But First, Fun! Cooperative Care Training
with Sara mcloudrey
A KPA LIVE!™ Class featuring real-time training and coaching WITH sara
A fun way to build skills and behaviors for canine cooperative care!
Join Sara McLoudrey and learn to make cooperative care fun for everyone.Cooperative care makes caring for your dog safer, lower-stress, and more consistent for you, your dog, and anyone else involved. But teaching dogs the behaviors that are needed for cooperative care can intimidate even the most well-intended trainers and pet guardians (injection training? Yikes!). Once you have taught these behaviors, the infrequency with which they are needed and the amount of time it takes to set up practice sessions make it easy for dogs to lose fluency (and for trainers to lose interest).
Imagine if the behaviors needed for cooperative care were fun to teach, learn, show others, and practice. For Sara McLoudrey, the road to cooperative care success is paved with fun skills and “trick-style” behaviors that keep the learning process reinforcing for her clients and their dogs. Cooperative care need not be “chore-full.” It should be joyful.
In each of the four class units, Sara teaches you to train fun, new skills and tricks from the ground up and connects these behaviors to their cooperative-care uses. For example, “Face in Things” is a great trick behavior that can be used to prepare for a muzzle or recovery cone. “Cookie Sheets” mimics duration stays on exam tables and scales. Sara makes the training easy using objects you have around your house or can access or create easily.
The week-by-week curriculum coordinates with a weekly schedule of LIVE real-time classes conducted over Zoom as well as the class discussion forum. Both the Zoom classes and the discussion forum will have direct coaching and instruction from Sara for each Excel team. If you are not able to attend live, no worries; classes will be recorded. Between the live classes, there will be lectures, video demonstrations, specific tricks to practice with your dog, and feedback and coaching from Sara.
Sara is known for bringing fun to dog training, no matter the topic! As a reactive/hesitant/aggressive dog behavior specialist, she understands the importance of consent in helping these dogs thrive as well as the need to make the process reinforcing for both ends of the leash.
Whether you have been intending to learn cooperative care practices, want to reinvigorate your training, or are interested in adding a fun training approach to share with others, join Sara for this unique, time-limited KPA LIVE class and ease on down the cooperative care road!
LEARN, PRACTICE, SHARE
LEARN
Six weeks of training, a week-by-week curriculum integrated with four LIVE virtual classes with real-time coaching, interactive learning, and Q&A. Super educational, super fun.
PRACTICE
The LIVE week-by-week curriculum integrates with, and prepares you for, the weekly LIVE class. New levels of advancement each week!
SHARE
Ask questions and share insights, pics, and your training videos. Celebrate progress together!
A week-by-week curriculum guides your learning every step of the way. Each week, join your classmates for one of four LIVE classes for real-time training and personalized interactive coaching, plus Q&A with your instructor. You will see other students practice the behaviors, hear your instructor’s feedback, make adjustments, and improve their training. Each of these Zoom-based classes is two hours long. All students get access to the full week-by-week curriculum and class forum. In each Zoom class:
- Engage students watch training and your instructor’s coaching and can ask questions through Zoom chat.
- Excel students get personalized real-time coaching and feedback on their training during the Zoom class PLUS on-screen Q&A.
Miss a class? No problem. LIVE classes are also recorded.
Let's Begin This Fabulous Journey, Together
- Unit 1 Lessons
- Live Class 1: September 27th
- Unit 2 Lessons
- Live Class 2: October 4th
- Unit 3 Lessons
- Live Class 3: October 11th
- Unit 4 Lessons
- Live Class 4: October 18th
LEARN WITH Sara mcloudrey
Sara McLoudrey is the founder and owner of Decisive Moment Pet Consulting. She specializes in Care with Consent (cooperative care), a variety of behavioral struggles and aggression, helping senior dogs thrive, and living with intact dogs. Sara is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant (CDBC), CPDT-KSA, Fear Free Certified Professional Level 1 and Certified Trainer - Elite, Low-Stress Handling Certified, Pet End of Life Doula, FitPaws Master Trainer, and TagTeach Level 3.
Since 2001 Sara has been competing with positively trained dogs in retriever field tests, high-level competition and rally obedience (Utility and RAE level), conformation, and elite-level nose work. She founded ROOT Dog Training in 2004 and opened the first positive reinforcement training facility on Chicago’s North Shore in 2012. In 2016 Sara moved to Portland, Oregon, and joined Synergy Veterinary Behavior. There she was instrumental in expanding their Behavior Modification services and mentoring the growing team of trainers.
Over the years, she has seen how our relationships with dogs have changed and even how the “positive/force free/clicker” training world has evolved. For Sara, it is inspiring to help continue and promote this growth mindset for fellow trainers, behavior consultants, and pet guardians.
