So what kind of job can your dog do?
Every dog has different needs. They were historically bred for various specific tasks, and later interbred with basically unpredictable results, and on top of that they have their individual life experiences and feelings. Our mission is to help you find out what types of work will best suit your dog’s genetic and personal traits, to satisfy their inherent needs, and get you both working together as a team.
The first job for a dog is simple training. Each new skill, cue, or trick your pet learns is “work” for them, both in the learning and in the practice. The more we train, the more it exercises their brains, and this is actually quite tiring for dogs. It also puts them in a mindset of working with you, they come to expect that you will reward them for engaging with you and performing tasks. When the dog thinks of you as a working partner, they are ready to take on bigger jobs.
To get there we love the Pattern Games developed by Leslie McDevitt. They use movement and repetition in a way that helps a dog know what to expect, and how to focus in different situations. Pattern games are most commonly used to help reduce reactivity, but they also do a great job of building teamwork and the dog’s attention to you.
Sports are a very popular job for dogs; however, participating in organized dog sports can often mean long drives out of town, long wait lists to get into classes, difficulty finding the right teacher, and committing to various organizations and their timetables. Good Work Dog offers the opportunity to try these sports in a more accessible format, including in your own home. We want everyone, especially beginners and people who “have no free time”, to benefit from this sort of activity. If you want to get into a dedicated or competitive program for a specific dog sport, we will refer you to specialized instructors at other facilities. We can also reinforce your dog sports skills in between trips out to those larger barns and sporting rings.
Two of our favorite job-like sports are rally and scent (nose) work. Rally has the dog and their handler following a course where each station along the way directs you to do a specific coordinated movement together, like turn left or walk backwards. Scent involves training the dog to recognize and seek out various specific aromas, hidden in different challenging ways, and signal to you when they find it.
How do we teach them? We use positive reinforcement in shaping and other non-forced learning models. Positive reinforcement means when they do an action we like, we pay them for it, in a way that will lead to them repeating the desired behavior. The reward can be a food treat, but it can also be playtime, affection, or whatever the dog likes best. Shaping means we set up a circumstance where the dog is likely to try to do the thing we want, and we reward them each time they get closer to success. We use structured games to identify and build the right toolbox of “jobs to do” for your dog. Practicing these skills together is called enrichment because it meets their inherent needs, and increases the satisfaction they get from living with you, leading to better behavior at home. Good work, dog!
