Will-Skill^SM Class Descriptions

Timing + intention = communication. Casey Sugarman, founder of Partnership Engineering, teaches you how to harness your split second decisions and reactions so you can become a safer and more effective teacher and handler of animals.

We learn about our will and the wills of others not by hearing about them in lecture format but by experiencing them first hand. Your one-on-one timing can indeed be improved in group format classes. Exercising the "intention muscle" and understanding your student's perspective are best done using immediate cause-effect participation.

All group classes are based on the Will-Skill curriculum developed by Casey Sugarman. Both her extensive experience in psychological rehabilitation of dangerous domesticated species, and her 10 years as a veterinary biologist at Boston's New England Aquarium informed the "primal" content of this curriculum.

WILL-SKILL LEVEL I
All three Level I classes are arranged in a recommended order as each class provides foundation for the following class. For specific needs of specific audiences, classes may be conducted individually or "out of order", with the understanding that some efficiency may be lost.

Class 1 Engage Shaping: The Ability to Convey an Idea
Vocal participation from seated audience.
Unlimited audience size, Any location can serve as a classroom
Animal Participation: none
Time: 90 minutes

The Test: Can you teach someone to their sunglasses on upside down? But here's the catch: you only have five minutes, you must use no body language, and you may only use one word out of the dictionary!

Wonder why your animals don't understand you? Laugh your way through funny silent games to practice conveying your ideas clearly. Activities reveal your hidden communication blockers and hidden abilities. Experience first hand the causes of frustration and anxiety in your animal students. Avoid confusion and manipulation, using only timing to influence your counterpart's decisions. This is not clicker training! Learn about ideas like "photonegative yes" and "process focus". This class is a must for new owners and expert trainers alike.

Class 2 Equipment of Every Kind: Trouble in Paradise
Unlimited Audience Size, Any location can serve as a classroom
Comfortable shoes required
*People with knee or back injury should alert instructor before participating
Animal Participation: none
Time: 60 Minutes

The Test: Using a rope tether, can you teach someone to cross a line in the sand and come over to your side? But here's the catch: you only have three minutes, and that person wants to stay put!

Equipment can often cause more problems than it solves, yet we exist in an equipment-heavy world. Physical contact is largely a mental exercise, not a physical one. Learn new counterintuitive reflexes that help you use equipment respectfully and effectively. Skills apply to every type of equipment used to achieve leverage, connection, direction, instruction, and safety. Class activities are similar to contact leverages used in some martial arts. This class is a must for all abilities from low-strength children to heavy-handed adults. Trainers will benefit from an enhanced understanding of the animal's experience of physical aids from the body and from equipment.

Class 3 Disengage Shaping: The Power of the Social Vacuum
Unlimited Audience Size, *An open space is required
Four participants are used for demonstration: comfortable shoes required
Animal Participants: none
Time: 90 Minutes

The Test: Can you teach someone to walk toward an undisclosed location and stay there as you leave the scene? But here's the catch: you only have three minutes, you can't speak, you can't touch them, and they are suspicious of you!

This class shares some ideas in common with herding theory, but the focus is on largely uncharted areas of the "social influence" dynamic. This class teaches you how to utilize your own self-respect to teach, it teaches you how to stop causing unintentional insult and confrontation, and it teaches you how to identify and avoid oppression strategies and abandonment strategies. This class adds a new level of safety and influence to capable handlers and trainers working with especially difficult and willful animals, but beginners will also benefit. This class requires demonstrations by the instructor and participation of volunteers.

WILL-SKILL LEVEL II

Personalized Will-prints
Animal Participants: none
Time: Single skill :10 minutes per person / Full Willprint-all skills: 60 min/person

You may be unaware that the "free will" inside each individual has a unique style or fingerprint which is as different from person to person as hair color. It leaves behind a unique fingerprint, a Will-print, which can be described and employed in aid of your goals. It takes just one hour for PE to identify your personal Will-print.Will-printing is done to identify the category and specific skill that would cause the greatest amount of positive change for you specifically.

The Will-print test is a purely diagnostic process that collects extremely subtle responses to subtle social and physical pressures. Will-printing provides easily accessible, reliable, and invaluable information about your unconscious tendencies which will stand out "like a neon sign". Rest assured, the experience of being Will-printed is not uncomfortable. Reports of the experience range from 'imperceptible' to 'fun' to 'it feels like you are being assessed by 'an animal'. Each individual in a pair must be tested separately.

The information leading to the concept of Will-printing originated from Sugarman's necessity for tests to safely diagnose the behavioral tendencies and hidden motivations of dangerous animals. Will-Skill is a trademarked process of Partnership Engineering and is not a licensed therapy.

Combined Will-Skills
Limited to four participants (Observers welcome but are not part of class.)
Animal Participants: 4, same species please
An open space is required
Time: 2.5 hrs

This class is for students who already speak the language of Will-Skill but wish to be more fluent. Classes in combined/advanced Will-Skill require that every participant has already taken all Level I classes, and each has had a fully tested Will-print. Each human participant will be quickly evaluated before animal work begins. Animal background and skills are not a factor. Class consists of a rapid succession of challenge tasks appropriate to each pair. Both animal and human creativity are required for success.