Journeyman Module One - Canine Communication, Learning & Training Skills
Getting the Most from This Module
Journeyman Module One brings together three closely connected areas of professional dog training: canine communication, behavioral science, and increasingly refined practical training skills.
A skilled trainer needs to do much more than teach behavior. We need to observe carefully, recognize changes in body language and behavior, consider the context in which those changes occur, and make thoughtful decisions about whether and how an interaction should continue.
Much of the first part of this module therefore focuses on canine communication and social behavior.
We will explore consent tests, emotional contagion, distance-increasing and distance-decreasing signals, and the different ways dogs may respond when they want to create or reduce distance. We will also examine the responses commonly described as fight, flight, freeze, and fawn, and begin looking more closely at aggressive behavior and predation.
As we develop these observational skills, the aim is not simply to memorize lists of body-language signals. Communication needs to be interpreted in context. Individual signals may have different meanings depending on the learner, the environment, what has happened immediately beforehand, and what happens next.
We will also consider how we can provide learners with meaningful opportunities to communicate whether they are comfortable continuing an interaction. Learning how to conduct and interpret a consent test encourages us to pay closer attention to choice, agency, assent, dissent, and the learner's emotional experience.
Alongside this, you will continue refining your practical training skills.
We will explore luring, targeting, shaping, and capturing, while asking you to apply these techniques with increasing precision and fluency. You will also explore olfactory cues, the Differential Outcomes Effect, and different applications of targeting.
Your practical exercises include teaching behaviors such as:
- Take a Bow
- Figure 8
- Go Around
These exercises are not simply additional behaviors to add to a learner's repertoire. Each gives us another opportunity to practice timing, observation, reinforcement strategy, stimulus control, criterion setting, and thoughtful selection of training techniques.
As your skills develop, we want you to become increasingly comfortable asking not only:
“How can I train this behavior?”
but also:
“Why am I choosing this approach, and is it the most appropriate approach for this learner?”
We will also continue developing your understanding of respondent and operant learning.
You will examine the four processes of operant learning, including negative reinforcement, as well as extinction and the use of no-reward markers. We will explore respondent conditioning and consider how the associations our learners form influence their emotional responses as well as their observable behavior.
Understanding these processes accurately is important even when they are not processes we intentionally choose to use.
As force-free professionals, we need to be able to recognize what may be happening functionally, evaluate the likely effects of our training choices, and develop plans that prioritize reinforcement, learner success, choice, agency, and welfare.
Importantly, respondent and operant learning do not occur in isolation from one another. While behavior is being reinforced and shaped, the learner is also forming associations with people, equipment, environments, procedures, and the training process itself.
What the learner does matters — and so does how the learner feels.
By the end of this module, we want you to be moving beyond simply identifying behaviors and training techniques and beginning to think more analytically about the complete learning picture.
That means asking questions such as:
- What am I observing?
- What is happening in the environment?
- What happened immediately before the behavior?
- What happens immediately afterwards?
- What might the learner be communicating?
- Is the learner attempting to increase or decrease distance?
- Does the learner appear comfortable continuing?
- What choices are available to the learner?
- What learning processes may be operating?
- What can I change about the environment or training plan to support success?
These are questions we will continue returning to throughout the Journeyman Level and beyond.
As you work through the module, we encourage you to watch each recorded lesson before spending a few minutes reading the accompanying notes.
Many lessons are accompanied by additional written resources designed to complement the recorded lesson rather than simply repeat it. Depending on the topic, these may include:
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Lesson Notes, providing additional explanations, practical examples, and further discussion to deepen your understanding.
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Professional Practice Notes, offering practical guidance on applying the concepts with pet dog guardians, developing your coaching and decision-making skills, and helping you think like a professional trainer.
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Additional ABA Notes, where appropriate, exploring the behavior analysis behind the topic in greater depth and continuing to develop your theoretical knowledge.
Not every lesson will include every type of resource. Some lessons may simply include Lesson Notes, while others may also include Professional Practice or Additional ABA Notes where they add particular value.
The DogNostics Dog Trainer Certificate Program intentionally follows a spiral curriculum. Throughout Journeyman, you will encounter important concepts more than once and explore them from different perspectives. Each time we return to a concept, we can add greater depth, make new connections, and apply our developing knowledge to increasingly complex training and behavior situations.
Journeyman Module One is particularly important in developing the connection between what we observe, what we understand about learning, and what we choose to do next.
Take your time with the lessons and practical exercises. Watch your learner carefully. Look at the whole picture rather than isolated behaviors or body-language signals. Consider how the environment, your own behavior, and the training arrangement may be influencing what happens.
Most importantly, continue to approach training with curiosity.
The more carefully we observe and the better we understand the science behind behavior, the better equipped we are to make thoughtful, compassionate, and welfare-focused decisions for the individual learner in front of us.
