This webinar is running LIVE with a q and a August 16 at 2 pm ET. It will be recorded for those who can't join us live. 

Feeling confused and frustrated is a very aversive experience for all of us, dogs included.

Because frustration is a function of extinction, if we are seeing (or experiencing!) signs of frustration in a training session, it’s a sure sign that somebody isn’t getting their reinforcers - and it most cases, both of you aren’t!

It’s not uncommon to run into frustration when you are first trying to teach a behavior when you aren’t really sure how to get it started in the first place. But it’s even more common to get a start on a behavior, and then have the wheels come off when you start trying to increase the difficulty by building duration or adding distance or distractions.

As things get harder, the errors start piling up and your rate of reinforcement falls off a cliff. You aren’t getting the results that you want and your dog is confused - and maybe both of you start to hate training a little bit. The perfect recipe for extinction.

The root cause of a lot of this frustration is often in how we approach training in the first place. Your overall method might actually be solid, and making some small adjustments to how you set up your training sessions and when and how you increase your criteria as you go can go a long way toward making everything work a lot more smoothly.

In this webinar, we will look at how to apply concepts from loopy training and approach shaping with an “upside-down funnel” to give you better results with less frustration. We will look at examples from teaching behaviors from scratch, through building duration or adding difficulty with existing behaviors, and even fixing behaviors that maybe have gotten a little messed up already. (Nobody’s perfect!) Let’s find some strategies to make sure you both get your cookies!

Then, of course, we'll end with a discussion and time for questions and answers.  No matter your sport, no matter your experience you'll find something to USE in this webinar. 

Hannah Branigan

Hannah  Branigan is passionate about positive training and good training. In addition to being a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner (KPA CTP), she is a faculty member for KPA, a professional member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT), and a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT). As the owner of Wonderpups, LLC, Hannah is committed to helping people help their dogs. Hannah runs a very successful obedience program Zero To CD and hosts one of the most popular training podcasts: Drinking From The Toilet.

Hannah has titled her dogs in conformation, obedience, Schutzhund, agility, and rally. Her dogs have multiple class wins, both AKC and UKC High in Trial awards, and scores that qualify for several Front & Finish Awards of Excellence (FFX). She and her dogs love learning and enjoy playing together.