Gold Star Go Outs

Class Description

4 Week Course

If ever there was one obedience exercise with a million different ways to train it, this would be the one!  Take a look around at a match and see all the different ways handlers are trying to influence their dogs to run away from them at full speed (toward a wall or gate, no less!), but then still stop on a dime when cued to sit.  When they are precise, they are beautiful, when they are messy; it causes stress to the handler and dog.  Here is a proven method that will give you beautiful go outs that are OTCH pretty.  Fast runs, quick stops and the skills to keep them sharp for the performance career of your dog.

Week 1: Let’s get out there!

What do you want?  What do you have?  You may have started with a method of go out training that involved targeting, this week, let’s look at that.  If not, let’s get going with that.  Good trainers know the value of targeting, but targeting will only help you if you have an excellent target behavior, and maintain criteria.  Got it?  Time to name it!

Week 2: Stops are king

Run, run, run away from me on go outs, until I say sit.  Good targets will get you straight and speed, but the stop is the king.  Without a good sit behavior, your target behavior may actually get in the way of the go out!  Teaching the sit in a way that makes sense, and teaching the dog to discriminate the target and sit cues happens this week.

Week 3: Run far!

We need length, right?  Or do we?  How far does the dog have to go for a go out?  How far should we be pushing the dog when training?  What training distance makes the most sense to get the most work done?  Should we have jumps out during this training, or not?  How to present the stimulus picture to the dog and not add confusion about when the jumps are valuable in this sequence.  How to add jumps to the go out sequence.

Week 4: What if?

What if……………………happened while you were doing a go out?  This is the week we can start to introduce some fluency training to the go out.  There are common show scenarios that can be hard for a dog, let’s take a look at the best way to confidence build your dogs go outs.  What if the sequence falls apart?  How to handle mistakes in the sequence, when to take the sequence apart and re-train, and when to train in the sequence.  This can be huge for a trainer and dog to understand!