To love your dog and develop a fun, working bond in a safe environment while learning basic agility foundations which can be built upon.

Students will lean various agility equipment and the basic skills necessary to navigate small sequences, as well as building confidence in the dogs with a new environment & a new task.

*students to bring crates as needed, martingale style collar with flat leash preferred & your dogs favourite motivater (treats, toys, etc)

Interested in training your dog to be a therapy dog for an organization like PALS? Want to learn how to start training an Owner Trained Service Dog? Or maybe you just want a well-behaved pet, that even your neighbours enjoy? Teaching your dog the skills required to pass the Canine Good Neighbour Test is the first step.

Our CGN classes will help prepare you for the CGN test, which evaluates a dog’s basic manners and obedience training. To receive your certificate requires a pass in ALL of these 12 skills/steps:

1. Accepting a Friendly Stranger – without jumping or barking

2. Politely Accepts Petting – while in a sit or down position

3. Appearance and Grooming – accepting brushing and demonstrating comfort when handled by a strange is helpful in many situations, like vet visits

4. Out for a Walk – politely walks on a loose leash

5. Walking Through a Crowd – loose leash walking around several people, which may include children

6. Sit/Down and Stay in Place

7. Come When Called – reliable recall in a distracting environment

8. Praise/Interaction – demonstrates the ability to settle down after enthusiastic play

9. Reaction to Passing Dog – demonstrating the ability to ignore the distraction of a friendly dog

10. Reaction to Distractions – tests comfort around everyday distractions such as a person with a cane or the sound of a vacuum cleaner

11. Supervised Isolation – dog must remain quiet and demonstrate comfort without jumping up when the owner is out of sight for 3 minutes

12. Walking Through a Door / Gate – shows that the dog won’t bolt ahead of the handler.

Your Instructor is Dr. Carla Simon, BSc, MD, MBA, who is a CGN evaluator. Carla has been a CKC member for 23 years, a former behavior assessor for the Calgary Humane Society, and organized Alberta’s first CGN test in 2002. She’s a professional sniffer dog trainer, whose dogs regularly demonstrate all of the CGN skills at work, including bed bug deployments in diverse environments. Carla has taught thousands of students around the world and is passionate about making evidence-based dog training both motivational and effective.

Please note that CGN classes will help prepare you to pass the CGN test but does not include the test. Watch for upcoming CGN test dates, as they are approved, on the Canadian Kennel Club website. While some service organizations require proof that the dog passed its CGN test, passing the test does not automatically mean the dog will qualify as a service dog or a therapy dog. Depending on your previous relationship with your dog and how much sustained effort you put into your homework, some teams may need to take the class or the test more than once to pass.

The CGN test welcomes mixed-breed and purebred dogs over 6 months of age. Encouragement and praise may be used throughout testing. Multiple commands are allowed. But training aids including pinch collars, food and toys are prohibited, clickers, etc. will not be allowed.

Training these foundational obedience skills is fun, rewarding, and useful for working dogs, service dogs and well-mannered pets. It will help you to build a richer bond with your canine partner and enjoy the freedom that comes with a well-trained dog.

An intro to agility for puppies ages 6 months to 1 year. Come build your puppy's confidence while learning the basic skills, coordination and foundations to move into an agility class once your puppy is older! All of our activities have been designed to be low impact as to avoid any disturbance to developing skeletal structures. All puppies must have been through a regular puppy class prior to attending. You will need to bring a flat collar and leash, a favourite toy and lots of tiny treats. We are very excited to offer this and can't wait to see you!!

Rally obedience (also known as Rally or Rally-O) is a dog sport based on traditional obedience – with fun twists and turns. This novice class will focus on Canadian Kennel Club (CKC) Novice level exercises building dog/handler focus, shaping heel position while in motion for longer periods of time, stationary position changes (sit, down, stand, front), and moving position changes (turns, spirals, pace changes). These skills will help the dog/handler teams build their confidence to compete in Rally.

Rally obedience (also known as Rally or Rally-O) is a dog sport based on traditional obedience – with fun twists and turns. Rally is a great dog sport where teams build a positive working relationship while negotiating a course of different exercises. In this class we will work on heeling techniques, sits, downs, fronts etc. to build the solid foundations of the skills you may need to compete in Rally and other dog sports.

Whether you want to start training scent detection for fun, you’re competing in nosework at the Elite international level, or your training a dog for deployments (e.g. Search and Rescue), we’ll help you to succeed with our proven protocols.

Every dog can learn to find target odor.

We’ll explain what to do at every step so it’s easy. Your dog will learn:

• To love finding target odor. Motivation is the key to all advanced skills!

• Obedience to odor

• To search systematically

• To find the precise location of source (the highest concentration of odor), within 2-6 inches

• To move their nose as close to source as possible

• To stay at source and receive multiple high value rewards, until cued to leave.

No previous experience is required. There are no prerequisites for this course. We start our puppies as young as 5 weeks, using motivation and games so every dog can succeed. Dogs of all ages can learn as long as they are motivated by food or toy rewards.

Goals

Our Beginner Scent Detection classes will prepare you to:

• Pass an odor recognition test  e.g. ORT, DOT, container search or lineup

• Confidently search and find source (the precise location of a target odor)

• Our protocols consistently prevent common undesirable behaviors that cause failures in advanced searches, deployments and nosework competition.

Check out this video!

Improve your service dog candidate’s obedience skills, with an emphasis on settle down and relax at your feet, leaving your dog in a stay while you go out of sight, and introducing mitigating tasks. This class assumes your dog already understands basic obedience skills like  sit, down, recall and loose leash walking. Note: If you mainly want to work on loose leash walking, Canine Neighbour Classes are a better choice. Students may use training aids like harnesses, and head halters. Equipment: please bring high value rewards, and a comfortable dog bed or low platform (like a bath matt or Klimb table) for your dog to go to and relax.

Wonder if your dog would be good at Search and Rescue?

Want to train your dog to follow the evidence left on the trail behind a tracklayer?

Train your dog for CKC/AKC tracking tests at Barrett Dog Sports

All levels of trackers enjoy this class. Your in-structor is Carla Simon, a professional sniffer dog trainer with CKC field and urban tracking titles. Her approach is so clear and fun, a 4 month-old puppy demonstrates: https://vimeo.com/659900432/bdef3639de

The foundation of all training is teaching tricks and building upon them to develop your skills as a team to accomplish any goals you desire. Through teaching tricks, you will build countless skills as a handler. You will be introduced to various techniques of teaching, proper reward marking, learn to progress behaviors, improve focus and control and build your relationship with your dog while having FUN in this five week class!

This class is perfect for puppies but any dog and handler can learn including our Senior Citizens (K9 and human).

Successful graduation of this Class will include earning your Novice Trick Dog Title Certificate and Ribbon while additionally building skills toward your Masters Title.

There are four Standard trick title levels: Novice, Intermediate, Advanced, Expert, Trick Dog Champion, and Trick Dog Grand Champion. There are also Masters level titles to display your dog’s mastery of numerous tricks within one difficulty level. All are recognized by the Canadian Kennel Club.