Month: February 2019

My agility club has been teaching a tricks class over the summer, to raise funds so that we can buy more wing jumps. This week it was my turn to teach them a trick, and we worked on backing up on cue.

Dogs will gravitate towards the location where they have received their rewards. When you are training a back-up cue, this means that they need to be reinforced away from the handler, at the location where they have backed up to (or even slightly behind it). Rewarding the dog from your hand makes it hard to get more than a couple of steps of backing up, as the dog will want to come forward again to your hand to get its cookie.

Feeding from the hand is a deeply entrenched habit, and I had to remind them all multiple times to toss the cookies back to their dog after he had moved backwards. Once they had got the mechanics right, the dogs were much happier to leave their handlers and back up for their supper.

Old Lady with Labrador Syndrome

Every beginners agility class at my old club in Wellington seemed to contain an older woman with a food-obsessed Labrador. This dog learned the obstacles fairly quickly, but then really struggled to put them together in a sequence. It had an uncanny knack for tripping up its handler, which was scary as we trained in an indoor venue with unforgiving concrete pillars for people to crash into.

Continue reading “Training Basics: Placement of Rewards”

Most clubs in New Zealand have a set of Farmtek electronic timers in the shed. There are two models commonly used here. The older “wand” style has a small timing wand which is mounted on a separate pole and must be moved up and down to match the height of the jumps. With the newer “curtain” style, the is only one pole which has multiple laser beams at different heights. Curtain timers are much nicer to use because they don’t have to be adjusted every time the jump height changes.

This weekend I made the long trek to Invercargill for the Southland agility champ show. I really enjoyed catching up with my Southern friends, and the laid-back atmosphere meant I even had time to pop inside and watch my clubmates cleaning up in the obedience show.

Rik and I had a nice run in Novice on Saturday and got third. We also went clear in Jumpers B on Sunday, picking up our last win to move up to Jumpers A. It felt like a very hairy run from inside the ring, although apparently it looked less chaotic from the outside! Our other Jumpers B run was much smoother but unfortunately we had a little misunderstanding about which side to take #11 from.

Last week it was reported that several dogs had died on an Interislander ferry crossing. It’s the second time this has happened recently, with five racing Greyhounds dying in another incident in January 2018.

I’ve taken the ferry with my dogs numerous times, so was initially very concerned when this headline broke. After learning more about what happened, though, I’m satisfied that ferry crossings don’t pose any significant danger to my dogs. Here’s why I don’t think a carload of agility dogs are going to be the next victims.

Continue reading “How Safe Is the Cook Strait Ferry?”

Some people take agility very seriously. They are willing to put a lot of time and effort into their dog’s training, and hope that it will pay off with lots of success in the ring.

Some people take agility very casually. They don’t do any training between their weekly visit to dog club. They treat agility a lot like their weekly Lotto ticket – sometimes they go home empty-handed, sometimes they get a nice wee thrill, and either way they’ve had fun.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to train an Agility Grand Champion. There’s nothing wrong with just being happy to get around without getting eliminated. One of the great things about agility is that it provides many different types of goals for people to choose from.

Continue reading “Choose Your Own Agility Adventure”

This weekend Rik and I competed at the Waimak jumpers show. We saw a more technical style of course to what we’ve been running lately, and found some of the challenges a bit much. We left empty-handed, but we got some things right and I enjoyed my weekend out.

This was the fourth weekend in a row of agility competition in the Canterbury region. A lot of dogs had already won out of their grade and were making the most of their bonus runs. In one Jumpers B, four of the top five dogs had already graduated to Jumpers A. It will be interesting to see some different faces in the lineups soon!

This is the second post inspired by the recent Tracy Sklenar seminar in Dunedin. I had a working spot in the Novice dog session and this was the first exercise that she had us do.

Tracy talked about two different kinds of agility dogs. “Cold porridge” dogs are distracted or disinterested in agility, and lack focus on their handler. “Hot porridge” dogs are too hyped up, and may struggle with self-control or be focused excessively on the obstacles rather than their handler.

The ideal agility dog is warm, Goldilocks porridge. She’s focused on her handler and quick to respond to cues. She’s got her brain fully engaged so that she can give the right responses to those cues. She can resist the temptation to charge around, making up her own course as she goes.

Continue reading “Goldilocks Porridge and the Five-Tricks Warmup”

I’ve already written a post about how to train (or retrain) a start-line wait. This is an incredibly useful skill to have, unless perhaps you are able to run much faster than your dog. It’s like a free gift at the start of every run, allowing you to be exactly where you need for the first few obstacles.

I’d always recommend training a reliable start-line wait as a long term solution, but sometimes that advice isn’t practical. Not everyone has the same priorities in life (or in their agility training). Sometimes it’s not worth the effort or the missed runs that you may need to fix a long-term problem. Or maybe you’ve started retraining, and you’ve decided not to ask for a wait in the ring until you’ve made more progress.

There’s also a group of dogs which dislike being left at the start, and tend to go slower if they are asked to wait. The handlers of these dogs tread a fine balance between trying to keep their dog’s enthusiasm up, and getting to the right spot to handle the start of the course.

Whatever your reasons, here are a few other strategies you can use to give yourself a head start on the agility course.

The Slingshot

Continue reading “Start-Line Strategies for No-Wait Dogs”

I don’t think I’ve ever been to an agility show as hot as this weekend’s champ show at Ashburton. The high each day was 32 degrees according to the metservice, although some people’s iphone apps reported temperatures as high as 36!

There is limited shade at the Mid Canterbury shows and I struggled to keep Rik cool. My clubmate Bronwyn kindly lent us a little USB-powered fan which made her a lot more comfortable. Phil generously passed around an assortment of Popsicles on Sunday which was also much appreciated.

Rik and I had a second placing in Novice on Saturday. We also did some good work in Intermediate, but were let down by our weaves – I haven’t done any training on these for a couple of months so it’s time to set them up again at home. We had a third placing in one Jumpers B on Sunday and had an absolutely stunning run in another one, sadly with a rail off. I’m looking forward to six more chances next weekend to see if we can finally pull off the perfect run!

Following on from last week, this is another post inspired by the recent Tracy Sklenar seminar. Today’s post focuses on what to do what to do when your dog makes a mistake in training.

One of the difficulties of agility training is that it’s not always clear whose fault a mistake is. Sometimes your sloppy handling will cause your dog to run past a jump he was supposed to take. Next time, maybe your dog is so fixated on an incorrect obstacle that he forgets to check in with you for directions. In that split second after your dog has sailed over the hurdle, you don’t always know whether your handling was right or if he has an “excuse” for the mistake.

Our dogs are generally pretty good at following our bodies. This means that the human teammate is at least partially at fault most of the time. It’s generally safe to assume that your poor handling caused the mistake unless you have compelling evidence to the contrary. Obviously it’s not fair to punish your dog for something that might be your fault – so what do you do?

Continue reading “Train Your Dog to Save You”