Life Skills Advanced - 6 Week Course

Life Skills Advanced is for dogs and owners who have already built a strong training foundation and are ready to work at a genuinely advanced level.

To join this course, you will need to have either:

• Successfully completed our Life Skills Intermediate course

• Had an assessment with one of the practice's behaviourists to make sure you and your dog are ready for this level of training

This is not a course you step straight into. It is designed for dogs who already have a broad range of learnt behaviours, can work confidently with their owner and have developed the skills needed to cope with more complex training challenges.

Some of the course is taught in the class environment and some takes place out in the real world, where we can work on transferring your dog's learning into more challenging and varied situations.

The focus throughout is on developing a happy, confident dog who can respond to well-established cues across a wide range of environments.

Across the course we look at:

• Advanced proofing of established behaviours

• Working in more complex real-life environments

• Maintaining focus around higher levels of distraction

• Developing greater fluency and precision

• Different reinforcement strategies

• Rates of reinforcement and how and when to change them

• Understanding how reinforcement affects learning and performance

• Developing your understanding of different training and learning techniques

• Dog body language

• Understanding your dog's emotional state

• Understanding arousal and how it affects learning and behaviour

• Developing your ability to read and respond to the dog in front of you

• Troubleshooting more advanced training difficulties

A significant part of this course is about developing your skill as a trainer. We look more closely at why particular techniques work, when you may need to adapt your approach and how to make thoughtful training decisions as you continue working with your dog.

We also introduce a range of different activities and exercises, including some trick training and other fun challenges, giving you new ways to stretch both your own skills and your dog's.

This is a comprehensive course for the real dog geeks - people who have already invested a lot of time in training, enjoy learning about behaviour and training, and want to keep progressing with their dog.

The aim is advanced skill, but always with the dog's confidence, enjoyment and emotional wellbeing at the centre of the work.

Life Skills Advanced is currently building a waiting list. If you are interested in joining a future course, please contact us so we can discuss whether it is the right next step for you and your dog.

Support Between Sessions

Every course has its own WhatsApp group, which you can opt in to join. This gives you access to your trainer and assistant between sessions for additional support.

You can use the group to ask questions, share any difficulties you are having with homework and let us know how you are getting on. We also use it to share useful video content and additional guidance to support your training at home.