Training Outside the Box: Teaching Training Creatively and Adaptively
WITH Sarah rodriguez
A KPA LIVE!™ Class featuring real-time training and coaching WITH sarah
HELP CLIENTS WITH DISABILITIES THROUGH CREATIVE AND ADAPTIVE TRAINING
Join Sarah Rodriguez to make training both fun and accessible for every clientEnrollment Opens on May 14, 2024 at 10 am PT/1 pm ET. Spots are Limited!
This class will teach you how to adapt your training classes and private lessons to better meet the needs of clients with disabilities. A wide range of disabilities is covered in the class including various forms of physical disabilities. This class will provide practical solutions that you can implement right away and will build your creative, adaptive thinking skills. Learn to train “outside the box" of prescriptivist solutions.
The hallmark of Sarah’s approach is to meet clients where they are and provide the tools and guidance to get them to where they would like to be. In this class, Sarah teaches you how to determine what is needed and to develop creative, practical solutions that will enhance your client’s progress and your teaching effectiveness—which is very reinforcing for everyone!
If your goal is to serve all clients regardless of their physical needs, this class is for you. If you are already serving this population, this class will enhance what you are already doing by providing new tools and ideas to serve a wider subset of the population creatively.
In this 4-week class, behavior consultant and trainer, Sarah Rodriguez will examine what you thought you knew about training “simple” behaviors and help you expand your training toolbox in a meaningful way. Sarah begins by addressing the question of how to work empathetically with clients who have disabilities and then coaches you through training multiple “easy” behaviors that she or her clients have found to be anything but easy!
Where and When?
Zoom classes will be held on Tuesdays: June 4, June 11, June 18, and June 25. Classes will begin at 2:00 PM PT / 5:00 PM ET and are two hours long.
As soon as you enroll, you receive access to all of the curriculum videos. Can’t make the Live classes? No worries! The Zoom classes are recorded and made available shortly after each class concludes; you can access all of the recorded material for a full year!
Each unit of the class includes commonly taught behaviors and provides training plans to adapt to various disabilities. Sarah and Excel students will discuss each Excel student’s experiences training the exercises presented in the weekly curriculum. In these exercises, trainers will receive a series of rules and restrictions that help the students build creativity and develop ways of teaching that adapt to disability restrictions. The week-by-week curriculum coordinates with both the weekly schedule of live real-time classes conducted over Zoom and the class discussion forum. Both the Zoom classes and the discussion forum will have direct coaching and instruction from Sarah for each Excel team. If you are not able to attend at the scheduled time, no worries; classes will be recorded. The class includes Zoom classes, the student discussion and video-sharing forum, feedback from Sarah, and a curriculum of recorded lectures, video demonstrations, and assigned exercises for you to practice with your dog.
Sarah is known for finding fun, engaging, and creative ways to train necessary behaviors within her own life and for her clients using positive reinforcement and thoughtful environmental arrangements. She has experienced the fallout of procedural training advice and has helped many clients and trainers better meet their needs through her empathy, acumen, and passion for positive reinforcement training and the welfare of both dogs and clients.
Be sure to check out Sarah's Live from The Ranch appearance to see how she's applied these skills in her own life!
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: June 4th
- Unit 2 Lessons
- Live Class 2: June 11th
- Unit 3 Lessons
- Live Class 3: June 18th
- Unit 4 Lessons
- Live Class 4: June 25th
LEARN WITH sarah rodriguez
Sarah Rodriguez graduated from Cal Poly Pomona with a degree in Psychology. She went on to earn her CPDT from the Ethology Institute. She owns her own dog training business, Home Schooled Hound, where she helps clients both in person and virtually to build deeper relationships with their pets through training.
She is also Fear Free certified and works with a local Fear Free veterinary office doing in-service training to help create a low-stress experience for their canine and feline patients. In addition, she helps interested clients learn how to teach their pets husbandry behaviors so they can provide stress-free care.
Born with a neuromuscular disease called Spinal Muscular Atrophy, she uses a power wheelchair to get around. She enjoys empowering others with disabilities to creatively come up with ways they can train their own dog and build a lasting bond between them.
Sarah shares her home with her dog, Danny, and her parrot, Gracie. In her free time, she enjoys volunteering and fostering for a local animal shelter and teaching her pets tricks. She regularly attends animal behavior conferences to stay up to date on the latest scientific findings to provide the most recent training techniques to her clients.
Here's What You'll Be Learning UNIT by UNIT
1
Client Communication, Needs Assessment, Empowerment, and Adaptive Play
Skills:
- Social Etiquette
- Support and Family Inclusivity
- Observing Client Needs
- Client Intake
- Respectful Dialogue
Unit #1 dives right into practical perspectives and tactics that can make training more accessible. Sarah will first teach you how to gain a fuller understanding of the needs of a client with disabilities—and how to begin to think creatively about the training solutions that meet those needs and the needs of their dogs.
