This seminar was a thoroughly enjoyable two days of practice, theory, and discussion of TAGteach with Theresa McKeon. We were delighted to see some familiar faces and to welcome new friends as well. It was instructive to hear about how each participant was applying TAGteach in their respective fields, including in corporate management, with special needs children, in the veterinary setting, for animal handlers, as parents, and more. Regardless of industry, we all shared a need for clarity of information and for greater understanding of learner challenges.  Here’s more information about TAGteach.

Over the weekend we were encouraged to both teach and learn with the intense focus and precision that TAGteach enables. We practiced clearly identifying and describing the results we wanted rather than placing emphasis on unwanted behavior. More effective prompting got behaviors started in the right direction very quickly, and set both learner and teacher up for many successes. Just as much fun as practicing our own TAGteach skills was having experienced TAGteachers practice on us. No matter what skills we were learning or teaching, using TAGteach meant it stayed fun for all.

Jessica Taylor and Linda Randall, DVM (Agility Underground) presented on their recent research regarding the delivery of prompts, studying the relative merits of Group vs. Individual prompting. Kristen VanNess, Karin Coyne, and Abigail Curtis presented on their application of TAGteach at their annual 4H dog camp (more on this). The presentations offered us new ways of thinking about how we apply TAGteach, no matter what we are teaching.

PosiDog Canine Learning Center was thrilled to house this TAGteach Primary Certification Seminar. Kristen VanNess, KPA-CTP and PosiDog Lead Trainer, was our host. Kristen earned her Primary Certification in Chicago last year, and is currently working toward her Level 1 Certification. Sarah Keegans, PosiDog Assistant Trainer, earned her Primary Certification in Colorado Springs last year, and this was her second seminar. Morgan Newman, PosiDog Assistant Trainer, earned his TAGteach Primary Certification at the seminar. All three of us left full of ideas and excitement about putting what we had learned into practice.

While we were learning to better teach people with Theresa at PosiDog, our Assistant Trainer, Chad Byerly, attended another seminar.  Chad  spent a four-day weekend in hilly southern Pennsylvania studying decoy techniques under Jimmy Vanhove, France’s top-ranked Level 3 French Ring Decoy. One day maybe decoy skills will be taught with TAGteach   Chad is hopeful that he will be able to attend a TAGteach seminar sometime in the near future, maybe even at PosiDog Canine Learning Center in 2010.

On a related note, our friend Axel Van der Borght passed his test on Saturday and is now a licensed Belgian Ring trial decoy. Axel is a clicker trainer and is passionate about showing how well the “clicker way” works for sport and police dogs. Congratulations Axel!

 We hope to bring BelgianK9Friends (Axel and his training partner Guy Penning) to PosiDog Canine Learning Center for clicker seminars and workshops during 2010.