Five Fault Club

Today my club had our annual working bee to clean all the winter mud off our equipment and fix the stuff we’ve broken. This year we had the added challenge of converting all of our jumps to the new heights.

We still have a lot of the older metal style hurdles, although we are gradually replacing them. This weekend two club members and a supportive husband removed over 500 metal lugs from these jumps!

We have fitted plastic stick-on lugs to some of our hurdles, although we will need to finish this job off at training next week. One complication that we hadn’t anticipated is that many of our jump poles are a wee bit too long for our hurdles now – the plastic backing of the cups reduces the span of the hurdle slightly and the poles are an extremely snug fit.

Has your club modified your hurdles yet? Did you encounter any unexpected challenges?

Most people don’t want to learn too much about the science of training when they take a beginners agility class – they just want to run around and have fun with the obstacles. A good instructor will distil their knowledge down into easy training “recipes” to teach each skill – easy steps for you to follow which will get your dog performing the obstacles without hurting your brain too much.

As with cooking though, recipes will only get you so far. If you want to progress, eventually you will need to understand the basic concepts of dog training. One of these fundamental ideas is “operant conditioning” – the use of reinforcement and punishment to change the dog’s behaviour.

Continue reading “Training Basics: Reinforcement and Punishment”

EDIT: This post is now out of date. Please refer to the 2023 version.

Navigating the paperwork to enter your first agility show can be a bit confusing for an agility newbie. Today I’ll explain what you need to do before you’re ready to make your debut.

Requirements to Enter a Ribbon Trial

A ribbon trial is a small agility show, usually held on one day. The entry fees are cheaper than at championship events, and there are no cash or sponsor’s prizes – just a ribbon and a clear round certificate. They are intended to encourage newcomers into the sport, and often more experienced people will use them as a training opportunity. You can enter a ribbon trial on the day of the show, but you will need to:

• Make sure your dog is at least 18 months old on the day of the show
• Have your dog measured – I will cover measuring in a future post
• Optional: Obtain a permanent number from the Agility Committee website. This is not compulsory for ribbon trials.

Continue reading “Agility Competition Paperwork (2018 version)”

This weekend my club hosted a jumpers champ show in Timaru. I kept myself pretty busy helping all weekend, and was also show manager on Saturday. The show went very smoothly and it was lovely to see some of our newer members doing well in the ring, as well as sharing the load of running the show.

Rik and I have been working on her commitment to wraps over the last couple of weeks, and I was pleased with our progress in the ring – no refusals and one beautiful wrap on Saturday where she drove confidently to the jump. We also pulled off a 2nd place in the last Jumpers B of the weekend.

Did you go to an agility show this weekend? What was your favourite moment with your dog?

At many shows, the club will provide a bucket for you to put your lead and toys/food in when you go into the ring. This bucket will be waiting for you on the finish line.

Most dogs rapidly learn that the bucket is a source of wonderful goodies and they will make a beeline for it at the end of the run. Sometimes they are a bit too keen and don’t wait until they are actually finished before they charge off bucketward – it is very frustrating to get all the way around to the end and have your dog go round the last jump!

I’ve had two dogs that were very keen on their buckets, but I’ve never had a dog leave the course early to get its toy. I think the way I train at home has a lot to do with this.

Continue reading “Tips for Bucket-Driving Dogs”

Today I’m going to talk about what happens in the last couple of minutes before you step into the ring to start your run, and how a bit of consideration can make everyone’s day less stressful.

Holding Areas

All rings should have a roped-off area next to the entry and exit to the ring. Often there is a rectangular area that runs the full width of the ring, with the scribe’s tent placed in the middle of it. In indoor venues a club might take advantage of existing fencing for their holding area.

This space is there for three reasons:

• To give the handler and dog who are about to go space and privacy, so that they can concentrate on their run
• To provide some space around the exit so that the dog and handler don’t come running out and crash into someone who is walking past
• To keep the running dog’s treats and toys safe from opportunistic theft by passing dogs

There are a few rules and some basic etiquette about how to use this space. Most of it is common sense to experienced competitors but we forget to explain it to newcomers, so here’s all the dos and dont’s.

Continue reading “The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Holding Areas”

Rik and I enjoyed a fun weekend of agility at the CCATS (Christchurch) champ show this weekend. It was pretty hot with a strong wind which kept us nice and cool, although it caused havoc with the wing jumps.

After creating a blog called the Five Fault Club, perhaps it was karma that on Saturday we had five faults in all four classes! I was very pleased with all of these runs. Our Intermediate was the smoothest run we’ve done so far at this level, and in Jumpers B I used my backside cue in a situation I’d never anticipated when I trained it – and Rik got it right.

On Saturday night I stayed at my friend Gayle’s, along with another friend Liz, and we had lots of fun. Gayle has been working hard with her dog Breeze and today she got her first champ show ribbon, a 2nd place in Starters – well done!

This weekend there were also agility shows in Whangarei and Feilding. Which show did you go to? Which run were you most proud of?

I am on the committee that will be hosting the 2019 NZDAC in Cromwell, and I came to this year’s event with a critical eye, looking out for mistakes that we could learn from to make it even better next year. Aside from the obvious issue of the surface, I have to say that Zone 3 did a phenomenal job with the organisation of the show and Zone 5 has a very tough act to follow!

Here’s my take on what went well and what could be improved on.

Continue reading “NZDAC 2018 – What a Show!”

Welcome to the Five Fault Club! I’ve been thinking about starting an agility blog for a couple of years now and recent events have inspired me to finally take the plunge. My vision for this blog is to provide the agility community with somewhere to share their opinions, and also a resource for newcomers to find the answers to some of their burning questions. Guest posts are welcome, so please email me on fivefaultclub@gmail.com if you have something you want to get off your chest.

I tried out the phrase “Five Fault Club” at SCDTC training the other night and everyone had a different interpretation! To me it is a reminder that agility is about more than just winning, and that you can approach the sport with two mindsets – you can moan because a rail came down, or you can choose to celebrate because your dog did seventeen obstacles perfectly and nailed a hard weave entry. I used to spend a lot of time in the former camp but I am now striving to stay in the latter!

For those who don’t know me, I’m Kate and I’ve been competing in agility for more than twenty years. The photo above is from my first NDOA (now the NZDAC) at Auckland in 1997, with my Sheltie “Funzie”. I’m now up to agility dog number four, a Heading Dog named “Rik” with whom I competed at my 22nd consecutive NZDAC last month.