Puppy socialization & Adolescent Dog familiarization
with laura vanarendonk baugh
A KPA LIVE!™ Class featuring real-time training and coaching WITH laura
Don't leave home without it!
Join Laura VanArendonk Baugh and learn the skills to provide your dog with the lifelong benefits of top-tier socialization and familiarization!Sold out! Sign up below to get notified when a future class will be offered.
Socialization is crucial for a dog's well-being and comfort in various environments. However, many socialization plans for dogs oversimplify the process, missing important opportunities and potentially leading to frightening or unwanted situations for young dogs. This class offers the knowledge, skills, and plans to provide top-tier socialization for puppies and top-tier familiarization for adolescent dogs who may have missed or had incomplete socialization experiences.
Thoughtful socialization offers a host of amazing benefits. It reduces reactivity, increases the number of synapses in the brain, and improves lifelong learning ability. By engaging in thoughtful socialization, puppies and young dogs have the opportunity to grow, learn, and reach their full potential as exceptional family, sport, or working dogs. Top-tier socialization enriches dogs’ lives from the very beginning and enables pet guardians to train all the necessary skills their dogs need in a safe manner.
In this four-week, four-unit LIVE virtual class, you’ll learn trainer and instructor Laura Van Arendonk Baugh’s proven approach to healthy socialization for puppies and social familiarization for older dogs. You will learn the best practices that equip dogs to excel as companions, sport partners, or working dogs. You will learn how to appropriately introduce new stimuli like surfaces, sounds, sights, other dogs, and people. The class also covers fundamental skills such as targeting and recall - keystone behaviors for your pup, and even covers routine care behaviors, making tasks such as nail trims a non-issue from the start.
Whether you are an instructor, a pet guardian with a young dog, or preparing to bring a new dog into your home soon, this class equips you with all the tools you need to provide top-tier socialization. If you have an older puppy or adolescent dog with incomplete socialization, this class will also provide you with the necessary tools for familiarization.
Author, teacher, and trainer Laura VanAredonk Baugh is passionate about socialization and familiarization. She is the author of three books on dog training: Fired Up, Frantic, and Freaked Out, Social, Civil, and Savvy, and the fanciful, Dragons, Unicorns, Chimeras, and Clickers. Laura is also a faculty member of both ClickerExpo and Karen Pryor Academy.
LEARN, PRACTICE, SHARE
LEARN
Four 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 Laura. You will see other students practice the behaviors, hear Laura’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 Laura’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: July 18
- Unit 2 Lessons
- Live Class 2: July 25
- Unit 3 Lessons
- Live Class 3: August 1
- Unit 4 Lessons
- Live Class 4: August 8
LEARN WITH laura vanarendonk baugh
Here's What You'll Be Learning UNIT by UNIT
1
getting started
In the kickoff unit, we’ll establish a foundation for top-tier socialization and begin putting the principles into practice.
Laura will begin by defining the class goals and exploring the benefits of achieving them. You will learn the key periods of neurological development that are crucial for socialization, examine the periods during which negative experiences can have a significant impact, and clarify the distinction between socialization and familiarization, highlighting the expected outcomes of each. Moreover, you will learn about common misconceptions and ineffective practices and begin to put best practices into place. This includes purposefully establishing the appropriate emotional tone for early experiences and addressing observable behaviors as opposed to assuming a puppy's emotions.
In Unit 1, you will practice the first set of training techniques that facilitate socialization, including targeting, recall, and orienting to the handler. Laura will provide you with best practices and practical tips for implementing these behaviors. In our first weekly LIVE Zoom class, Excel students will have the opportunity to show off their puppy training progress from Unit 1 and receive coaching on further skill development and preparation for Unit 2. Both Excel and Engage students can also seek clarification from Laura regarding any remaining questions from this Unit or in anticipation of the next.
2
Environments
In Unit 2, we will delve into environments and situations that can either help or hinder the socialization process. We will talk about the significance of exploration and why clicker training is particularly suitable for this type of socialization.
You will have the opportunity to experiment with different surfaces and textures, with video examples illustrating both formal training sessions and informal exploratory sessions. Laura will teach you simple setups that you can use at home. Field trips will be organized for puppies to engage in people-watching and active experiences, with specific goals for each excursion. You will also learn how to provide a safe base camp for exploratory puppies and, if necessary, teach matwork.
Furthermore, we will begin working on reducing your pup’s startle response by fostering positive associations. Homework assignments will prepare us for the next unit!
During the Unit 2 LIVE Zoom class, Excel students will continue to develop the skills learned from Unit 1, integrate the environment-based training from Unit 2, and receive coaching on further skill development and preparation for Unit 3. Both Excel and Engage students will have the opportunity to seek Laura’s guidance, addressing any remaining questions from this unit or in anticipation of the next.
3
Meet & greet, and care
In Unit 3, we get to what most people commonly associate with socialization! However we don’t just want to just let our puppies interact freely in social situations and hope for the best. This unit explores how to create positive experiences and develop good habits, while also familiarizing puppies with a wide variety of people and animals. You will learn why following common advice, such as having strangers feed the puppy, may not be the best approach and discover alternative strategies.
We will also address emergency management, preparing you for unexpected situations during socialization experiences, and discuss appropriate goal setting for individual puppies.
Additionally, we will normalize routine grooming and medical care, teaching our learners that husbandry behaviors are just another game.
During the Unit 3 LIVE Zoom class, Excel students will continue to develop the skills acquired from Units 1 and 2. They will discuss and practice the new skills and behaviors from Unit 3, receive coaching on how to continue developing these skills as well as preparation for Unit 4. Both Excel and Engage students will also have the opportunity to ask Laura any remaining questions they may have about this unit or in anticipation of the next.
4
Ignoring others
Why would we want to teach our dogs not to meet people as part of socialization? Top-tier socialization extends beyond mere interactions with people and dogs. It encompasses knowing how to navigate society and social situations safely and politely. A well-socialized human does not greet or hug every passerby on the sidewalk. We apply the same principles to our dogs.
Unit 4 teaches you to establish expectations and utilize cues for either meeting or ignoring people, dogs, and other stimuli. You will learn how to teach our young learners when to approach, how to do it politely and safely, and when to disengage or ignore potential social interactions.
During the final Zoom class, Unit 4, Excel students will continue to develop the skills acquired throughout the entire class, discuss and practice the new skills and behaviors introduced in Unit 4, and receive coaching on how to continue developing these skills and behaviors as their dogs continue to grow and learn. This LIVE Class will be the last opportunity for both Excel and Engage students to seek Laura’s guidance and clarification on any remaining questions they may have regarding our socialization practice.
