Real Life Foundations: Holiday Edition

Oroville, California

Dates: October 27, November 3, November 10, and November 17
Time: Tuesdays at 6:00 PM
Duration: 4 Weeks
Small Group Format: Limited to 5 dog and handler teams

The holidays are coming, which means guests, disrupted routines, busier environments, family gatherings, travel, decorations, and a whole lot more happening in our dogs’ worlds.

Real Life Foundations: Holiday Edition is a 4-week group class designed to help dogs and their people build practical skills that carry over into everyday life, with a little extra focus on preparing for everything the holiday season tends to throw at us.

Maybe your dog pulls you down the sidewalk, checks out the second you leave the house, thinks every dog and person is their business, struggles to settle when things get exciting, gets overwhelmed in busy environments, or suddenly develops selective hearing the moment distractions show up.

Your dog does NOT need to be reactive to benefit from this class.

The goal isn’t simply to teach commands. We’ll work on helping you better understand the dog in front of you while building communication, engagement, leash skills, neutrality, confidence, and the ability to make better choices when real life gets distracting.

And with Thanksgiving right around the corner, we’ll also talk about how those same foundational skills can help with guests, gatherings, changes in routine, increased activity, and holiday chaos.

This is also a great foundational class for anyone interested in continuing into our Good Dog, Good Citizen class and working toward the AKC Canine Good Citizen test.

A Sneak Peek Inside the Curriculum

Week 1: “Hello? Earth to Dog?”

Does your dog seem tuned into absolutely everything except you? Dogs, smells, people, movement, a leaf blowing through the parking lot... somehow all significantly more interesting than the human holding the leash?

We’ll start by building the foundation everything else depends on: communication and engagement.

We’ll work on:

• Engagement and focus around distractions
• Marker training and clearer communication
• Understanding your dog’s body language
• Recognizing stress, arousal, and threshold
• Identifying triggers and distractions
• Building management strategies that prevent unwanted behaviors from being rehearsed
• Helping your dog learn that checking in with you actually pays off

Week 2: “Walks Shouldn’t Feel Like Water Skiing”

If your walks involve pulling, zig-zagging, lunging toward something interesting, stopping every three feet, or questioning who exactly is walking who, we’ve got you covered.

This week focuses on leash handling, structured movement, engagement, and helping your dog stay connected to you while navigating the world.

We’ll work on:

• Loose leash walking
• Leash handling skills for humans
• Structured movement and changes of direction
• Engagement around distractions
• Creating successful distance when needed
• Recognizing when your dog is approaching threshold
• Helping dogs disengage and reconnect with their handler

Week 3: “The Art of Minding Your Own Business”

Your dog doesn’t need to say hello to everyone, play with every dog, investigate every stroller, or have a strongly worded opinion about the suspicious-looking inflatable Santa across the street.

Neutrality is a skill, and it’s one of the most valuable things we can teach our dogs.

This week we’ll work on:

• Neutrality around dogs, people, and movement
• Passing distractions without needing to interact
• Handler advocacy
• Environmental management
• Confidence building
• Impulse control
• Helping dogs make calmer decisions
• Learning when to engage, when to move away, and when to simply mind their own business

Week 4: “Holiday Dress Rehearsal”

Now we put it all together.

Thanksgiving is right around the corner, so our final class will focus on taking the foundational skills we’ve built and applying them to the kinds of situations you and your dog may actually encounter during the holidays and in everyday life.

We’ll work on:

• Polite greetings
• Guests entering the home
• Place work and settling
• Managing excitement and overstimulation
• Creating safe spaces and decompression opportunities
• Maintaining engagement around distractions
• Real-life leash and neutrality skills
• Creating a realistic holiday plan for your individual dog

Depending on the dogs enrolled and what the group needs most, we may also incorporate real-world scenarios or environmental work to put these skills into practice.

This is not a dog socialization class or a chaotic free-for-all. Dogs will not be required to greet one another. One of the biggest skills we want our dogs to learn is that they can comfortably exist around other dogs and people without needing to interact with them.

This class is appropriate for a wide variety of dogs, from the adolescent dog who suddenly believes the world is more interesting than you, to the enthusiastic social butterfly who wants to greet everyone, to dogs who need a little more confidence or space around distractions.

For dogs with significant fear, aggression, or reactivity, please reach out before enrolling so we can make sure a group environment is the appropriate place to start.

All equipment and training tools are welcome. Training should fit the individual dog and handler team. If you have questions about equipment, I’m happy to help guide you.

Real Life Foundations is also an excellent stepping stone toward our Good Dog, Good Citizen class. Many of the skills we build here, including loose leash walking, polite greetings, neutrality around other dogs, handling, engagement, settling, and working around distractions, create the foundation you’ll need when preparing for the AKC Canine Good Citizen test.

Small group format • Limited to 5 teams

After registration, participants will receive an onboarding email with additional class details and required intake and liability paperwork to complete before the first class.