Readiness...

My puppy owners and students have been asking me a lot of questions such as "when should I start weaving?", "when should I start jumping?" and "when should I start... (fill in the blank)?"  I've been giving this a lot of thought especially with so many puppies currently training at ACTS right now as well as my first litter of puppies approaching 12 months of age soon. 

Puppies need to not only be physically ready for training - meaning growth plates have closed and there is an awareness of their body and how to use it ,but  puppies also need to be mentally ready.  This mental readiness is much harder to assess but it is so important to the training program.  We often talk about how males mature more slowly than females mentally or about how this or that puppy seems to be more immature or mature than others its age.  When it is something many of us can see - is there a way to really quantify this so we can have some measure of a puppy's mental readiness?

In my experience with my own puppies and my student's puppies it makes a huge difference if weave training is started when the puppy/young adult is mentally ready compared to starting it when they are still mentally immature.  Weaving is a complex behavior involving a lot of mental and physical coordination.  It doesn't matter which of the many training methods you use, if a dog is not mentally ready for weaving when it is started it can take an excruciatingly long time to train it to fluency and/or it can cause mental stress for the dog.

I first really noticed this phenomenon 4 years ago with Sinco.  Generally I like to move dogs through weave training as quickly as they can handle it which is why it is important to be sure they are mentally ready.  Sinco continued to show me that she was having trouble grasping the concepts.  Tay who was the same age caught on to weaving very quickly and really seemed to enjoy it at an early age.  Feisty also caught on to weaving quickly.  I chose to be patient with Sinco and just try her on the weaves every couple of weeks throughout the summer.  We were having to rework the teeter as well since she had a set-back on the teeter.  One day Sinco went through the weaves with the guides I like to use without hesitation and with speed and I knew that she was getting it.  It had paid off to not push her on it but to let her try it every couple of weeks just one time.  I believe if I had done a lot of repetitions with her she would have thought too hard about it and stressed herself trying too hard to learn it.

Now I wish I could put my finger on what clued me into giving her more time to learn to weave while the other two dogs I had who were about the same age were able to handle learning to weave and progressed at brisk pace. 

I do find that students who start agility training with older dogs have an easier time if and only if their dogs have been taught how to learn and how to make mistakes from a young age.  The older dogs seem to have a mental readiness for learning complex behaviors that is missing in many young dogs.  Now there are young dogs who are very mentally mature for their age (just as we see in people) and these dogs can be amazing at what they learn at young ages and in these cases we have to use the physical limitations to slow down the training process. 

So some things I'm starting to look for in terms of mental readiness for learning complex behaviors and behavior chains (sequencing obstacles for example) include:

• Ability to focus on learning new things for a few minutes at a time - continuously without getting distracted.
• This may not seem like much but for those who have done two minute timed shaping sessions will realize that two minutes can be a long time and dogs can lose focus multiple times in that two minutes. 
• Ability to learn new things in a distracting and/or novel environment.
• This is another indication of a dog's ability to focus on tasks which requires a degree of mental maturity.
• Ability to learn new things that involve different parts of their bodies. 
• For example teaching them to lift both the left fore and left hind legs at the same time, teaching them to stand on cans/pedestals/pods with one foot on one item and the other foot on a different item (ultimately all four feet each standing on a different item).
• Ability to exercise self-control amidst distractions.
• This is a sign that they are able think about controlling themselves in the face of fun things like toys which requires a lot of mental energy.  Doing stays with toys moving around them or food tossed on the ground for example.  Dogs who mature early have an easier time with learning the concept of stay at a younger age than dogs who mature more slowly.

Mental readiness for weave training should be the biggest concern for agility trainers who are asking "when will my dog be ready to learn to weave?".  I am familiar with a lot of different ways to train weaves and I know that not all methods work for all dogs and handlers - even the way I have had the most success using.  Weave training can also highlight a trainer/handler's strengths and weaknesses as a trainer.  If a trainer tends to want to "help" their dog solve problems rather than let them figure it out then this will show up in weave training .  The desire to help the dog will inevitably cause weave training to be delayed.  If a trainer is not able to work with their dog on a regular basis with weave training then this will also cause a delay in learning the weaves.  The biggest pitfall I see - no matter what method is used  whether it is 2 x 2, channel, guides or weav-a-matics is that people tend to stay too long at a particular stage in the training which causes delays and problems in the training.  If a dog is mentally and physically ready for weave training then the training should be able to progress at a brisk pace.  Often a dog is started on weave training that is not mentally or physically ready for the training and then training is delayed due to the dog's inability to grasp the complex concept.  This can prove frustrating for everyone involved and this is hard to identify as the underlying cause for the difficulty in training.  If you are unsure whether your dog is mentally ready for weave training then I recommend waiting.

