Well, it’s been an interesting year. What with lockdown and a back injury, I’ve only competed in 2 shows since mid-March, and I was at home for Labour Weekend for the first time since I started competing in agility in 1997.
I have struggled a bit with my motivation for agility-related things this year, but my dog is sound again and I came away from the Taieri show feeling very motivated to get back into it. I’m sure I’m not the only one dreaming about all the successes I want to achieve in the agility ring next year, but here’s a few other resolutions you could add to your list…
1. Give Your Dog a New Nickname
Shithead. Retard. Stupid dick. Idiot. Nightmare.
These are all names I have heard handlers calling their dogs in the ring this year … usually after they’ve just stuffed something up for their dog.
Please stop it. It’s not as cute or funny as you think it is.
I know your dog doesn’t know what those words mean, and I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt that you don’t actually think your dog is a shithead. But spectators don’t know that, and newcomers to the sport don’t know that, and this is not a great first impression for our sport.
And even if you don’t really mean these words, I do wonder how they affect your attitude towards agility training on a subconscious level. At least 95% of what goes wrong in the ring boils down to either handler error or trainer error. If one handler leaves the ring saying “you’re such a retard” and another one says “whoops, we really need to work on those weave entries”, which handler is taking responsibility for the problem and also helping their brain to develop a growth mindset about their dog’s potential?
2. Speak No Evil
This has been my New Year’s resolution for about 4 years now, after I heard some not-nice stuff being said about me. I realised that I too had a tendency to say not-nice things about other people at agility, and so I decided to cut it out. For what it’s worth, I’ve “failed” 4 years in a row, but I’ve definitely reduced the amount of backstabbing that I do, and I’ve found that there are plenty of more interesting things to talk about anyway.
I don’t think we have a major malicious gossip problem in our sport, but it does happen and it can lead to some awkward situations, especially when it starts happening within a club. There’s lots of people at agility and you won’t like all of them – but focusing your energy on the ones you find irritating won’t make anything better. It won’t really make you feel better, either.
So next time you catch yourself looking over your shoulder to make sure So-and-So isn’t in earshot before you make a catty remark, try just thinking it instead of saying it. And if you just can’t keep it to yourself, tell your dog all about it on the drive home.
3. Help a Newcomer
Way back in February 1997, I started a Beginners agility class. I entered Elementary at our club’s Anzac Day ribbon trial and I got a ribbon.
It’s getting harder for our newcomers to get started in competition, not just because the standard required is higher but also because in recent years some practical barriers have popped up. These days you can’t just mention an upcoming ribbon trial to your newbies on Thursday night and have them turn up and enter on the day. There are fewer ribbon trials to enter, and there’s permanent numbers and measuring to worry about first.
The gap between the first-time competitor and the experienced handler running their baby dog in Starters is growing. Courses are getting harder to remember, the best dogs are getting faster, and sometimes you’re going to encounter backsides in Novice. It’s inevitable that somebody who’s been doing agility for 20 years will have more skills than someone who’s just entered their first show, but we need to help our newbies to succeed and enjoy the sport so that they will stick around and become the next generation of Senior handlers.
This is an area that I’d love to see the incoming Agility Committee work on over the coming two years, but we can all do our little bit to help all of our newer competitors (young and old) to feel welcome, and to help them learn the ropes of the sport.
4. Train in the Ring. Or Don’t.
Here’s one I have often been guilty of in the past few years, and I’m going to try to be more aware of how I train in the ring next year.
I’ve been on a dog geek video binge this week, watching a four-hour lecture by world-renowned animal trainer Bob Bailey.
According to Bob, the definition of training is that it changes behaviour.
You’re not “training in the ring” if your dog misses their dogwalk contact, and you go back and repeat it four times, and your dog misses it four more times, and then you carry on to the next jump. You’re just adding thirty seconds onto the show’s finish time while you rehearse crappy dogwalk performances.
Judges like to see people and their dogs succeed and work together as a team. They don’t mind if you go back and try a tricky handling sequence again, or use your time in the ring to build confidence for your young dog. But it must be rather frustrating to watch people repeat the same mistakes over and over … and then over and over in their next run. I know I find this pretty tedious viewing from the sideline!
If you’re going to train in the ring, use that time strategically to build towards your future success. Have a plan before you go in about what you will do if your dog misses a contact or breaks their start line or stuffs up their weaves. How many retries you will do, and what you will do if your dog keeps getting it wrong? If you notice that your dog is often failing at the same thing, think about how you’re going to fix it. Maybe you could take a toy into the ring next time so that you can reward your dog as soon as he gets it right?
And ask yourself afterwards whether you and your dog are better off than you were before you started the run (another tip from Bob!).
5. Sharpen the Saw
My last dog Spring had a little problem with her retrieve. She always came straight back, but I nicknamed her the Grinch because she just couldn’t bring herself to let go of the toy. If I asked her to drop it she would – but then she’d grab it before it touched the ground. Then she’d lie down with her chin pressed into the ground so that it was almost impossible to wrestle the toy out of her mouth.
I put up with this minor annoyance for at least five years, and then one day I decided to actually fix it. It took me three weeks to train a new cue for Spring to jump up on my leg and push the toy into my hand.
Suddenly I could get the same amount of training done in half the time, and I wasn’t constantly having to bend down and get hair in my face while I negotiated with the Grinch.
My current dog Rik has a pretty awful retrieve because she likes to parade around and chew her ball for a while. Yesterday I took a ball and some high-value treats outside to work on tunnel threadles, which she finds very difficult. I don’t often train with food, and I was shocked to discover that her retrieve was flawless and we got heaps of repetitions done in just a few minutes.
So this is another of my New Year’s resolutions – I am going to fix Rik’s retrieve so that I can get the ball back straight away, even when I don’t have pockets full of dead animal.
What’s one frustrating or time-wasting behaviour in your dog that you could improve? Maybe it’s a slow or fidgety start-line sit, or a fondness for keep-away like Rik, or a dog that won’t let go out of a tug toy. If you work on it several times a week you should be able to make a huge difference – and then you’ll have more time for agility!