One theme of this course is that clients with disabilities are well-served by training that deepens the clients’ relationships with their dogs and empowers clients with the skills to achieve that deeper relationship. While this theme is common in teaching abled-bodied populations as well, its implementation with clients who have disabilities requires teachers to bring that goal to the forefront.
Unit 1 both puts in place foundational principles for effective, empathetic, and creative interaction and provides opportunities to practice these principles. You will learn language and practices that will be the foundation for effective teaching relationships with your clients from the moment they contact you for a training consultation. You will begin the process of re-imagining how training plans can be constructed to meet the needs of clients with disabilities. Finally, you will practice creative training solutions with your dog. The training exercises in this Unit include adaptive play– teaching clients how to enjoy bonding and playing with their dogs, something that is often overlooked in this population.
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 Sarah in preparation for the first Zoom class. Engage students can follow along with each Excel student discussion thread, share their progress, and share kudos with their classmates.
In the first week’s virtual LIVE class, you will get to know the Excel Teams as they practice the skills and exercises developed during this Unit. This will be your chance to show off your progress with all of the Unit material 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 empowering exercises! Engage experience students will be encouraged to bring questions from Unit 1 to the Zoom class; Sarah will answer each question and guide your transition to the next Unit!
2
Relationship Building: In Depth
Skills:
- Meeting the Dog’s Needs
- Bonding and Relationship-Building with the Dog
- Feeding and Care
In Unit #2 Sarah dives deeper into what it looks like to help clients build relationships with their dogs. Sarah discusses and provides solutions for many of the obstacles that clients with mobility challenges uniquely face that, if left unaddressed, impede the relationship-building process both within the training context and outside of it. As an example, for clients with mobility challenges feeding a dog is often one of the most difficult parts of daily life, never mind the mechanics of training.
Creative solutions to first-order challenges, like feeding an animal, are often the keys that open the doors to relationships that may otherwise remain out of reach. As you learn to consider clients abilities, constraints, and home environments, as well as their dogs’ abilities, history, and skills, you can create training plans that unlock success. After you work through assessment and design, you will practice training “standard” behaviors and skills in accessible ways. You will learn to develop an adaptive training mindset and will have a new repertoire of adaptive plans for future use.
In the second virtual LIVE class, Excel students will demonstrate their progress with the Unit 2 behaviors as well as the progress they have continued to make with Unit 1 behaviors. Sarah will coach each team individually and troubleshoot or level up the work they have done for the week. Engage students should bring training questions to the class for Sarah to answer live during the Zoom call.
3
Understanding Training Challenges and Finding Practical Solutions
Skills:
- Achieving Success by Understanding Training Challenges
- Verbal and Visual Cues and Markers
- Working through Overexcitement
- Heeling and Leash-Walking with a Mobility Device
- The Many Ways of Luring
Unit #3 is centered on teaching even more solutions to the unique challenges clients with physical disabilities may face training their dogs with markers and positive reinforcement. Sarah will teach you practical techniques for desired training outcomes. You will learn a variety of techniques that your clients can use with fine motor and mechanical skills that may be difficult, such as treat delivery, cues, and marker timing. Throughout the Unit, you will continue to build creative skills by practicing challenging and fun training exercises with your dog with the goal of training potentially known cues in creative, new ways.
In the third virtual class over Zoom, Excel students will demonstrate their progress with the Unit 3 behaviors as well as the progress they have continued to make with Unit 1 and 2 behaviors as necessary. Engage students should bring training questions to the class for Sarah to answer live during the Zoom call.
4
Safety in Adaptive Training: Living Safely with Dogs
Skills:
- How to Reduce Frustration for Everyone in Training
- Assessing and Training for Safety in Daily Living with Dogs Around Mobility Devices
- Creating Training Plans for Everyday Life
Clients with mobility challenges or physical disabilities face extra safety challenges in daily life with a dog, as well as during training sessions. In Unit #4 Sarah will guide you through the solutions she has found for safety concerns and challenges of living with a dog and maneuvering mobility devices.
One of the common challenges clients in this population face is training without frustrating themselves or their dogs. Able-bodied populations can provide a range of cues, signals, and prompts that keep their dogs engaged and learning without frustration. Clients with disabilities frequently cannot access the same tools, so new processes, tools, and techniques must be developed and taught. You will learn how to provide appropriate assistance to reduce your clients’ and their dogs' frustration or confusion as well as what clients can do on their own. This Unit’s exercises challenge you to consider how you would train for safe navigation through your own surroundings and how you might teach someone else to train that behavior if that person had limited mobility.
In the fourth and final LIVE Zoom class, Excel students will demonstrate how they navigated the Unit 4 exercise as well as the progress they have continued to make with Units 1, 2, and 3 behaviors as necessary. Sarah will work with each team on Unit 4 skills as well as answer any remaining questions from the class. All students are encouraged to bring training questions to the final Zoom class for Sarah to answer live during the Zoom call, as it will be your last opportunity for feedback from Sarah.
