Street Manners

March 10 – April 21, 2021
Wednesdays at 11:30 a.m.

Instructor: Alisha Fritz
Assistant: Julie Fields

Street Manners is an intermediate-level course with a focus on developing the skills dogs need to take on the world—especially during outdoor walks! There will be a heavy emphasis on overcoming leash pulling and dealing with distractions. Dogs attend all class sessions. We will cover the following:

  • The proper use of a head harness such as a Halti or Gentle Leader (a basic model will be provided)
  • Getting and maintaining your dog’s attention in increasingly distracting environments
  • Effective leash handling
  • Teaching your dog to walk without pulling using a variety of exercises
  • Using what the dog wants in the environment to reward good behavior
  • Walking past and leaving distracting items on the ground
  • Generalizing basic manners for real-world environments
  • Focusing on distance, duration, and difficulty of distractions
  • Teaching your dog that distractions don’t pay, even the dreaded squirrel!

Prerequisites: Canine Manners, Surviving Adolescence, or an equivalent basic manners class. Dogs should have been introduced to the following before attending this class: attention, sit, down, stay, and leave it. Guardians should understand the basics of clicker training.

This class does not address reactivity (dogs who frantically bark and lunge at other dogs, people or objects such as bicycles and trucks).  Reactive dogs are welcome to attend this class with permission from the instructor after the dogs have received training, such as in our Managing a Reactive Dog class. Which is specifically designed to better manage reactivity. Guardians with unprepared reactive dogs may not be able to complete Street Manners.

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