Saying Goodbye to separation anxiety
with terrie hayward
A KPA LIVE!™ Class featuring real-time training and coaching WITH terrie
Help your dog transition from anxious to independent when you leave home
Join Terrie Hayward and learn how to leave separation-related distress behind.Sold out! Sign up below to get notified when a future class will be offered.
Relieve your dog from the stress and anxiety of being left alone. Learn a reliable desensitization protocol for achieving relaxed alone-time behaviors. Help your dog gain the necessary skills and confidence needed to be comfortable with being alone while building your own peace of mind that your dog will be safe when you leave home.
Separation anxiety encompasses a range of behaviors, from mild uneasiness to destructive or self-injurious actions, exhibited by dogs when their guardians leave. These behaviors can deeply affect the entire family, making it crucial to restore or establish a sense of safety and security in your dog.
Separation anxiety specialist, teacher, and author Terrie Hayward has helped countless dogs find their calm in the absence of their people, and now she is ready to share her expertise with you.
In this four-week, four-unit LIVE virtual class, Terrie will outline and then break down a specific desensitization protocol for dogs. From understanding subtle nuances of body language to incorporating relaxation and confidence-building exercises, Terrie will equip you with the tools, techniques, and strategies needed to make alone time a relaxing experience for your dog.
You will learn how to integrate these elements into your daily routine, gradually increasing duration, distance, and distractions while identifying the observable body language that indicates a reduction in fear, anxiety, or stress.
You will begin by learning how to coordinate your support team. Terrie will then teach you how to become an attentive observer of your dog’s behavior. You will learn to train and reinforce calm behaviors during absences of increasing length, monitor and measure success, and navigate setbacks. Terrie's protocol requires a collaborative and consistent approach, and by the end of the LIVE class, you will be well-prepared to continue implementing the protocol’s tools and techniques with your dog and support team.
Through the recorded curriculum, live Zoom classes, and discussion group, trainers and behavior consultants will gain invaluable insights into how Terrie helps clients bid farewell to separation anxiety and distress.
Notes
- Please note that for successful implementation of this protocol, your dog should not be left alone outside of training sessions. If you enroll as an Excel student, ensure that you have a support team in place to provide coverage when you leave home.
- While the timeline for achieving success may vary, it typically extends beyond the duration of this class. In severe cases, full success may take a year or longer. However, during the class, you can expect to learn the protocol, initiate it successfully, and acquire the skills and knowledge necessary to continue the protocol effectively after the class has concluded.
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 Terrie. You will see other students practice the behaviors, hear Terrie'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 Terrie’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: August 2nd
- Unit 2 Lessons
- Live Class 2: August 9th
- Unit 3 Lessons
- Live Class 3: August 16th
- Unit 4 Lessons
- Live Class 4: August 23rd
LEARN WITH terrie hayward
Terrie Hayward has an M.Ed. and is a Faculty Member of the Karen Pryor Academy (KPA), a KPA Certified Training Partner (CTP), and a Certified Professional Dog Trainer (CPDT) through the Council of Professional Dog Trainers. Additionally, she is also certified in Canine Separation Anxiety Trainer (CSAT) and is a Certified Dog Behavior Consultant (CDBC) with the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants.
She is a member of the Pet Professional Guild and has written articles on training for BARKS magazine, Pet Business, and Grooming Business magazine and is the author of three books: A Deaf Dog Joins the Family,"
Terrie works with families and their animal companions, presents workshops, travels, and consults focusing on positive reinforcement interactions and modifying behavior through applications in behavior analysis.
Here's What You'll Be Learning UNIT by UNIT
1
Foundation
Unit #1 examines the various definitions of separation anxiety (SA) and how they manifest as anxiety-related behaviors. We will discuss why the “team” approach is needed and then outline the behavior sequences and plan you will use to help your dog relax in your absence. We will examine the big picture to identify end goals.
The lecture, discussion, training plans, and exercises in this unit help you build foundation behaviors that will be put together into the “separation anxiety mission” plans later in the course. The main focus of this week’s curriculum will be understanding relaxation vs. stress, SA truths vs. myths, how and where a “diagnosis” may occur, and what to do if your dog is assessed as suffering from SA-related behaviors. You will also get organized this week and start building, with your dog, the skills needed to implement this protocol.
In the Unit #1 Live Zoom class, Excel experience students will be fully immersed in the process as Terrie walks you through individualized initial consults and works with each team to build a plan moving forward. Engage experience students, this is your first chance to ask Terrie any questions you may have about the Unit #1 content or how this practice sets you up for success in Unit #2.
2
desensitization and arc of success
In Unit #2, Terrie will teach you the skills to read the subtleties of dog body language. This will enable you to identify the cues that tell your dog that a departure is imminent and examine what that means to your pup. We’ll also discuss operationalizing and quantifying behavior. From this, you will learn how and when to adjust criteria to keep you progressing at a rate that your dog will be successful. You will begin implementing your desensitization plan and tracking your dog’s progress towards relaxed alone time.
You will continue to build on the skills you established with your dog in Unit #1. The lecture, discussion, training plans, and exercises in this unit advance your understanding of your dog’s behavior and set you up to gather the information that will influence the selection of desensitization and training exercises used in your plan for success.
In our virtual classroom, our Excel students will demonstrate their skills progress, get coaching from Terrie, share their experiences, and ask questions about these next steps. We’ll also take a look ahead to the skills taught in our next unit and Terrie will answer questions from Engage experience students.
3
Adding Distance, duration, and distractions
In Unit #3, you will take the next step into the protocol, incorporating the more challenging criteria related to distance, duration, and distractions. Terrie will teach you to recognize how and when to adjust each of these elements in your plan. Understanding your dog’s feedback to these criteria changes through careful observation of your dog’s body language is an important skill practiced in this unit (and needed throughout this protocol).
The curriculum will help you improve your ability to interpret your dog’s body language and use that skill to help you decide when to drop, stick, or push forward new behavioral criteria. You will learn to read and interpret even the subtle signs that your dog is ready to move forward, needs to take a pause or even a step backward. Importantly, you'll also learn proven strategies that you to avoid the rehearsing of undesirable behaviors and the creation of associated behavior patterns. One of the key goals this week is to become more proficient at creating the small approximations that help your dog smoothly adapt as new behavioral criteria are added.
In our virtual classroom, our Excel students will show off their progress on the skills they have built to date and their progress putting their plans into action while getting coaching from Terrie and guidance on the next steps. Terrie will discuss the skills taught in our next Unit, including creative ways to practice desensitization and the next Unit’s confidence-building skills; Terrie will answer questions from Engage experience students in the chat.
4
final setup and strategy
In Unit #4 you will continue to practice the skills you’ve developed and teach your dog new confidence-building behaviors such as targeting, stationing, and non-follow behavior. Terrie also covers effective ways to help your dog generalize relaxation to different areas of your home and how you will address anticipated behavioral plateaus and regressions. In this final Unit, you’ll also learn how to fine-tune and adjust your training after class has ended.
In our final virtual classroom, our Excel students will demonstrate their criteria-slicing skills, their recent progress implementing the protocol, and teaching this week’s confidence-building behaviors. As Terrie coaches the students, she’ll prepare them for the next steps in implementing the Separation Anxiety protocol. Before wrapping this Unit, Excel and Engage experience students have this final opportunity to ask their questions about working through the protocol after the class has ended.
