I was so grateful to make it to Clicker Expo a full day early! With Pearl the Subaru’s oil changed and all that road salt washed off I could relax and enjoy the area and allow Leo and I to decompress. Again we took several nice long walks, explored the downtown area, grabbing some lunch and I found a local pet store to restock Leo’s food. Rather than taking all he would need for the trip I decided to take a smaller amount as I was not sure how hot the car would be on parked days in the sun and I didn’t want to have to haul a huge bag in and out of hotel rooms. So before I left on the trip I made sure there were places I could restock on the road and found a pet store in the neighboring town.

With all of my errands done, a nap, walks and some reading I decided to go see if the folks in charge needed any help setting up. They had sent out requests for volunteers before I left which I did not sigh up for as I was not expecting to be there before it started. I found Sarah who I follow on IG and had no idea was one of the folks putting this whole thing on and asked where they needed me. They set me up in the swag bag stuffing area where 570 bags needed to be stuffed with all the free goodies and handouts for the folks attending the event. I had tons of fun and made some new friends! In hindsight it might have been a bad idea as my neck mentioned it was unhappy. I probably should have gone with my first instinct which was to book a massage at the hotel spa 🤣. But I guess going to this event and not really knowing anyone the draw of making some friends outpaced self care. I did pay for it later and Leo migraine alerted half way through our after dinner walk.

Back to the room, took my meds, had a hot shower, closed the curtains, climbed into bed, buried my head under the pillows and went to sleep early, sweet Leo pressed along my back. Two giant king sized beds and I was still squished 🤣, that boy so attentive and sweet. The meds and sleep worked its magic and I woke up headache free, though my neck and shoulders were sore. All that driving on harrowing roads my body was beat up. Took Leo for a nice LONG walk and had breakfast before heading to the hotel lobby to meet up for a special trip to the Bronx Zoo! I was super excited as I paid extra and planned arriving a day early for this special add on excursion, a behind the scenes adventure to the zoo.

Loaded onto the bus, snagging a front row seat. I do not do too well on buses so closer to the front helps my stomach. Jane asked if the seat next to me was available and happily grabbed the open seat as a fellow not happy in the back of the bus rider. As we rode along she shared her stressful drive in from Canada, getting pulled over and intimidated by the police once over the border. What an awful way to start her Expo! She was excited for the zoo trip and said if it wasn’t for that she might very well have turned around and gone back home. What a lovely friendly charming warm person she is! I was grateful to share the ride with her and looked forward to having someone to buddy with for the zoo trip! However, I quickly learned once we arrived that as a Non- KPA (Karen Pryor Academy- Certified Trainer) person I would not be having the experience I was expecting. In fact it was a complete and total disappointment and I was pretty pissed off. In most other ways Clicker Expo doesn’t discriminate if you are not a KPA member and they welcome all trainers into the event, but this was absolutely a crock of 💩. It was sold as a behind the scenes experience. For non- members when we arrived we were separated from the group, taken to a bird enclosure and given a handful of mealworms to drop 15 feet down to some ducks and other birds 🤣, that was IT. That was the extent of our behind the scenes experience, 10 minutes of dropping worms, and not behind the scenes but right there with all the normal zoo visitors who also were given handfuls of worms if they wanted. And that was it. We were told to meet back later in the afternoon with the rest of the members near the daily seal lion feeding show. While the KPA folks had the experience I was expecting I just got to wander around the zoo, with the other non-special trainers 😆 during a time of year many of the animals were not on display because it was too cold. On the ride back to the hotel Jane told me all about her amazing experience, learning all about the training the animal keepers do, getting to watch and participate, “well I got to hold some meal worms AND drop them” 😂 I bragged. We laughed. I was glad for her that the experience was amazing and it absolutely rescued her from the stress and bad day.

It also turned out she was my hotel neighbor, in the room next to me. We then shared a good laugh about how our hotel rooms were also not at all what we had booked. Promised a lovely garden view and patio, our rooms walking out to face a concrete wall 🙈. The patios so small that the patio furniture blocked your exit so you had to either crawl over them or move it all off the patio onto the muddy “lawn” (weeds, dirt and moss) Also, the doors didn’t really work, the auto locks didn’t open with your room key, the doors were warped and almost impossible to open and even harder to close, and my room window was broken so you could only open and close it from outside, so yes, literally anyone could have climbed through my hotel window. We parted ways so I could get Leo walked and fed and she could get unpacked and settled in before the evening welcome mixer. I’d had dinner at the hotel the first night, which was ridiculously expensive! So I looked forward to the first paid meal of the event. All I can say about that is I am glad I had food available back at my room. It was fun to meet all the vendors and spend too much money on new training toys, equipment and treats. Picked up the swag bag I had stuffed the day before 🤣. Headed back to the room to actually eat while Jane headed out to find some food and had my evening call with HikerHubby before tucking in early.

