Cognition Clinics 

Canine Cognition Clinics for all disciplines/sports!

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These Canine Cognition Clinic are based on the research Cameron Ford of Ford K9 and Brian Hare have conducted with Duke University. 

The clinic will be delivered by Georgie Armstrong - the only Ford K9 Cognition instructor in the UK. 

Georgie has a rich background in many different scent based disciplines, having started her training in operational work over 8 years ago. 

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Since then she has not only trained her dogs for deployment in Search and Rescue and Victim Recovery on land and boat, and for Pyrotechnics detection, she has also trained dogs for others in a range of disciplines including tracking and bed bug detection. 

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These three day clinics will be organized as follows.

Day 1 – Theory Day, no dogs will be required this day (although you are welcome to bring them with you if they will settle 😊)
We will go through the reasoning behind the tests, what the tests are giving us information wise and run through them all so that we are comfortable with them before the dogs.

Day 2 – Practical Tests - Inference 

Day 3 – Practical Tests - Memory and Interpretation of the results.

Each day will start at 10am, and will finish between 3 and 4pm depending on the time taken to cover the content.

This clinic is for everyone and any discipline, if you are a professional looking to enhance how you select dogs, a Nose/Scent work handler, or simply a pet owner who loves learning about your dog, cognition testing will enhance your knowledge about the dog in front of you. 

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These tests have proven to reduce failure rates in selection detection dogs for operational programs and also sped up the training process because the trainers are able to understand the requirements of each individual dog. 

These Cognition tests help you learn crucial information such as, is you dog strong in memory, is the dog a problem solver, how quick does it make inferences? Additional things these tests show are, does the dog easy follow gestural communication and what is your dogs laterality.

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In conjunction with the normal K9 selection and evaluation steps agencies use, adding these K9 Brain games to an evaluation raises the percentage of dogs successfully picked to be working K9’s. 

Using these tests have proven to increase selection percentages of the right dogs for a training program.

If you do Nose/Scent work, the information from these games will help you understand your dog better and how to set up training sessions that get the most out of your dog. Just knowing if your dog is right or left brain dominant can make a big difference on how you search an area.

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These tests aren’t just for detection though, they would help you in all sports, agility, obedience, gundog work, the list is endless, to have a better understanding of how your dog learns is such a valuable asset. 

If you’re interested in hosting one of these clinics in your area/organization please contact admin@endeavourcanine.com