Take the Class!: The Complete Manual for Dog Obedience Instructors [Paperback]

Silvia Kent (Author)

Book Description

15 Years In The Making - Here's the REAL STORY on how to teach dog training classes! REAL classes with bitchy owners, howling spaniels, aggressive rescued dogs, kids at the end of a lead attached to a Rottweiler, in tiny halls with slippery floors, in windswept fields, with unhelpful bystanders, you name it - We've done it! Me and my friend Rowna learned the hard way and I've written down what I know so you can save yourself time, money, trouble and heartache and get to be as confident as we became after a few hundred training classes with a few thousand owners and their individual dogs in much less than half the time. I've collected dozens and dozens of methods and arranged them into a handy A-Z of dog training, and then there's a very useful section on how exactly to treat over fifty problems in the foundation exercises. There's handy tips on class control, how to deal with difficult owners, what to do about problem dogs, and everything I have learned over the years about how you make classes exciting, great fun, super safe and get the owners to learn much faster and in an atmosphere of calm support. Thousands of copies of Take The Class! have been sold worldwide and it has been received with joy and more acclaim than we have space for on this site. If you are at all interested in many different dog training methods, how to teach properly and with absolute confidence, you really should invest in this manual.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Take The Class! has been proved so useful to our club in so many ways. It is absolutely excellent, we recommend it to every one of our new assistants and refer to it often. P. Scholey, ABIPDT, Cobham DTC - Dear Silvia, having purchased most of your range of books and tapes over the past years I continue to use them for reference. I am in the process of training three members of my club to become assistants. Your book, Take The Class! is a great source of reference to them as it is the only book that I know on the market which doesn't simply tell you about how to plan the class, what shoes to wear and what the floor surface should be like but also give advice to on what to do if you have dogs eyeballing each other or you have petrified owners. Angela Pitman MIACE, BIPDT, APDT, Fido DTC - I have enjoyed Take The Class immensely, in fact have not been able to put it down and I feel sure it will prove to be invaluable for many years to come. I thought the advice given, the humour and the so obvious insight into all aspects of dog training and an instructor's role, absolutely excellent. I will certainly recommend that this book should be read, indeed must be read, by anyone who is involved in teaching dog obedience. Thank you for your help. Mrs Liz Killick - Dear Silvia, I recently purchased your book Take The Class and was so impressed with it, I just had to write and compliment you on your ability to write so concisely and informatively on what I consider a minefield of a subject. For the past few years I have been the secretary of a dog training club. I also assist on a one-on-one basis with behaviour problems within the class. However I have never wanted to "take the class" as I felt that I had neither the knowledge or the confidence. By the time I had finished reading your book I had been transformed from a dog handler into someone who has now the confidence to say that I have the knowledge of knowing where to start setting up a course of instruction. Thank you for writing an interesting, readable and immensely helpful book. Mrs Joyce Cooper - Dear Mrs Kent, I have just finished reading your book Take The Class and I felt I must write to say how much I enjoyed it. I have been training dogs for many years. The last ten I have run the Dawlish Dog Training School. All profits go to charity and we have managed to donate just over GBP30 000, a record we are very proud of. The School has four qualified trainers with years of experience and two assistant trainers, we have 300 doggy pupils attending 28 classes each week for Obedience, Agility and Flyball. What I really enjoyed about your book was the fact that we seem to think and work alike, I agreed with almost everything you said, you also reminded me of several exercises which we have not used lately, and one or two problems which have occurred recently I was able to check in the book to see if I had handled the situation as you would have done. I have read many training manuals in the past, most of them I consider rubbish, but I am keeping Take the Class in my office and I am using it regularly as a reference and to remind me of exercises which can make classes more interesting. We can all get stale and become repetetive, we follow a structured course which has proved to be most efficient but at our next Trainers meeting when my other trainers have read your book I am sure we will be making alterations, especially to the advanced competition class. Good luck with all your future activities, if you ever chance to visit Devon, please look us up, we would be delighted to see you in any of our classes with best wishes, Pat Neale, Principal Trainer, Dawlish DTS - Dear Ms Kent, thank you for my copy of "Take The Class!". It's Brilliant!!! All obedience instructors should be made to read it! I was going through a de-motivated patch at club recently but Take The Class has put things back into perspective and has made me laugh. I found your comments on Kindergarten Puppy Classes especially interesting, it explained so well some of the problems we had been experiencing. Good luck with the book, I hope it sells a million yours sincerely - Jackie Mallins - Dear Mr Burnett, Some time ago you sent me "Take The Class!" and made a note that you would like to know if it was use to a ringcraft instructor as I had mentioned in my order. My reaction was to write back immediately and say "of course it will be!!" but I have waited for the first term to be over to give you a proper assessment. I can now say emphatically that it has been of great benefit to me as I am neither trained a s a teacher nor as the Obedience girls were by a Police Dog Handler. Everything applied to my class. I have to be in charge, responsible for saftey, not overbearing, helpful, etc. I had fumbled through a few weeks before I read about your book and what a difference! I structured the class, wore something distinctive to make me stand out and give me confidence, carried my notes on a clipboard and did much more, all as suggested and did it work! It made the world of difference and everyone noticed, right away. So yes. This is a book for ALL who instruct anything to do with dogs. Yours sincerely, Mrs M Marshall Breed Judge & Ringcraft Instructor - Thank you for sending your manual "Take The Class!". This has proved most helpful as a resource and a "Back up" for the One Day Instructional Course I had planned for our dog club assistants and would be instructors. The day was highly successful and had all the participants requesting more! With many thanks - BC Pearson, Senior Instructor, Twyford DTC - Dear Mrs Kent, I am absolutely delighted to have discovered your book "Take The Class". How refreshing to find a book that deals with the practicality of dog training, putting across How To Teach in such a readable and instructive way. This was certainly a book that is much needed and one which I will value greatly. Yours sincerely - Neil Watts BIPDT, Senior Instructor, Lucky Dog TS - Dear Mrs Kent, I have recently received your book "Take The Class" and I am so pleased with it. I take training classes and so the information contained in the book is so useful, I refer to it every week when I set out my plan for training. Also when there is a problem in an exercise, it is so helpful to have something to refer to you can trust to work every time. I call it "my instructor's bible""! Thank you very much, you have made my job so much easier Sharron Davies (Mrs), Instructor - Have You Read? The Subtitle of S. A. Kent's oversized 300 page manual is "Success Strategies For Dog Obedience Instructors". It is written in an anecdotal, friendly style and is easy to read, and some of the wise advice is bound to stick where it is most needed. Silvia has had wide experience with different top class overseas and British dog trainers. She is a compassionate woman who hates to see dogs and their owners humiliated in front of other members of the class, so the first part of the book is an easy treatise on people psychology. The book then progresses to analyzing the types of dog temperament which may be encountered, with emphasis on dogs with problems which may prove to be a barrier to learning. She illustrates the practical use of the space available in the venue via new patterns and training games and variations which will keep the class interest high for dogs, owners and the trainers. Finally, there are detailed lists on how to teach exercises and perhaps more valuable still, what to do when there are problems - a goldmine of good ideas. A good buy this, and an essential part of the kit for every trainer, every class, no matter how long it has been running. Kay White, Review From Dog World. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: DragonRising
• ISBN-10: 1873483015
• ISBN-13: 978-1873483015
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #7,361,027 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)