Where are my paws?
You seen them?
An online course to polish your training skills
AND up your dog’s coordination skills. 2 in 1! Whoop!
We love paw targets. They are a simple way of telling our dogs WHERE the paws need to go. They are perfect for coordination exercises!
Coordination is all about efficient movement.
… and for that we, the handlers, must become efficient in our training!
Welcome to Where Are My Paws!
An exercise focused course, covering
20 exercises over 6 weeks
See what the others are saying:
This course was life changing for both my dog and me. We have always been struggling with shaping, and we have always been struggling with body awareness (especially hind legs). Not only that this class helped us with putting those paws at specific spots and targets. It also made both of us feel more confident in general, and we really loved all the sessions!
The lectures are great, and Mari’s feedback is amazing! Always detailed, helpful and motivating! We learned to love the clicker, we learned to love food, we learned to have fun with training – and we hope that Mari will have her next class ready very soon, because we can’t wait to continue working with her!!!
Susanne
I have taken Mari’s course with two of my dogs – a puppy and a senior. They both had age specific trouble with usage of their body and these simple exercises made a big difference! I had tried teaching my dogs stepping on small targets before, but thought it was just too hard for a puppy or an elderly dog to do it with ease. Mari had such well thought out plan for teaching these skills, that I was amazed how fast both dogs learned. Not only that, but they also did the difficult movements fast and effortlessly. It’s really neat!
Emma
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if your trainer would pay equal amount of attention to both your dog and to you, the actual trainer of your dog? Enter Mari’s course! Not only has she great eye for the most subtle details of your dog’s form, she will also notice these subtle details in your actions that make your dog do what it does (or does not). We were so stuck in the manic food-grabbing behavior with my “I’m the fastest eater in the world” young border collie Zirka. Not any more! Well, Zirka is still in the run for the fastest eater prize, but Mari helped me to use reward placement in a way that helped Zirka to find her paws and use them according to our training plan. Mari is the most thorough trainer I know and determined to help her students succeed in whatever their goal might be. And she will do it with kindness and humor!
Rita
Mari’s methods of teaching canine body coordination are nothing short of genius. I was not new to paw targets or clicker training when I started taking lessons from her on the subject, however, I was amazed by how much I could improve my training in this area. The setup of Mari’s exercises is designed so that both the dog and the handler will experience the minimum amount of error and frustration. Everything is broken down into simple, easy to understand pieces that fluidly build up to more complex behaviors in a satisfyingly logical manner. Her program really is a must for any training enthusiast, I guarantee you will learn something new!
Reet
I’ve just finished week 4 of the Where are my paws course, and can HIGHLY recommend it. The explanations and videos are really good and clear. I have been working through it with both my dogs and their paw targeting behaviours are so much more cleaner and calmer. No extinction behaviours, no dancing around, no snatching at food, and I can see the improved posture transferring to everything else too. I will definitely be doing another course with Mari.
Lucy
One of the things I’ve really begin to appreciate about your Paws class as we’re working through it is how reward placement truly impacts movement. I thought I was fairly reward placement savvy after years of dog training with approaches like shaping, but until your class I hadn’t really grasped how influential just the tiniest different in reward location can be. It’s been really revolutionary to me, to consider my reward location now down to the centimetre, way more precise than I’d before forced myself to consider.
Anna
Registration is CLOSED
What’s included
Bits and pieces
This course is focused on +R approach. Clicker/marker words and treats will be our friends here.
Yes, we will be teaching paw targets as a foundation behavior. BUT… It’s really about developing a system for teaching different movement patterns that can be used for coordination training.
Great, you already have one of the foundation behaviors in place 🙂 While we do use paw targets in this class, it’s more about using paw targets in various ways to get controlled and deliberate foot movements. There will be definitely new things for you to learn in this course!
It would be best to use stable and non-slippery targets for this course. You will need 2 big square targets, side length about 2x dog’s shoulder width. The targets should be 1-2 cm thick for small dogs, 2-3 cm for medium dogs and 4-5 cm for big dogs. I use rubber door mat cut into pieces – that’s non slippery, stays in place and can be cut into sizes I need. Ideally we want to reduce the size of targets gradually. If you have different sized targets available, then that’s great. But all of the exercises can be done with just 2 big targets.