Got up early, by now my sense of time was so mixed up and my body had no idea what day or time it was. But I enjoyed a long walk with Leo and we stopped by the bagel shop near the hotel which was fantastic! Settled Leo into the hotel room and headed off to the opening ceremonies and first lectures.

I always love listening to Chirag Patel speak, he always has some great ideas to ponder and I love his approach to teaching. Such a positive inspiring speaker. He started with a session where he worked with non-dog trainers to show how he works with someone inexperienced with dogs. Enjoyed all of the morning lectures and presentations. Unfortunately lunch was not that great, I couldn’t believe it, the last expo I went to the food was fantastic and I didn’t even think twice before buying the meals package. That was not the case for this event, I kid you not, lunch was exactly the same until the last day, and I mean EXACTLY the same, same dry chicken, same over cooked boring vegetables, same flavorless rolls, same offering of fruit- strawberries and not quite ripe melon. The lunch “roundtable” events where you can sit at a table with a presenter to get to know them better, most of the tables were not actually round 🙈 which basically meant you could only hear them if you sat right next to them and two of the days I was finished and left before the person arrived. Again, one of my favorite experiences from previous expos that was disappointing this time.

That being said, the expo itself and learning opportunities were great. I did feel like overall it was a little too “science” heavy and too “training” light. What I mean by that, is way more presentations on theory and less on showing actual technique. Not that it wasn’t available, and they did have some amazing trainers on board showing skill. But I personally found way more options to watch great training in action at previous events than I did at this one. Part of that is there was a lot of overlap where the working sessions were all at the same time and there were lectures where that was the only thing offered at that time so there were just fewer opportunities overall. Again, I don’t mean to sound totally negative, and I totally understand that many folks want different things than I want, but I did walk away feeling a little underwhelmed, not because it was bad, but because in the past it’s been amazing and this time it was just ok.

I was also fairly underwhelmed by my working sessions. Don’t get me wrong, they were a BLAST, but I did not feel challenged or like I learned anything. For the teaching a tricks class, we were asked what tricks Leo knew and then on our turn instead of learning a new trick we got to demo the tricks we mostly already knew. With maybe adding a little thing on. Like Leo already knew sit up and paws on my arm, so we added feeding him under my arm for the pray trick.

And then he already knew through my legs and spin, so we combined those. Look at my face at the end when she suggests we quit while we are ahead. I’m like “huh” 🙃. But this is really about my expectations vs what the situations allow for. Like I wanted more of a seminar experience, where I leave with new tools. But really the working teams are more like live demos of the desired behavior, maybe not the path to getting there. Also, I feel like, not to toot my own horn, but of the working teams Leo was one of the better prepared dogs, by that I mean, he has competed in many events and so this environment was easy for him to work in. Most of the other teams the dogs were overwhelmed by the environment so it always felt like we got the least amount of time because he “just did it” so we didn’t get as much instruction like those who struggled did. So while it was fun to play with Leo and show off a little, I didn’t feel like I picked up anything new. That’s ok, I often feel like this, so I come to expect it, not because presenters don’t do a good job, but because I am at a point in training where I’ve been doing this for a long time so not a lot of new ideas pop up.

I still always walk away with inspiration and for more ideas on working with other people. It is fun to focus just on me and my pup training when most of the time all my focus on teaching other people. So I did come away with that feeling! And I got some GREAT practice on how to help Leo cope with the environment.

Leo was tired by the time we got to Expo. Over a week on the road, busy cities, staying in lots of different environments, long days in the car, a completely different schedule with the time change, very few opportunities for off leash exercise. He was tired. So the start of the first session, I was sitting at the chair by the blanket in this photo, the presenter was talking to me about what Leo knew, and a lady came through this door I am standing by in the photo above, she had a service dog, only demo dogs signed up to work the presentation or service dogs are allowed. Everyone was already settled and she bursts in the door (which no one else had been using as the “entrance” was on the other side of the room) with her black lab coming through the door in front of her as she is talking to her friend and the dog is half way to Leo before she sees us and pulls her dog away. It freaked Leo out. Because he was looking at the instructor talking to us and that door had not moved the whole time we were sitting there. So having a big dog rush through it behind him was startling. Leo woofed once. I helped him move around in front of me so he could see it was just a dog and he was ok. But he was a little edgy after that, wondering if something else might pop in.