Even though Sara’s behavior consulting practice focuses on complex and sometimes dangerous behavior struggles, she is known for bringing fun, creative problem-solving, joy, and laughter to her classes and sessions. Sara is an optimist at heart, a perpetual Pollyanna, and loves teaching clients they have the power - they are their dog’s magic wand!
For more information about Sara, check out her Website, Instagram, and Facebook pages.
Here's What You'll Be Learning UNIT by UNIT
1
Foundation For fun!
List of Behaviors:
- Intro to the shaping game, capture game, luring chair game
- Middle/Peek-a-boo game (sit, stand, duration, and look up - possibly adding duration)
- Pop (moving out of peek-a-boo while moving backward, and staying behind)
- Face in Things (pre-muzzle/pre-cone) - put face in all the things
- 4-Paws On (how to build it and how to add release/change body position/change surfaces)
- Stand on Cue
- Release Cue (primer - adds over class)
- (BONUS BEHAVIOR) Shake-off
Welcome to Fun!
Unit 1 jumps right into fun, foundational tricks and skills. These behaviors serve as the foundation for other behaviors in the weeks to come. For example, “Face in Things” is a precursor to wearing a muzzle or a recovery cone. “4 Paws On” builds core body positioning skills that are utilized in Unit 3. In this unit, you will receive detailed instructions for building these behaviors and discuss whether to shape, lure, or capture them. These behaviors are not only fun, but they help prepare you and your dog for an easy transition to muzzles/cones, injections, scale training, and so much more.
Make your way to the discussion forum on groups.io as soon as possible. Excel students will share videos of their training from Unit 1 to receive feedback and coaching from Sara in preparation for the first Zoom class. Engage students can follow along with each of the Excel student discussion threads, share their own progress, and share kudos with their classmates.
In the first week’s virtual LIVE class, you will get to know each Excel Team and practice the skills developed during this Unit. This will be the time to show off your progress with foundational skills and receive expert guidance on any roadblocks that have appeared. At the end of this Unit, you will be ready for the next three weeks of Cooperative Tricks! Engage experience students will be encouraged to bring questions from Unit 1 to the Zoom class; Sara will answer each question and guide your transition to the next Unit!
2
Heads up!
List of Behaviors:
- Open mouth with or without an object
- Focus: duration on staring at treats (hold still)
- Recovery Cone Training (building upon “Face in Things” to using a cone/box/posterboard) and cued back out with “pop” behavior
- Head Target (lift chin/raise neck)
Heads up! Week Two is all about tricks involving the head. These skills are a blast to train and help you and your dog transition more easily to practical behaviors for dental care, ear and eye care, and wearing the recovery cone. In the groups.io forum, Excel teams will share videos from both Week One and Week Two to receive feedback and coaching from Sara.
In the second virtual LIVE class, Excel students will show off their newly acquired Unit 2 behaviors and the progress they have continued to make with Unit 1 behaviors. Sara will coach each team individually and troubleshoot generalizing these fun tricks into veterinary and husbandry contexts. Engage students should bring training questions to the class for Sara to answer live during the Zoom call.
3
fancy feet
List of Behaviors:
- 2-Paws On (variety of surfaces, duration, adding inspection of undercarriage)
- Paw targeting (to objects - from all positions) - add pressure
- If ya’ fit’ ya’ sit - 4 feet in objects (different positions and box sizes, and varying duration)
- Cookie Sheet fun (stay in positions until released; mimic exam tables and scales)
Unit 3 is all about fun with feet. All of these tricks revolve around learners doing things with their feet in preparation for scale training, paw soaking, cleaning, nail trims, and exams. The community discussion over groups.io will focus on these new skills while continuing to build on Unit 1 and Unit 2 skills as needed.
During the third LIVE Zoom class, Excel students will demonstrate their fancy footwork. Sara will work with each team on problem-solving, and discuss how to expand the new skills beyond the class setting. Sara will also answer any questions Engage experience students have.
4
Level up!
List of Behaviors:
- Backward peek-a-boo(ty) - for nails, injections, hind-end inspections)
- Bandage a leg or paw (build from paw targeting an object)
- Clothing - build on head target and cone
- (BONUS BEHAVIOR) Hold Still and Freeze in the position in which the student/dog team excels at
Unit 4, our fourth and final unit, takes trick training to the next level. This Unit introduces a few new skills and explains how to level up the skills learned in the earlier Units and how to bridge them into cooperative care behaviors that remain fun and engaging for you and your dog.
In the fourth and final LIVE Zoom class, Excel students will demonstrate their progress in incorporating the skills from the previous Units into their care routines as well as the progress with any of the prior Unit behaviors. This fourth Zoom session is the last chance for Engage or Excel students to ask questions or receive coaching from Sara.
