Today, Stacy, Robin, and Crystal sit down to reflect on their five-day experience teaching at Distraction Camp 2022.

Describing the camp as an opportunity to learn how to train your dog, they break down the various lessons taught over the course of five days. These include the strategy of sculpting your dog’s behavior via odor and hide placement, and introducing new aspects of play to enhance how your dog works through distractions.

Our hosts emphasize the importance of trusting your training beyond trusting only your dog. They encourage handlers to get comfortable with simply giving their dog a job, because when they have a job, the dog makes better choices. Without expectations, a dog can only guess.

Further, they explain that the idea of using play to curb distractions is so powerful because it takes away from a task becoming another “job” for the dog and turns the entire experience into something they love. Creating reinforcing experiences is, ultimately, the best way to eliminate distractions.

Key Topics:

• Using odor placement to sculpt your dog (06:34)
• Keys to engagement (08:12)
• What was used to distract the dogs (15:05)
• The transformation from Day 1 to Day 5 (19:54)
• Using doodle notes to retain more information (23:19)
• How to train your dog (without tests) (28:59)
• Gaining different perspectives (34:33)
• Creating reinforcing experiences (37:25)
• The outs are expensive (43:08)
• Why you shouldn’t just “trust your dog” (45:19)
• Final takeaways (49:36)

Resources:

• K9 Detection Collaborative Episode 11: The D’s of Detection Work
• Nina Russell (Instructor for Inspire 2022)
• Doodle Notes
• SciK9
• Sexier than a Squirrel Challenge

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