Journeyman Module Two - Building Flexible, Fluent & Reliable Behavior

Getting the Most from This Module

Welcome to Journeyman Module Two.

At Journeyman level, we move beyond simply teaching behaviors and begin looking more closely at what makes trained behavior flexible, fluent, reliable, and useful in the real world.

Throughout this module, you'll build on concepts introduced earlier in the DTC while developing a deeper understanding of how cues, antecedents, reinforcement, fluency, stimulus control, and the conditions surrounding behavior all work together.

As always, we encourage you to watch each recorded lesson before spending a few minutes reading any accompanying notes.

The written resources are designed to complement the recorded lessons rather than simply repeat them. Depending on the topic, you may find:

• Lesson Notes → How and why. These expand on the practical concepts and training principles introduced in the lesson and help connect them to what you already know.
• Additional ABA Notes → The science behind it. Where appropriate, these explore relevant concepts from applied behavior analysis in greater depth.
• Professional Practice → How to apply it with real clients. Where appropriate, these help bridge the gap between understanding a concept yourself and successfully applying or explaining it when working with pet dog guardians.

Not every lesson will include every type of resource. We'll include them where they genuinely add value.

Continuing the Spiral

Remember that the DTC follows a spiral curriculum. Concepts introduced during Apprentice level have not been left behind. At Journeyman level, we revisit them, make new connections, and explore them in greater depth.

Increasingly, we'll move from asking simply:

How do I train this behavior?

to also asking:

Why does this training work? What variables are influencing the behavior? How can I make the behavior more fluent and flexible? What happens when the conditions change? How can I adjust my training plan while keeping the learner successful?

This shift is an important part of developing your knowledge and skills as a professional dog trainer.

Enjoy Journeyman Module Two - and enjoy discovering just how much there is to explore beyond teaching the behavior itself

What Will We Explore in This Module?

Journeyman Module Two takes us further into both the practical mechanics of training and the science that helps us understand why our training works.

One of our main themes is moving from a behavior that a learner can do to a behavior that is increasingly fluent, flexible, and reliable under changing conditions.

A dog may perform a behavior beautifully in a familiar training environment, with a familiar person standing in a familiar position—but what happens when something changes?

Throughout this module, we'll explore how to systematically prepare our learners for those changes while protecting their confidence and emotional well-being.

The Skill Set & Mechanics

During this module, we'll learn how to:

• Use different approaches to proof behaviors.
• Increase the flexibility of trained behaviors.
• Systematically introduce distance, duration, and distractions—the 3 Ds.
• Add challenges without unnecessarily placing stress on the learner.
• Understand and develop stimulus control.
• Transfer stimulus control from one cue to another.
• Use discrimination training to help the learner respond appropriately to different cues.
• Play the Stimulus Control Game.
• Use the Premack Principle as a reinforcement strategy.

A particularly important idea throughout this module is that proofing should not mean setting the learner up to fail.

We want to introduce achievable changes, observe how the learner responds, and adjust our training accordingly. Increasing distance, duration, or distractions should be a thoughtful training process - not a test of whether the learner can cope.

The original module objectives specifically emphasize adding these challenges without placing stress on the learner and, instead, helping to increase confidence.

The Science & Knowledge

We'll also deepen our understanding of several important learning and behavior concepts.

These include:

• The components involved in creating fluent behavior.
• The 3 Ds and their role in teaching and proofing behavior.
• Stimulus control.
• Learned irrelevance.
• Poisoned cues.
• The process for introducing a new cue.
• The antecedent package.
• Setting events.
• Motivating operations.
• The relativity of reinforcement and the Premack Principle.

These topics will help us look beyond the behavior we can see and consider the variables influencing whether, when, and under what conditions that behavior occurs.

Behaviors We'll Train

We'll put many of these principles into practice while training several behaviors:

• Bang/Play Dead - dropping onto the side from either a sit or stand.
• Roll Over.
• Go Left and Go Right.
• Say Cheese - focusing toward the camera.

These exercises aren't simply about adding more behaviors to our training repertoire.

They give us opportunities to practice training mechanics, thoughtful progression of criteria, cueing, fluency, flexibility, discrimination, and stimulus control.

As we work through Journeyman Module Two, keep looking for the connections between the different lessons. The individual topics may have separate lesson titles, but together they help us answer a much bigger question:

How do we develop behavior that remains successful when the circumstances change?