Kim will be presenting at the Control Unleashed Conference in North Carolina on combining CU and Ace Free Work, Creative Reinforcement Strategies, and Look at That.
Combining Control Unleashed with the Magic of ACE Free Work
There really isn’t anything much better than Control Unleashed—until we combine the magic of CU with the power of ACE (Animal Centred Education) Free Work! ACE Free Work was founded by the late and brilliant Sarah Fisher to provide dogs with an activity that encourages curiosity and natural investigation while promoting a healthy body and mind. By providing Free Work to our CU dogs, we’re giving them an amazing enrichment activity that, over time, will allow them to practice regulating their own emotions. We’re also discovering their preferences—both emotionally and physically—which we can then incorporate into our CU skills and patterns. From this presentation, you’ll gain the skills that will allow you to uncover which foods and eating methods may calm your dog, the best height to feed them from, how to help them facilitate comfortable body holding patterns, and more. Undoubtedly, if you incorporate Free Work into your dog’s life and CU skills, you will be surprised in more ways than one by your dog’s preferences and capabilities!
Creative Reinforcement Strategies to Apply to Your Patterns
ACE (Animal Centered Education) Freework was created by the amazing and magical Sarah Fisher, whom we all miss terribly. Sarah and Leslie were talking about working on a collaboration, since their methods go incredibly well together. We are so fortunate that Kim chose to become both a CCUI AND a certified Freework practitioner before Sarah passed away, so that she can represent both Leslie and Sarah and voice what their collaboration might have been. There are a number of different ways that you can reinforce your dog with food rewards that will help to lower arousal. This lab will allow you to experiment with these strategies to determine the best fits for your dog, while practicing (or learning) some of the most useful CU patterns. Kim will use concepts from ACE Free Work to create a reward system for your dog that is emotionally and physically comforting for both you and your dog!
Look at That
Look at That is one of the most famous training games out there for a reason. Learn from the originator of LAT herself how this wizardry works to empower dogs to have a conversation with YOU about the environment instead of being reactive to it. Kim will coach you and your dog through the process of teaching the wonderful skill called “Look at That” or LAT. She will take a two-pronged approach, beginning with teaching your dog the skill of “looking at something” in order to earn reinforcement. Once that skill is in place, you’ll use a training sequence with a helper that will demonstrate to your dog that they can use this new skill with stimuli in the environment. The goal will be that you’ll have a thorough understanding of the steps to teaching LAT to bring home and generalize to real world applications.