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Trial Preparation Seminars with Laura Waudby
Trial Preparation Seminars with Laura Waudby
8:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Rewards at a Distance
Are you struggling to keep your dog’s focus without feeling like a Pez dispenser? Your dog looks brilliant in practice… as long as they know you have food on you! But the moment you set the rewards down, your dog struggles: Sniffing. Zoomies. Visiting others!
Making that bridge to competing without the food feels impossible and even overwhelming with where to start. You’ve likely tried before! And maybe even felt like YOU might be more attached to the security blanket of holding food than your dog!
The goal of this seminar is to introduce a zen bowl to your training sessions. A small dish holding the dog’s reward; without a lid to stop them from having a free-for-all! We will discuss how to train this seemingly impossible skill to teach your dog how to willingly leave the reward in order to get it later! And how to progress this into the skills you need to be trial ready!
Dogs working in this seminar should have the ability to work (on leash) in a group as multiple teams may be working at once. This seminar is geared towards dog sport skills and future trial preparation in any sport.
Working spots: $85 members/$100 non-members. Ten working spots available.
Audit spots: $25 members/$40 members. Unlimited audit spots.
1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.: Ring Confidence for Obedience & Rally
Most handlers spend years teaching their dogs the specific exercises found in the obedience and rally ring. We break down teaching heeling, and then we spend several more months making sure our dogs can perform their heeling with a wide variety of distractions. We teach retrieves, exams, recalls, and stays.
Yet we often fail to teach our dog what to actually expect at a trial. They are thrown into this new, chaotic environment with a stressed handler. Most dogs immediately disconnect from their handler as they enter through those ring gates at a show. They go from perfect focus outside, to barely acknowledging their human once inside the ring.
And many of them do not get better with repeated exposure. For most dogs, the opposite happens, and the dog quickly get worse in each new trial! Because you are limited in what support you can give them in a trial, the dog is left experiencing that stress and realizing that the rules for trials are different than practice.
This seminar looks at teaching the dog, and human!, exactly what to expect and what to DO at each little point in a trial. From the moment you arrive to the moment you exit the ring and reward them. Teach the little pieces such as how to handle waiting outside the ring, a judge asking if you’re ready, how to move with connection between each exercise, how to handle delays, and more! Build your dog’s confidence at each step of the game and learn ways to support them in a trial environment.
Working teams for this seminar should have at least 10ft of focused heeling/attention walking without a visible reward. Dogs should also have the ability to work (on leash) in a group as multiple teams may be working at once for some exercises. Dogs do not need to be trialing or even close to being ready to enter a trial! Working on these exercises well before your dog starts trialing is ideal, but it’s not too late to start fixing trial issues either!
Working spots: $85 members/$100 non-members. Eight working spots available.
Audit spots: $25 members/$40 members. Unlimited audit spots.
About Laura Waudby: TCOTC instructor Laura Waudby trains and competes in obedience, rally, and agility. Due to the special behavior needs of her Toller, Vito, Laura developed a strong interest in learning how to create motivation and confidence in dogs that struggle to make it into the competition ring. She was halfway to her OTCH with her UDX corgi, Lance, before his unexpected early retirement. She also has several championship titles in USDAA and UKI agility. Laura was previously a service dog trainer for 10 years in a variety of roles from directly training the dogs for their specific jobs, to helping the puppy raisers and clients with how to train their dogs. Now Laura teaches for Fenzi Dog Sports Academy with online classes focusing on trial preparation and advanced obedience skills. Her goal as a trainer is to help both dogs and humans find the joy in training!
