Ian Dunbar UK seminars

Q. If I can’t come, can someone else come in my place?

A. Yes, that’s fine, we just need their name and contact details before the event.

 

Q. Will I receive a certificate of attendance?

A. All attendees will receive a certificate of attendance which can be used as evidence of CPD.

 

Q. Will I receive a printed ticket?

A. No, but you will receive confirmation of your place and further information via e-mail.

 

Q. Are refreshments included?

A. Complimentary tea, coffee and biscuits will be available and a sandwich buffet lunch is available at a small charge per person (payable on the day) at most venues. We will be in touch with attendees for any changes to this nearer to the event. 

 

Q. Can I bring my dog?

A. This is a spoken event without dogs. Some of the locations are ok with dogs in vehicles as long as they are suitably modified for the weather conditions. 

 

Q. Can students get discounts?

A. Students can get a 10% discount by using the coupon code STUDENT. They will need to provide one of the following (valid at the date of the seminar) either in advance or on the day…

• Totum Card
• University Student ID Card
• International Student Identity Card (ISIC)
• Student travel card
• Student Debit Card
• Student Beans Card

 

Q. Can charity workers get discounts?

A. Charity workers can get a 10% discount by using the coupon code CHARITY. Please email us once you have booked your ticket with something to show you work for a charity. 

 

Q. What is the refund policy?

A. For information about refunds and other terms, please visit the Terms and Conditions page (blue section, point number 15)

 

Q. Where can I stay locally?

A. We have a list of possible accommodation at https://www.dog-and-bone.co.uk/accommodation. We do not personally recommend any particular accommodation. 

 

Q. Will the event be recorded / will photos be taken?

A. Photos and videos are often taken by Dog & Bone at their events, either for social media, advertising or for videos of the events. If you do not want to appear on any media, please let us know at the beginning of each day.

Veterinarian, animal behaviourist, and dog trainer, Dr. Ian Dunbar (PhD, BSc, BVetMed, MRCVS) has authored numerous books and DVDs about puppy/dog behaviour and training. His latest book, Barking Up the Right Tree, is available on Amazon

 

In 1982, Dr. Dunbar designed and taught the world’s very first off-lead puppy socialisation and training classes — SIRIUS® Puppy Training. In 1993 he founded the Association of Professional Dog Trainers in the US and later, similar associations around the world.

 

Dr. Dunbar developed the San Francisco SPCA’s Animal Behaviour Department, and the American Kennel Club Gazette's "Behaviour" award-winning column, which he wrote for seven years. He hosted the popular UK television series Dogs with Dunbar for five seasons, appeared on numerous radio and television programmes, consulted on a variety of movies, (including Pixar’s UP), and twice spoke at the prestigious TED Conference.

 

Over the past 40+ years, Dr. Dunbar has given over 1500 one-day seminars and workshops for dog trainers and veterinarians to popularize off-lead puppy socialisation classes, temperament modification, and owner-friendly and dog-friendly dog training.

 

Dr. Dunbar lives in Berkeley, California and currently works alongside Kelly and Jamie Dunbar, creating video-content for www.DunbarAcademy.com and www.DogStarDaily.com

You may download three of his puppy/dog training books for free from https://dunbar.info/freepupbooks_UK  PLEASE SHARE THESE BOOKS with all your doggy friends, neighbours, work colleagues, clients, and customers, and on social media, encouraging everyone to share the books with their doggy friends. Also, please, post the books on your own website for free download, to lure oodles of dog people to your site. Dr. Dunbar's goal is that every prospective, new, or current puppy or dog owner gets these books before they get their dog.

The prime directive in all animal training is opening communication channels by teaching your dog ESL — English as a Second Language. Without a doubt, Lure/Reward Training is the quickest way to teach your dog the meaning of words to use as instructions, so our dogs understand exactly how we would like them to act, and as instructive verbal guidance to get them back on track when they err. Which would you prefer if your souffle fell flat, or your golf swing sliced the ball to the Nineteenth Hole? Screamed criticism? A leash correction? Or clear, precise, understandable instructions, advice, and guidance for how to resolve your chef/golfer glitches?

 

Learn how to determine how well your dog understands your verbal instructions by calculating Response-Reliability Percentages. You'll find these illuminating; RR%s vary considerably depending on who is training, where you test, and what's going on: in the kitchen at mealtimes, other rooms, yard/garden, or dog parks; close by or at a distance; and on-leash on sidewalks with a smorgasbord of sniffs, another dog approaching, or squirrels in sight.

