Luring & Footwork Without a Dog

with Michael Ellis

54 Videos | 3 & 1/2 Hours of Content

There is a huge difference between a professional dog trainer and a great dog trainer.

People can be called professional dog trainers when they own a nice kennel and training facility or because they have owned a successful pet dog training business for 10 or 15 years. Some people are even considered professionals because they compete and win in their dog sport. There is nothing wrong with that, but that doesn't make them a great dog trainer, not even if they are very successful.

I am 72 year old and have been training dogs dogs since I was in high school. I do not consider myself a great dog trainer. What I am good at is recognizing a great dog trainer. I have only know a handful of really great trainers in my life. Michael Ellis is at the top of that list, followed by Cindy (the women I am lucky enough to live with). She will probably kill me for saying this but it happens to be true.

So what makes a great dog trainer?

A great trainer has a passion for training and an amazing work ethic. They understand that they will always have more to learn.They are people who are deeply focusing on learning, refining and maintaining the basic foundation of their training system. They can seamlessly apply those basics when working on advanced skills.

 They are not people who look for the newest problem solving training method. Rather they are more impressed when they learn a new way to improve and use the small little details that make up a behavior. 

They also know that when they take the time it takes to get their foundation totally solid they wont have to problem solve. 

So what is the foundation of training?

Every dog trainer worth his or her salt understands that engagement is the the absolute foundation of all good dog training. Simply put, if we don't have engagement we cannot train.

This is something Michael teaches his students from day one, starting in puppy class. When students bring their puppy or dog into the training room and the dog is completely distracted (not engaged) Michael shows them how to test for engagement but when that doesn't work he asks them to put their dog up and explains that they should bring it out later. This is a great learning experience

Learning to engage a dog is an art form. The process is where the dog learns that training can be fun. It is thru engagement that they start to "learn how to learn".  Every great trainer is a master of engagement and every new dog trainer can learn how to do it.

Once a dog will engage with his handler the very next thing great trainers teach is luring. That's what our course is all about.  Luring is the tool used to maintain engagement and to teach behaviors. It is also a tool we will use throughout the dogs life in a million different circumstances.

With our new dogs we use luring to teach the sit, to teach the down, to get the dog on it's dog bed. It's used to get our dog to focus on us as we move it through or past very distracting environments. It's how we maneuver our dogs into a formal heel position. The fact is there are an unlimited number of applications where luring is used to teach a dog what we want it to do or not do.

Learning to lure correctly is an art form. It is what great trainers do without thinking and they excel at. They do it so subtly that the average person doesn't even recognize what they just did. When we watch someone like Michael Ellis is running luring dills it is beautiful to watch. I may sound silly but its like poetry in motion. You can see this in the promo video for our luring course.

At our 3 day Ellis workshop one if the trainers at his school, Jesse,  had a 4 month old female Malinois puppy that she was training. When Michael wanted to use the puppy as a demo dog, Jesse had to bring the pup into the room and get it past a number of strangers and dogs in crates. She simply opened the crate she lured the pup (who already knew luring) right past the everyone who were all staring at it and the dogs that we barking. It was a beautiful example of how valuable luring can be. 

The average person thinks there isn't anything to luring. They think anyone can teach a dog to follow a food treat in your hand. They are right for about 2 seconds. But when  Michael asks them to maintain engagement as they run, reverse directions and make the dog miss a food target in their hand.(missing increases frustration and builds drive)

That's what our course will teach you. When luring is done correctly the handler can almost with speed (many can run) in both directions. He or she can reverse directions while maintaining engagement. Michael teaches how to safely move laterally or backward with speed and all the while maintaining engagement. He starts this work without a dog. He has developed a series of footwork drills that trainers should master before they try to do the work with their dog. The goal is to learn to do this safely without falling or worse rolling an ankle. Students who have attended Michael's school make luring look easy.

Our course shows dogs that are lured correctly (so you see what it should  look like) and we show a number of handlers and dogs that are still learning. In our opinion that people can best learn best by watching others go through the learning process. 

This course has 54 videos with a total of 3 1/2 hours of video. Just to be clear, there is some overlap of information in this course and some of the other videos we have produced with Michael.None of those courses go into the detail that we do in this online course.