, record data and provide feedback after each session. You may also have an auditing participant on your team to help with logistics. There will be multiple training sessions each day.  

You may request a working and/or lab assistant partner or we will randomly assign you. All team requests must be requested NO LATER than 14 days before the workshop.

Requirement for working participants - Dogs that participate MUST be able to readily target multiple items placed on the floor several feet from the trainer, without luring or prompting from the trainer and must have some experience being shaped without the use of lures or prompts (i.e., free-shaped). A participating dog should be able to play “101 Things To Do With A Box” or another similar shaping game that requires the dog to offer behaviors when confronted with a novel item. The dog must also have at least 6 behaviors reliably on cue; in other words, the dog must be cue-savvy. 

Dogs of all ages are welcome if they can target objects, offer behaviors and respond reliably to several behavioral cues. 

Dogs must be able to stay quietly in a crate or ex-pen and must be tolerant of people and dogs.

Dogs must be able to stay quietly in a crate or ex-pen during lectures as well as when it is not her/his turn to work. Working dogs must be tolerant of people and dogs in close proximity.

If you have questions about your dogs qualifications, please contact Dana Crevling via e-mail or at 508/529-3568 M - F 8:00am - 7:00pm EST.

Lab Assistant/Auditors (unlimited spaces)

This participation option is perfect for people with dogs that do not meet the requirements, prefer to observe, or want to be a lab assistant for a working team. Come and watch the savvy dogs problem solve and see how the handlers design and reevaluate their training plan based on their dog’s responses.  

Lab assistants/auditors will be assigned a working team to participate/assist on the exercises. You may request a specific team or we will randomly assign you. All team requests must be requested NO LATER than 14 days before the workshop.

13 CEUs for CPDT's expected
12 CEU's for IAABC expected

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Early bird registration is available according to location. Registration ends 5 days prior to the event.

Click on the location links at the top of this page or below to get specific information, including tuition, for the location of your choice.

You may pay for tuition by:

• Personal or Bank Check

• Paypal - using your account or opening a new account

• Visa, MasterCard or Discover - by contacting the office and providing
  your credit card information

Complete payment information will come up on the screen after you complete registration. General Payment Information

If the seminar does not meet the minimum (35 participants) and must be cancelled, currently registered participants will be refunded the full amount without penalty. Please familiarize yourself with the Registration/ Refund Policy and the Waiver before signing up.

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As a graduate student at the University of Hawaii in the 1980's, Kathy was part of a team that trained dolphins to solve complex cognitive puzzles. These dolphin "mind games" were part of intensive research into how animals think and process language. After receiving a master's degree in experimental psychology, she was hired by the U.S. Navy to train dolphins for applied open-ocean tasks.

Kathy Sdao has earned a living as a full-time animal trainer for the past 21 years, first with marine mammals and now with dogs and their people. Kathy was a marine mammal trainer at the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma, Washington. There she expanded her training skills by working with beluga whales, walruses, sea lions, polar bears and otters. Years later, Kathy and another zookeeper left their jobs to create Tacoma's first dog daycare facility, Puget Hound Daycare. This is where Kathy began teaching group classes for pet owners. 

Since leaving Puget Hound in January 1999, Kathy has been lecturing nationally on operant conditioning, sharing her passion for the science of training, and the awesome power of clicker training she has experienced with so many species. She is a dynamic instructor with infectious enthusiasm that will keep you on the edge of your seat! In 2004, her speaking engagements include presenting “Know Way, Know How,” a three-day workshop hosted by Dogs of Course, Karen Pryor’s “ClickerExpos” and the Association of Pet Dog Trainers annual conference.

At home in Tacoma, WA, Bright Spot Dog Training’s services include: teaching private lessons to dogs and their owners, consulting with families about their “difficult” dogs, coaching novices and professionals to cross-over to clicker training and chaperoning doggie field trips to local parks. She also has trained animal actors, written for The Clicker Journal and the APDT Newsletter, served as a subject matter expert for the Delta Society's Service Dog Education System, conducted rat-training camp for Terry Ryan's DogSense, instructed at Dogs of Course’s Instructor Training Course and appeared as the "Way Cool Scientist" on an episode of Bill Nye the Science Guy! 

As a Certified Applied Animal Behaviorist, Kathy is available for private lessons and classes, day and evening workshops, coaching for instructors who want to bring clicker training to their students, and consultations for behavior issues through her business, Bright Spot Dog Training.

Kathy lives with her two rescue dogs; Effie, a sweet and intense foxhound and Nick, an Aussie-cross that came to her with serious aggression issues.

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Please see requirements for dogs attending the workshop above.

If the seminar does not meet the minimum (35 participants) and must be cancelled, currently registered participants will be refunded the full amount without penalty. 

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