How Movement Works" is an 8-week online course. All Zoom lectures and Q&A sessions will be recorded. We have a group of expert TAs to support your work through this course. View course details at BehaviorWorks.org by clicking on Professional Courses. Class will begin on October 10, 2023 This course is offered once per year in October. "How Movement Works" is a professional course and is designed to improve the welfare of animals by improving our training and observation skills via teaching our learners precise movement skills. These movement skills also result in confidence for our learners once they gain the ability to control their bodies in new and precise ways from head to tail. These behaviors are often a foundation for husbandry behaviors, fitness, and a variety of activities and sports. This course is about improving the skills of both the teacher and the learner through movement behaviors. The course uses precision movement behaviors to expand the teacher’s knowledge of shaping and observation skills, timing, positioning, and reinforcement strategies as well as help our animals learn the subtleties and intricacies of movement work. Our animals will have an expanded skills repertoire which is useful for most activities, as well as moving through life with more behaviors to apply in a variety of situations. The weekly homework focuses on the entire movement loop or cycle rather than focusing on goal-behaviors. Intermediate and advanced trainers will learn to look at details in the learner’s responses, alignment, various subtle movements such as weight-shifts during shaping, and more. Self-observation and critique are complex and we’ll practice setting up and refining the conditions for success. Both trainers and animals will develop better communication and connection through the joy created by teaching movement work. The skills in this class can be applied to a variety of animals. The descriptions for how to teach the weekly-behaviors will focus mostly on dogs—these descriptions can easily be modified for other animal species. Video examples include dogs as well as other animals.

Sponsor:BehaviorWorks.org
Speaker(s):Lori Stevens, CPDT-KA, CPBC, SAMP, CCFT

Contact: Lori Stevens
 Email: lrs@behaviorworks.org
 Web: https://www.behaviorworks.org/htm/how_movement_works_info_links.html