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Cooperative Paws

Service Dog Training & Education for Owners and Professionals

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Building Blocks: Service Dog Foundations

This Course is Coming April 21!

All service dog tasks and skills start here. These foundation behaviors—nose touches, platform work, and chin rests—are the building blocks for tasks such as alert behaviors, retrieves, balance and brace, blocking, DPT, turning on lights, opening doors, and public access skills like loose-leash walking and more. Learn how to train these foundation behaviors using effective clicker training mechanics so they can be combined and used to teach complex service dog tasks and skills. 

“I really enjoyed the course. There is a lot of information that allows trainers to understand the basics all dogs should know prior to starting service dog training.”

Emilea Byrum BS, RVT, KPA CTP, CCFC, FFCP (Elite), SDC

Who This Course is For

This course is perfect for professional trainers, individuals training their own dogs for service work, and volunteers in service dog programs who are new to clicker training. It’s ideal for anyone looking to refine their mechanics and skills needed to train complex behavior sequences and behavior chains.

“This was a great course and a good refresher for me. The videos showing how to train each behavior and the finished skills were very helpful. The short modules with slides and videos kept me engaged throughout.”

Natalie Widomski VSA-CPT, LFDM, SDC

What You Will Learn

Learn how to implement the mechanics of clicker training to train nose targeting, platform skills and chin rests. Understand how these behaviors can be applied to train service dog tasks and skills. You’ll also explore how to combine foundation skills to train complex behaviors.

Course Outline
  • Foundation Skills & Clicker Mechanics
    • Introduction to foundation skills
    • Dog training concepts
    • Clicker training mechanics
  • Nose Targeting
    • Training a nose touch to hand
    • Training a nose touch to a target
    • Functional applications
  • Platform Work
    • Training dogs long platform skills
    • Use platforms to address leash walking challenges
    • Training pivoting with a round platform
    • Training back up to a platform
  • Chin Rest
    • Training chin rest with duration
    • Applyng chin rests to addressing challenges with retrieves
  • Combining Behaviors
    • Combining foundation skills to train complex behaviors

“The course demonstrated how mastering these foundational skills to fluency can streamline the process of building larger, functional behaviors. The course focus on foundational mechanics makes the content both practical and impactful for trainers at all levels.”

Victoria Cherpes KPA-CTP, SDC

How You Will Learn

This is an online course set up on a user-friendly platform and includes a combination of video presentations, demonstrations, informative links in addition to written information. This course takes about 2 hours to complete. However, students have access to the course for 3 months (90 days) so they can review material at their leisure. 

The Details – Coming April 21!