Tobias Gustavasson Day One- Hunt & Play

Tobias is one of the founders of SWDI new (Scandinavian Working Dog  Institute) and one of the authors of ”Tracking Dogs - Scents and Skills” 

He has been working full-time as a dog trainer and instructor for the  last 22 years. In 2022 he decided to start up his own company, GrittyK9,  together with his collegue Boki Damis. 

Their main clients are governmental agencies around the world-

police k9 units, police and military special operation forces, government dog teams for large carnivore management, search and rescue dog teams, customs and prison  services. 

Tobias specialises in tracking and scent detection and has extensive experience in developing skills in dog teams on all levels.

Day One- Hunt and play development

Play can be a powerful tool in dog training. Not only can it be a strong  reinforcer but it can and also be an effective way to strengthen the  relation and communication between you and your dog. At the same time  play can cause conflicts if we do it in the wrong way. Problems with  ”out” or dogs who refuse to come back with the toy are two of most  common examples. During this seminar we go through all the different  parts of play development that is needed to create an highly motivating  play without conflicts. We start with chasing games and go all the way  to social play and different ways of training the dog to come back with  the toy and release on cue.  

Day Two- Foundations for detection and tracking   

This seminar gives you a good insight in how you train a strong and  reliable foundation for both detection and tracking dogs. We start with  search development where we focus on increasing the dogs motivation for  searching. We introduce simple exercises where we mix play with search  in different environments. In the next step with continue with different  methods and principles to train the dog to do a more detailed search  with high sniffing frequency. The second part of the seminar is all  about different ways of training a solid and focused passive indication.

There are 5 working dog spots available each day.

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