 

Learn how to teach your dog to respond willingly, reliably, and promptly on verbal cue, when off-leash, at a distance, when distracted, and without the continued use of any training tool, especially including food lures, food rewards, collars, leashes, halters, harnesses, and hand-contact. Again, please note: all three adverbs are objectively quantified; science-based training is all about numbers that offer proof of training, its effectiveness, and speed.

 

Learn how to phase out food lures so they don't become bribes and make your dog's reliability contingent on whether you have food in your hand.

 

Learn how to reduce your reliance on food rewards. By decreasing their number, you increase their reinforcing power, and make sure that your dog's responsiveness doesn't become contingent on you having food in your pocket.

 

Learn how to use much more powerful life rewards, such as, 'go play', 'go sniff', 'let's go', tug, tag, fetch, find, hide-n-seek, and Bill Campbell's Jolly Routine  to motivate your dog to the max. so that eventually, your dog becomes self-motivated and internally reinforced, i.e., 'just doing it' is sufficient reward.

 

Learn how to use reinforcement schedules that are easy for people to use to train their dogs, cats, and horses and yet are far more effective than the schedules you'll read about in books (CC, FI, FR, VI and VR) — generated by the Century-old, learning theory of computers training rats in cages, which has so little relevance to people training dogs off-leash (to live with them off-leash at home).

 

Many reward-trainers are at a loss for what to do when dogs are non-compliant or misbehave. However, once you've taught your dog a well-rounded vocabulary, you'll discover how easy and effective, how relieving, relaxing, and fulfilling for you, and your dog, and how blindingly obvious it is to deal with non-compliance and misbehaviour by simply using your voice, and without even having to raise it.

To give just one example: When your dog jumps-up on visitors, or you, do you?

a) Squirt the dog with water or lemon juice, throw a chain, or shake a can of pennies?

b) Turn your back and ignore your dog to 'extinguish' the behaviour?

c) Differentially reinforce a DRO or DRI? (???) or,

d) Simply Instruct your dog to "Sit" in a soft, calm, controlled, but insistent tone. Wow! The power of communication — instructing our dogs exactly how we would like them to greet people. And if the dog doesn't sit because they are beside themselves with the boundless joy of greeting visitors, or upon your return from taking out the garbage just 93 seconds ago, we troubleshoot proofing the response-reliability of Sit in that specific scenario. So obvious, so easy, and so much fun. The magic of our words. Indeed, unlike aversive stimuli, a single word conveys two (and sometimes three) pieces of information: a) Stop what you're doing, b) Do this instead, c) This instruction is reeeeally important right now. And there are so many other words you can use: Find your Chewtoy, Go to your Bed, Settle, Shush, Hustle and Steady (speed up and slow down when walking), and of course, Goooood Dog!

Other topics include:

• Monitoring Response-Reliability Percentages and Response:Reward Ratios to track progress and determine whether training worked, how well it worked, and how quickly it worked.
• The notions of repetitive reinstruction and progressive comprehension. Yes, objective quantification proves that repeating an instruction until eventual compliance causes response-reliability percentages to increase (learned relevance), rather than 'learned irrelevance'.
• The use of formal instructions for on-demand, ultra-reliability.
• Random reinforcement. Yes, you may be inconsistent when administering rewards, in fact you should be inconsistent to dramatically increase the reinforcing power of rewards.
• Amping up praise, kibble, and toys into mega-secondary reinforcers.
• Putting problem behaviours on cue to facilitate teaching the offset, e.g., teaching Speak on cue facilitates teaching Shush on cue, at your convenience.
• A variety of other non-aversive techniques for teaching your dog and quickly resolving misbehaviour and non-compliance.
• Wait & Reward Training — specifically designed for teaching hyperactive, inattentive, rambunctious, and rumbustious, adolescent dogs (that blow off food-in-the-hand and their owner's instructions), to calm down, focus, and reengage, so you may resume Lure/Reward Training.

