Preparing for Camp

Thanks to camp, this is how my room/office area looks like. There is a box of stuff to go in Blue, a box for Red, prizes, craft supplies, give-aways, harnesses, reading materials, more harnesses, notebooks and handouts, cooking supplies....


When camp is over it magically all hides in my closet or on top of a big shelf. But for the next week, this is where it will be.

See you next week campers!

Camp and Workshops

Camp Applications are available on our website. We will be having two camps this year.

"Canine Explorers" is for 4-H members 13 and older that have 1-3 years of 4-H dog experience. This is a good fit for 4-H members that participate in 1-2 dog activites projects and are primarily only involved in 4-H projects.
"Canine Challengers" is for 4-H mebers age 14 and older, who have 3+ years of 4-H dog experience. 4-H members applying for this camp should have dog experience outside of 4-H, participate in multiple dog activities or have attended camp two or more years.

We will also be holding three one day "mini-camp" CLICK workshops. All 4-H members, parents, and advisors are invited to attend.

This years locations are:

May 9th: Cambridge Park Armory, Cambridge OH
12:00-6:00pm

May 22nd: Posidog Canine Learning Center, Grove City, OH
1:30-7:00pm

May 23rd: Mercer County Fairgrounds, Celina OH
12:00-6:00pm

Applications for the workshops will be on our site within the next few days. We hope to see you there!

Five Tips for Success in 4-H

1) Get rid of your food bowl. Your dog gets all meals through training or in food toys like the "Kibble Nibble" or "Tug a Jug."

2) Practice every day. Short training sessions are important (2-3 minutes at a time, or less!).

3) Be Prepared. Know what you have to do for your level of competition. Know the rules.

4) Go to meetings and practices. Work hard and be attentive in class. Ask questions and help each other.

5) Each session, work on only one skill. It is very important to practice one thing lots of time to make the changes happen in your dog's brain. A few repetitions is not sufficient.

Obedience is great!

Kristen

Teen Conference

We had a great time at Teen Conference and were happy to see four of our campers, and one was even presenting!

Thanks to our campers who helped with activities. You're the best!

State wide 4-H events are a great thing to attend, there is always a lot to learn and interesting people to meet.

A summary of our two sessions:

Teaching New Skills:
This session was super interesting! We will definitely be playing with some of these activities at camp. We started out with a communication exercise, challenging groups to be clear and concise. From there...we were teaching either skills they did not know or teaching skills their partner did not know. One of the most common demonstrations was "rabbit/chicken handling" and "rabbit-chicken putting in/out of cages." So many of these members said it was one of the hardest things to learn in their project areas. They had their partners doing the activity within minutes!

I was especially excited about this as we have been talking about one of our camp activities this year to be on animal handling and restraint. Using Sophia Yin's book _Low Stress Handling, Restraint and Behavior Modification of Dogs & Cats_ When I read this book, I thought "WOW, this would be a great TagTeach activity to do at camp! We can start with stuffed dogs and go cooperative real dogs!"


Our other session was on clicker training animals. We were surprised, not only did we have a huge attendance, but more people came than we expected. Clicker training is simple but not easy! It was exciting to see the variety of species everyone had (livestock, to horses, to dogs, to birds!)and the interest. Next year we will probably break down our activities even further. If anyone remembers our activities from the previous year, we've learned hands on is better than lectures...but hands on for 50 people is -quite- a challenge!

Thanks to all our campers who attended and assisted.

Go Click Challenge

We are currently working hard to improve this years camps(yes, there will be two!), but we are also having a lot of fun training our dogs.

A few weeks ago Kristen, Megan and I started the Go Click Challenge as a way to challenge ourselves to train new skills. Every Sunday we post a new challenge and encourage people to train throughout the week and then send us videos, photos or comments about their progress. Past challenges have included a kick-back stand, 4 feet in a box, play dead and teaching the dog to put its nose into a muzzle. So go find your clicker, your dog and some treats and start training for this weeks challenge!

Solving Your Training Problems

What? A second post this month? It is true!

When you're having a problem with training...look at these pieces:

1) What is your rate of reinforcement. How many times/minute are you click/treating. The higher this number per minute, the better. An exception would be behaviors that take a long time (...retrieve) or duration behaviors (stays or heeling).
2) What is the placement of reinforcer? Where exactly are you putting your reinforcer? If you have a stay exercise, you almost always want to feed the dog in position, with his chin tucked a little. If you are doing heeling with a slow dog, toss the treat ahead. If you are heeling with an excited dog, feed at nose level, right along your leg. If you are doing fronts...feed right where your dog's head should be: Straight and close to you.
3) Think about how you present the reinforcer. Do you move your hand to his mouth? Do you have him move to get it? Do you toss the reinforcer?


Rate of reinforcement, placement of reinforcer, presentation of reinforcer. There will be a test on these at camp! (...well.. maybe not...)

Kristen.

Preparations

We hope to see our campers at the teen conference next month! We'll be there with new activities and information to share.

Start thinking of activities you might like to see at camp. We're slowly reworking our application process and figuring out ways to help you have the best experience as possible.

Thanks to a grant from Ohio 4-H, we will be offering two "Connected Learning in Canines and Kids" (CLICK!) workshops in Ohio this year. These will be one day events...and more information to come as we prepare for our official announcement on this program.