Fenzi Courses

Stop it guys. You're going to make me spend money.

For those who have taken a fenzi class before, how does it work at the bronze level? Do they give you a code to look at the material or username or somethign like that?

I really want to take the Impulse control class, we need it lol

You have a username and pass same as everyone else. There are forums and lectures. You can see everything everyone else can, you just can't reply or create your own threads.

I am currently taking heeling precision and control that crazy canine and I am beyond thrilled with it. the classes have done a great job at keeping us motivated and the forums have been really helpful for trouble shooting tips. I'm most likely going to continue on with heeling games in the next session. Fenzi dog rocks!

What is everyone taking this term? I wanna know! LOL.

I'm thinking out of motions and prey drive 1. There are a bunch of others I want to take, but I feel these two are most important for us right now.

Prey Drive class. Both myself and Nancy Little want me to take it at Gold. Responsible adult in me is probably going to take it at Bronze.

I want to take everything at Gold. My bank account however would totally break our relationship if I tried that. I even have to limit my class choices. Sad.

Maybe we can both encourage each other in prey drive. That is one of my biggest hurdles. School stresses me out and then I go for easy things with the dogs.

Fronts and Finishes! I might take one more.

I think I'm definitely doing the intro to agility one. I have a couple jumps and we could do some of it indoors at low speed.

I'm conflicted on the second. Kind of want to do training the handler or whatever it's called, but I think it's one I need to do at gold to get anything out of, and I just don't have the time or space for a gold class now. Then I thought puppy classss, but if I get a puppy it won't be until June so that seems pointless. So prey drive? I'm worried it will just be stuff I already know but either haven't followed through enough or haven't been able to use in real life situations.

We totally can keep each other going!

The main "oh sh*t" moment where I really took a step back and said we have to get Siri's prey drive under control was at our run through. There was a screaming baby (infant) and Siri said 'SMALL DYING ANIMAL, MUST KILL!!' and it scared me A LOT. So yeah. I am all in on this one.

The reason I'm not sure about the prey drive class is that Watson isn't really like that at all. But if he smells an animal trail, even with no animals in sight, he becomes obsessed and is so hard to reach mentally. He is interested in chasing moving things and live animals too, but that's much easier for me to manage and train. So I'm not sure how much I will get out of the class if it's mostly about the drive to chase things vs hunting things. The description and equipment mentioned having radio controlled cars and moving toys, and I don't think he would see those as distractions unless I tied a live bunny to the back (and my bunnies are not going to sign up for that).

I might email Denise or the instructor and see what she says. If I don't take it, I'd love to hear updates from you guys on what you learn and I might take it in the future. I love the idea of the class.

I don't think I will be taking any this session, but I am interested in the Bogeyman course. Has anyone here ever taken it? I emailed the instructor last week about that course versus Ring Confidence for Kimma (though I think the Bogeyman one is more along the lines of what I need to work through our issues) and I haven't heard back. I would want to save up to take it at Gold.

We're taking the Prey Drive class and Get Focused. Pretty excited. Will take them both at bronze level because... money.

Focus was one of the other ones I wanted to take! They have so many good offerings, it's so hard to narrow them down.

It really is! I chose those two at the same time because I think they'll really compliment each other. I read the syllabus and it's all a lot of focus and recall with distractions (dogs and squirrels especially) which is what we need to work on the most.

I took focus at silver and wasn't blown away by it. It was good, but for the most part it was stuff I knew. I also didn't have the time to really really devote to doing the exercises every day in new locations which didn't help. There also weren't any gold dogs who reminded me of Watson at all, except a 4 month old puppy, so that also made it hard to get a ton out of it. It was ok, but probably my least favorite fenzi class so far.

Finkie, have you tried asking Denise? She might respond faster.

What are you looking to get out of it? I haven't taken either class, but I bet if you laid out what you want and asked the FB group they would give you a recommendation too.

Hmm. That's good to know. I haven't taken any group classes with him because he really won't focus in close proximity to other dogs (yet). I KNOW a lot of stuff like "Look At That" and "It's Yer Choice" would help him, but I'm really struggling with bridging the gap between know what the process is and doing it with a real live dog. I end up just sort of doing some stuff here and there so I was hoping have it in a class/program format would help me be more consistent and varied.

No, I haven't. I emailed Dr. Cook. I will try emailing Denise

Basically I'm looking to help Kimma with her trial-environment shut downs. We've been making a lot of progress, but I feel like things are starting to plateau.

If you can commit to following the program, even when the exercises seem simple and boring, I think you will probably get something out of it. The other people in the class said they loved it though I didn't see much evidence in the gold videos that the dogs had come a long way.

I'm sure if I had really done it step by step I would have taken more away too, but going at it more casually it was boring and kind of obvious. Not even many games to play, just a lot of "click and treat for eye contact, click and treat for longer eye contact, then ask for a behavior before you click and treat". The gold dogs in my class were mostly kind of shut down/nervous or reactive. The only one that was confident and more interested in exploring the environment, like Watson, was the puppy and of course she was young and spazzy so I didn't get to see how it worked with an adult dog similar to Watson.

Maybe it's just one of those foundation things that you have to do even if it's boring, though I feel like I've done a ton of that stuff already in Watson's life. I want to sign up for the Focus Games class when that comes out because I think that will be more engaging