Band City Kennel and Obedience Club

The Band City Kennel and Obedience Club provides classes starting with Puppy Socialization, right up to Competitive Obedience. Whether you have a new puppy you just want to get out, or have an older dog that needs to learn some manners, or if you want to train to a higher level and possibly compete, we have a class for you. Our classes are open to both pure-bred and mixed-breed dogs. All dogs are required to have up to date vaccinations (for puppies, appropriate for age) to attend classes.

Puppy Level 1- Age: 8 weeks to 5 months
This puppy class teaches the foundation work for obedience, agility, and any other sport you would like to be involved in. Also in the process of the class the puppy is exposed to people, other animals, different places and various circumstances. Through these exposures, the puppy learns about the world around it, and how it is expected to behave in that world. Your puppy can gain self-assurance and the skills necessary to thrive in its co-habitation with humans. They will learn the simple commands of sit, down, come when called and walk on a loose lead. A well-socialized dog is a better companion, family member, show dog, and working dog.

Puppy Level 2 - Age : Up to 1 year old
The second level puppy class is a class that continues on with foundation work for all levels of competition, and also helps with the manners and skills your puppy will need to be a great member of your family. You will get a little taste of what Agility is all about also what basic and or competitive obedience might be like.

Basic Obedience - Age: 6 months and older
Basic Obedience teaches your dog the basic commands of heel and heeling patterns, sit, down, stay, come when called, stand for examination, etcetera, to establish the perfect family pet, or the Novice A Trialling dog.

Competitive Obedience
Competitive Obedience are classes that will get your dog ready to complete in an obedience trial up to the level of Open.

Conformation/Show Handling
Conformation classes are designed to be able to take a pure breed dog into a conformation show and be better able to obtain your conformation Championship title.

Clicker Training
Clicker training is the popular term for the training or teaching method based on what we know about how living organisms learn.

Research has shown that any creature, whether be it dog, cat, dolphin, parrot, fish, horse, llama, or person, is more likely to learn and repeat actions that result in consequences it desires and enjoys. So clicker trainers provide consequences desired by their animal in exchange for actions or behaviours desired by their trainers. We call these consequences rewards and the process is called reinforcement. Clicker training, therefore, is a positive-reinforcement-based system of training.

Why use a clicker? The essential difference between clicker training and other reward-based training is that the animal is told exactly which behaviour earned it a reward. This information is communicated with a distinct and unique sound, a click, which occurs at the same time as the desired behaviour. The reward follows. Without hearing a click during an action, an animal may not connect the reward with that action. Or, the animal may associate the reward with another, unwanted action. With the click, a trainer can precisely mark behaviour so that the animal knows exactly what it was doing. That is why clicker trainers call the click an event marker. The click also bridges or connects the behaviour and its reward, and so is also called a bridging signal.