*Please note: This is an old course from 2018. You can find an updated and more comprehensive version here: Recall Expert
We highly recommend you study the new version!*

Welcome to the Outdoor Games and Focus class!

We will give our best to turn your dog into an attentive, focused and engaged team mate – no matter where you are. The next weeks will give you many different games, exercises and activities that will help to show your dog that there is only one thing worthy of their full attention: and that is you!

Before we start, here are some pointers to help you get set up for success:

Find rewards your dog likes.

I cannot stress this enough. Unless you are 100% sure that you have found his very favorite reward in the world already, go and experiment some more.
You don’t have to invest a lot of money into expensive dog treats – go and try some hotdogs, bologna, ham, bacon, cheese etc. from the supermarket. Maybe try to bake some treats with recipes from the internet. Make the treats very very small (about the size of, or smaller than, your pinkie finger nail!).
We will later in this class also talk about finding a toy that your dog really likes.

Here are two videos with some more food reward ideas:

These treats can be made and stored in the fridge for 2-4 days, or frozen and kept in the freezer to take out and thaw for training sessions.

VERY IMPORTANT: If you are training and your dog refuses to take the treats you offer him, stop what you are doing immediately and move to an easier location. Training with a dog who refuses rewards is not actually “training” – it is the dog working for free and being disappointed by what we give him for his work. This is never going to be useful.

Don’t let him enjoy “bad” rewards.

If your dog doesn’t pay attention to you out and about, he probably has some good reinforcement history for that by now: he has learned to ignore you and as a result get to enjoy the environment with all that it has to offer.
We need to change our perception a bit: Don’t think of him being distracted. Don’t think of what he is engaging with (other dogs, other people, smells…) as “distractions”. Instead, think of them as “rewards of the environment”. These rewards of the environment compete with the rewards we can offer (our treats, toys, games, interaction…)
Our rewards need to be better than the environment’s – only then he will decide for us.

It is very important that you do not let your dog be rewarded for being distracted. If for example you are training with him and someone with a dog comes by, your dog disengages and goes to “say hi” – you just taught him that by disengaging with you he gets to enjoy meeting a new dog friend. That is not good!

Don’t let your dog enjoy reinforcers that happen after he made a bad choice. In a situation like this, move away from the distraction and get your dog’s focus and attention back. We will be out and about a lot during this class with many possible scenarios for distractions. Make sure that you always keep in mind: your dog needs to be prevented from leaving you and enjoying the reward of the environment, or you will have no chance to teach him that you are in fact the most important thing.

He is always learning, not just when we decide it’s training time!