Topics include:

• Becoming a behaviourist — the vital importance of representative observation.
• Sexual differentiation — how male and female dogs develop differently.
• Male hierarchies vs. female hierarchies, and male-female interactions.
• Female amendments to male hierarchical law.
• Development of hierarchies in puppies: teat appropriation, non-stop play-fighting, intra-litter and inter-litter puppy fights, dyadic, triadic, and group tests with a meaty bone,
• Puppy-adult interactions: Puppy license to misbehave, developmental nolo contendere.  Certainly, mental 'dominance' is involved but physically, there is simply no contest between a pup and an adult and hence, no need for physical force. (Of course, unsocialised adult dogs may inflict damage because they lack with social savvy and bite Inhibition, normally acquired during puppyhood.)
• Adult dogs as teachers — so unbelievably cool!
• Observations of pack living (12 adults with 12 puppies from three litters): proximity to individuals, competition for twigs and favourite resting spots etc., games and strategies.
• Complexity of cooperative social structure — special friendships, allegiances and sharing, and individual animosities.
• The power of social heredity: Great Dane with Yorkies, Cross fostering goldens and bull terriers.
• The crucial importance of play, especially play-fighting and play-biting. Atmosphere cues. Good and bad play groups — the pros and cons of same-age/size and variable-age/size play groups.

 

The following seminar description was written by Dr. Ian Dunbar in 1986, at the start of the Center for Applied Behaviour's seminar series that lasted through 2015...

"Debunking the Dominance Myth - an insight into the development of social hierarchies, from the last ten years of the most comprehensive, long-term (30 years) research study of dog behaviour (Yale/Berkeley). We originally embarked on the study searching for physical “dominance”. But didn’t find it. Certainly, puppies spend a good proportion of their time play-fighting (to learn bite inhibition) and fighting with each other to establish and maintain their relative rank, but we saw no cases of adult dogs physically dominating puppies, and we observed very few dog fights between adult dogs during the ten years of the study. On the contrary, we observed many instances of adult dogs spending long periods of time “training” puppies and young adolescents to slow down, chill, sit, lie down and otherwise “show respect”. The puppies developed stable hierarchical relationships while growing up which served to prevent the need for fighting as adults.

We found that dogs growing up and living together (without human intervention) develop an extremely complex and sophisticated social structure. The social behaviour of dogs is utterly fascinating — special friendships, preferences and allegiances, as well individual animosities. But by and large, when left to their own devices, dogs get along quite amicably. It is surprising, therefore, that so many dogs living with people become fearful and dog-dog reactive. Certainly, with a better understanding of how dogs' social hierarchies develop, we can move beyond the unfounded notions of 'dominance' and prevent or resolve fearfulness and dog-dog reactivity.

Our research findings taught us many things that had an enormous impact on reshaping pet dog husbandry and training during the late 70s and early 80s, namely: the extreme and long-lasting effects of early socialisation (or lack thereof); the notion that temperament may be modified; the overwhelming importance of puppy play, bite inhibition, and developing social savvy as puppies, i.e., before adolescence and adulthood; and the importance of variable-age, off-leash socialisation classes for building confidence, preventing/resolving fearfulness, toning down play-styles, and preventing bullying.

Perhaps most enlightening, socialisation follows a predictable, albeit deceptive, time-table. Deceptive, because two-, three- and four-month-old puppies appear to be super-friendly and overly-confident social butterflies and so most owners slack off from the intensive socialisation program. Of course, the puppies are friendly and sociable, they’re puppies. Predictable, because without ongoing socialisation and extensive Classical Conditioning while the puppies/adolescents are still friendly, five-, six-, seven- and eight-month-old adolescents will start to show incipient signs of standoffishness, wariness, fearfulness, and eventually, reactivity.

Behaviour is in a state of constant flux and is always changing. With ongoing socialisation and training, behaviour gets better; without sufficient and appropriate socialisation and training, behaviour generally gets worse. Heavy-duty socialisation and classical conditioning must continue until dogs weather adolescence and reach social maturity at about three years of age, otherwise adolescent dogs will predictably become fearful and reactive and then, we must embark on a treatment program. Rehabilitation techniques are pretty much the same as preventative measures, except that treatment takes longer.

“Dominance” is most certainly a most misunderstood topic in dog behaviour. A woefully simplistic interpretation of wolf behaviour has been applied to dogs, and then this misunderstanding of dog-dog behaviour has been cavalierly extrapolated to dog-human interactions and training. Such facile views of dog behaviour are an insult to dogs and advertise a complete misunderstanding of their social structure. More disturbing though, misunderstood notions of supposed physical dominance-hierarchies are often used as a rationale (excuse) for physically manhandling and punishing dogs under the guise of training, especially when attempting to resolve biting and fighting problems.

The mere use of the term “dominance” biases the training arena, encouraging an adversarial relationship between people and dogs, prompting owners to attempt to physically dominate their dogs. Physical manhandling causes mistrust and fear, exacerbates existing problems and ultimately, creates additional problems. Without a doubt, all too often, the “treatment” is the cause. Why treat our best friend like our worst enemy?"

