I have avoided putting much of my work here on dKos for a few of reasons:
1. Scared of Political Fallout - hate to lose customers because of my political bent
2. Afraid of being accused of spamming - nothing like sharing stuff your passionate about and getting shellacked for spamming
3. Anonymity - I'm pretty naked online, it's not hard to find my front door.
Well, I'm over that now, having outed myself and our business in triciawyse's woozles & pooties series. I'm also really interested in getting our 1/2 hour weekly dog training & lifestyle web series out to a larger audience. I'm maxed out on teh FB. So I'm reaching out here, and on a few other non-dog sites to increase our reach. I hope that you'll pass it on to your crazy dog friends.
We're trying to shop it around to agents & production companies in order to get some production support to keep it going. As of now, I plan, shoot, and edit the whole thing - and I can't keep it up much longer...
And, not to toot my own horn or anything, it's a pretty bad ass show. Follow me past the little orange dust bunny and I'll show you & tell you all about it.
So... What's the Point?
The video above is our show trailer, and it's only 1m04s long, check it out and you can see some cool dog stuff and get an idea of what we're all about. Go ahead. I'll wait...
As you can see, the point of the show is to help people make their dogs cool and to have a great time doing it. All the dog training shows out there focus on fixing the dog, or making the dog behave. Well, you can get that without focusing on it. We like to talk about obedience through interaction, and it not only works, but it's cool and much more fun than "obedience".
Having a solid working understanding of operant conditioning and positive reinforcement changes people's lives. People (and their dogs) become more confident and capable and wind up with a different perspective on life and how it can be navigated.
Why a 1/2 Hour?
As you will see in the diaries that follow, we go pretty deep, highlighting a fairly complete foundation of dog training that is built upon behavioral concepts and the principles of classical and operant conditioning.
Doing things in one off, 5 minute video clips might be easy to consume for the viewer, but it doesn't allow for nuance and problem solving. The dog training shows and videos out there are pretty much cookie cutter, perfect sessions, using experienced dogs in the case of training videos, or relying on heavily edited footage in order to get a quick fix on behavioral problems. But there is no time in dog training.
This cookie cutter approach does not represent real dog training. It doesn't work like that in real life. It's like learning to hang a door from HG TV. Sure it works if everything is perfect, and you have a epic set of tools. But what if your door frame is 88° instead of 90? What if you have a different kind of door frame? What do you do then?
That's the kind of stuff people need to know. That's why we do full sessions with green dogs and we don't edit out mistakes; so people can be level set as to what dog training is and what it really looks like.
Our goal is to make you a better dog trainer and to improve your working relationship with your dog.
Who Are You Guys Anyway?
We are dog trainers who live in the middle of the city with a large pack of rescue dogs. We've got more than 40 years of dog training between the two of us. We do
Assistance Dogs and
Frisbee Dogs, and pretty much anything in between.
We do camps and seminars, run a Disc Dog Bed and Breakfast (dog training vacation), and do local pet training. Apryl is also a classically trained metal sculptor (BFA), and I'm a freelance writer and blogger - she welds, I type - go figure...
Where Can I Check Out the Show
The show is
on YouTube and we're shopping it around to a short list of media production companies. (If you have any connections in the biz, please, let me know in comments...)
I will be posting each episode in it's own diary here at dKos and will answer any and all questions about them in comments.
In the meantime, if you're interested in checking out the show, here's the first episode:
Surf by segment:
0:43 - Attention for Toys with Hops
2:22 - Fridge Retrieve with Parkour
3:16 - Show Introduction & Backer Shoutout
5:55 - Shaping & Capturing Attention with Flo
9:51 - Flowing Mo Moves with Hops
10:56 - 3 Flavors of Attention
13:26 - Go Do Dog Stuff - Dismissal
14:44 - Dismiss to Warmup with Kiva
16:28 - NH Disc Dog Camp Vignette
18:01 - 1 Footed Foot Stall with Hops
20:07 - Sequence Building - Notecards with Kiva
22:35 - 1 Footed Footstall Reloaded
24:31 - Notecards & Big Air with Kiva
26:00 - Vault Quickie
26:28 - Attention - Performance is Not Understanding
28:59 - Refocusing with Attention with Lexi