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.
Don’t Blame Your Dog For Your Choices
There is something wrong, however, with training like a casual competitor, but expecting your dog to perform like a pro in the ring. I see this attitude most often with contacts and start-line behaviour.
I’ve written two posts recently about lead-outs – how to train a rock-solid wait (for those who are ambitious) and how to cope without a lead-out (for those who aren’t). The first path involves a lot of training and patience. The second path involves accepting that your dog doesn’t know how to hold his wait, and working around that.
There is a third path – asking your dog to wait when you know that he probably won’t, and then getting angry with him when he doesn’t. This is not fair on your dog, and often not that nice for spectators to watch. Shouting, dragging the dog by its scruff, and other displays of frustration have no place at agility.
Either put the work into achieving a reliable performance – or don’t. Remember that decision when you go into the ring, and accept the consequences of it.
If you’ve worked on your 2-on 2-off at home and your dog misses his contact in the ring, well, it turns out you’ve still got a bit more work to do. If you redo it before you carry on with your run, you can do some of that work now and get a little bit closer to future perfection.
If you’ve never taught your dog a contact behaviour and he misses his contact in the ring, well, what else did you expect? You dog doesn’t know any better, so there’s no point getting angry with him. Give him a treat and a pat at the end of the run, because you’re not a world-class handler either but your dog is happy to go out and play agility with you anyway.