First and foremost, it is essential to assess the dog's bite inhibition by evaluating their Fight/Bite history. These methods are only intended for dogs (the vast majority) that have been involved in many full-contact scuffles or fights but have never injured a dog so badly that they required veterinary repair. There is no guaranteed treatment for dogs that lack bite inhibition, (normally acquired from play-fighting in puppyhood), and so, have caused significant damage to non-human animals, including other dogs. Fortuitously, the vast majority of dog fights cause next to no damage and so the prognosis is excellent.

 

Nonetheless, it can be challenging to resolve dog-dog reactivity using food rewards alone and often, not advisable, depending on how the other dogs react around food. For a speedy and effective positive outcome, dogs require prior practice (every 25 yards on walks with no other dogs in sight) to reliably Come-Sit-Watch, lots of praise when not reacting on walks, oodles and oodles and oodles of praise (classical conditioning) and ongoing verbal instruction and guidance when other dogs are within sight, plus a toy that has been amped up as a mega-secondary reinforcer. It is possible to classically condition and operantly condition simultaneously, so as not to unintentionally reinforce reactivity.

 

Your dog’s demeanour has an enormous influence on the perceptions, feelings, and behaviour of other dogs, and people. One of many effective ploys is to teach your dog, (to the degree of reliability of an Emergency Sit or Down), to Come-Sit-Watch whenever you stop walking and take one quick step backwards and stand still with both hands raised to your chest. When stepping back, position yourself so that when your dog turns around to look up at you, they present a less-threatening picture to the other dog and owner — a waggy butt, no freezing, and no eye-balling. Hence the other dog and owner begin to relax and so, threaten your dog less. Yes, you can make life on the sidewalks and country paths a whole lot more enjoyable for your dog and yourself by teaching your dog how to act when under duress.

 

The key here is for owners to develop the force in dog training — the confidence that they can verbally change and control their dog's behaviour. Once you see this in action, the process is surprisingly easy, and extremely effective. We perfect Sit-Stay-Watch to reliability by using a tug toy (or ball) that has been amped-up to be a MEGA-secondary reinforcer.

 

Other ploys that make life easier for your dog are to practice instructing your dog to beg, bow, shake hands, or high-five in front of you, every 25 yards on walks when no dogs are in sight, so that your dog is more likely to respond when other dogs are present. All these simple 'tricks' are friendly-appeasement behaviours that make your dog feel altogether better about life, and, they strongly affect the perceptions and hence, actions of other dogs and people.

 

Back in the 80s, we had a pink-ribbon programme, designed originally for Rottweilers. Tie a pink bow to the dog's neck and every 25 yards on walks, instruct the dog to sit up and squat-beg (like a sun bear). Whereas the poor Rottie lived life with people always weirding-out, spooking, and crossing the street to avoid their approach, now people cross the street to engage, "What a lovely dog. What sort of dog is he?" "Yes, he is lovely. He's a German Cattle Dog."

 

Most reactivity is caused by normal (predictable) developmental change that occur during early adolescence, whereby dogs become increasingly wary of the unfamiliar, usually unfamiliar dogs, unfamiliar people, and unfamiliar surroundings, compounded by owners unintentionally reinforcing their dogs' fearful behaviour.

 

Sufficient, early, off-leash socialisation and play prevent the otherwise predictable development of fear of the unfamiliar and so, dogs would much rather play than fight and so, there's no reason for owners to become nervous and upset. However, the adolescent-onset of progressive fear of the unfamiliar is insidious and often goes unnoticed. Owners become complacent when customarily seeing their friendly and confident dog play with familiar dogs in familiar settings and so, are surprised when their dog becomes reactive around unfamiliar dogs in unfamiliar settings. This change is predictable and so, all the more urgency and importance for puppies to develop dog-dog social savvy in off-leash puppy and then, adolescent classes.

 

We may gain another perspective on dog-dog reactivity by interviewing the dog: “Well she’s a lovely owner. Brilliant temperament. Totally trustworthy. Good breeding. Saxon stock. But she has this thing about some dogs, especially little white dogs. Well, now, these days, nearly every dog. I just don’t understand it. Nowadays, I only feel relaxed walking at 2:00am when there’s no other dogs around. If a dog approaches, she just loses it. Her eyes cloud over and she shakes and shouts and yanks on my leash. It’s not pleasant and I worry about her. So, I feel it's my responsibility to keep the other dogs at bay. I tell them, "Wrroof Wrroof! Grrrwoofff! Grrrrrrrrrrrr... Keep away! Stay back! She’s not to be trusted!” Sound familiar?