So it was great practice for me to be able to help him settle back down after getting scared. I felt embarrassed, because of that one woof, I assumed everyone would judge him as a reactive dog or aggressive dog. Though we all know he is not, he was just a tired dog in a chaotic environment that got startled by something startling. But I still felt that way. So I too had to work on letting go of my worries about what other people think. I was super proud of him when it was his turn to work. He was one of the only dogs that easily worked, was not distracted by the people and other dogs. It did seem like the instructor thought he might be a reactive dog as he was the only dog she didn’t say “do you want to take the leash off”, maybe that was because we both easily worked around it, and it was a good longer leash than others had. But yeah my self conscious self did pick up on that and of course made up assumptions in my head about it.

I carried that worry around in my head most of the next day. That people must have all thought Leo was aggressive. Because he barked once 😆. Oh boy that self judgment thing is hard. Later the next day as I was walking to lunch a lady walking behind me said “are you the one with that golden from the trick classes” to which I smiled and answered yes feeling that bit of shame inside. She then gushed on and on about how cute he was and how well he did, how he seemed made for this and was so good and how much fun she had watching us. I said thank you and as I walked on she kept on talking about how amazing Leo was to her friend.

I pushed myself that night to go to the social mixer I had paid for. Not usually my thing, but I was also trying to put myself out there more than I usually would. We played essentially clicker training games with people, and again pushing myself I volunteered to go first, being the “dog” in the situation and have others clicker train me. It was a lot of fun. Also the game was supposed to be random in they gave you cards with numbers on them that matched tables in the room and all of my cards had the same number 🤣, and the volunteer at that table was one of the friends, Allie, who I made on the first day stuffing bags so it was fun to hangout with her more. I won some tickets being the dog and figuring out the task, which I later won something in the raffle for. Jane was there too, though not playing the game so after that was over we hung out a bit. Laughing about the fact the food was still all the SAME and not good. On that subject, we also went to the speakers dinner the next night and yes, the food was the same as lunch 🙈. You guys it was so bad. The vegetarian option was literally just a slab of tofu cooked. Like not seasoned, not cut up so it would get some texture, just a brick of soggy gross tofu, that you could actually still see the ripples from the packaging on 🤣. I was so grateful to be a “flexitarian” to not be subjected to that. After two days of lunches where there were no vegetarian options for lunch, they just got the lunch without the chicken, so some carrots, zucchini and potatoes with a roll, some strawberries and not quite ripe melons. My food wasn’t good, but at least I was fed enough to function. The speaker was lovely, all about self care and taking care of your own self.

Our second working session was better than the first, in that Leo was totally relaxed, better rested and no one startled him. But still not what I was expecting. It was called a “dog consult” and was supposed to be 20 minutes of whatever you wanted to work on with the instructor. It was ok, however they broke it into two 10 minute sessions instead of 20 minutes at once and it was not equal time. I got 7 minutes the first go and 6 minutes the second time. Again I think it was because Leo did the suggestions quickly and instead of getting more time doing something else it was just our turn was over. There were two people, one with a puppy and one with a dog the guy just handed to her and said you do it, and they each got well over 10 minutes each go because the dogs didn’t know as much. It WAS fun watching the other training and it was still enjoyable. But it was not again what I expected. I sort of thought it would be more like an actual private lesson with a trainer where we could keep working long enough to get into a flow and get some stuff done. So it was ok, but again, not something where I walked away learning fun new things. Again, I think more about my expectations. Sort of a common theme here 🤣. I think maybe my previous Expo experiences had raised the bar really high, and this was good but not as good. And to be perfectly clear, it is STILL the best dog training conference I’ve gone to, the always have great speakers and trainers and the people are all lovely. I think less experienced trainers walk away with brains filled with new things! I think it is a super worthwhile event for any dog trainer to attend. They better figure out the food thing though 🤣 because that was awful.

I’m still super happy I went and I still came away feeling really inspired and excited to train. I did pick up some new ideas of things to try for some of my clients. I really loved Bobbie Bhambree’s presentations and got a lot out of them and I absolutely LOVED watching Michele Pouliot working with her demo students. I feel like I got the most practical details watching and listening to her work. Not the what she was teaching, but the how.

Loved her work on Cooperative Care and diving into very practical application for training and helping dogs when things are not optional. Again, my favorite part is always watching great training in action more than talking about it.

My favorite part of the whole thing was actually between the sessions when I got to talk more about training cats and got to watch Melissa Millet working with her movie cats in training. So I DID come home with a lot of new things to work with Harold and Gerald on!!!

Clicker Expo Part 2- Clicker Expo!

Clicker Expo Cross Country Adventure Part 1- getting there!