It is also very important to allow dogs to make mistakes as they are learning weaves - if they are trying to go faster then let them be sloppy.  If you put pressure on them to be accurate when trying to speed them up it can backfire by creating stress in the dog and then creating slow weaves.  When training weave entrances in a sequence I always want to repeat the obstacle(s) before the weaves so the dog learns the entry on their own.  I don't want to stop the dog and "fix it" for them or dogs will quickly learn that their handler will always "fix it" for them.  In the first year of doing weaves the dogs will seem to come and go with their fluency for weaves so be prepared for this and have a plan for how to handle it when it happens.  It is very important to be aware that physical soreness/pain can severely impact weave performance. 

Once my dogs are proficient with weaves I rarely practice them.   I feel that weaves are a physically demanding obstacle much like the aframe and therefore I minimize how much I practice them once my dogs are fluent with them.  I have also learned that if weave performance decreases after they have demonstrated fluency that 99% of the time it is due to physical soreness and/or mental stress/fatigue and not due to the weaves themselves.  Weave poles can bring out the best and worst in our dogs and our teamwork.  If a dog is stressed on a course it almost always shows itself in the weave poles.  If a dog is sore it almost always shows itself in the weave poles.

                                                                                                                   Photo by Great Dane Photos

                                                                                                     Photo by Great Dane Photos

I am still amazed that we are able to train our dogs to weave at all - it is truly amazing! 

When to trial?

I have been having this discussion with my beginner students at class and via email.  When to trial? 

It is human nature if you have any competitive bone in your body to want to get out there and start competing and seeing what you've got compared to everyone else out there!  Well at least get out there and start to feel like you've made progress toward a goal.  Now I know not everyone wants to compete in front of a bunch of people, it can be a nerve wracking experience. 

Nothing makes me happier and prouder as a teacher than to see my students succeeding at their goals with their dogs.  For some it is being able to run the course in class flawlessly the first time and for others it is to earn a qualifying score at a trial and for still others it is earning an agility championship title on their dog.  My goal as a teacher and a coach is to help students realize their goals/dreams, whatever they may be.  I train everyone as if they were going to compete because that will help ensure success in whatever they want to do with agility. 

I really want my students to succeed when they first start trialing, especially with their first agility dog.  However many of us tend to get in a hurry with our first agility dog and we all tend to enter trials earlier than maybe we should have done with our first dog.  I have had only a handful of students who wanted to compete and had to be poked and prodded into entering their first trial.  I rarely need to do that.  In fact some students ask me to be a gate keeper for them to help them wait until I feel they are ready.  Sometimes I have had to push hard on that gate to keep it closed!  I try to keep the best interests of the team in mind and the last thing I want is to overface a dog and handler. 

Too often I see dogs and handlers in the novice class at a trial who are not ready to be there.  I often feel sorry for the dog because the dog is often confused and stressed in the situation and the handler is unsure how to cope with it.  Or the other extreme is the dog is so driven to be out there doing agility that the handler is left in the dust and not sure what to do with this very fast dog who has broken a start line, launched off a contact and is running past weave poles. 

Before entering a trial I feel that students should have the following skills:

1.  Be able to perform courses that are more difficult than novice courses and know how to handle the sequences on their own without outside assistance.
2.  Be able to keep the dog focused on agility both in class and at run thrus/open ring time in different places.
3.  Have a strategy for maintaining criteria on start line stays, contacts, weaves, jumps and general attitude for a trial setting and have practiced executing this strategy.
4.  Have implemented a program to transition from training to trialing that involves random reinforcement on course, concealing toy and food rewards in training and introduced a verbal reward marker that can be used in agility trials.

I have found when students are able to do all of these things they have a very easy time at the novice level in trials and will quickly move to the upper levels if they choose to do so. 

I also feel strongly that regardless of the organization's rules that teams should be running novice courses cleanly (no refusals/runouts or off courses) before moving up to the next level.  This will help reduce the "brick wall" effect that happens as the qualifying criteria increases in the upper levels.

Building drive and building self control

These are not mutually exclusive concepts.  Having a lot of young dogs in class right now I am thinking a lot about which dogs need more drive building, which dogs need more self control and which handlers need more drive building and which handlers need more self control (to slow down their training goals).  I frequently get questions about concern about whether a puppy has enough drive or enough control. 

I know from experience it is much easier to train a dog to do agility slowly than it is train it to go fast and I am very careful to monitor every step in a student's training to ensure that speed is being encouraged and reinforced.  Some dogs are naturally speedy and so much so that they are not really thinking but just going.  Dogs need to be able to think and that usually means go slowly to learn something.  Most of us did not go fast the first time riding a bike, driving a car, walking or any sport or physical activity.  We need to go slowly to process new information.  As we get confident we get faster, especially with encouragement.  Even doing this it is still hard sometimes for newer students to be able to encourage speed in their dogs.  There is a small percentage of dogs who naturally want to do everything fast and are very reactive to motion and these dogs need more self control training. 

Some of the things I want to see early on in a young dog's training long before agility equipment is introduced is that they can send away from the handler to a target and a toy with speed.  If there is no speed here it will be even harder to get them to send to a jump with speed.  If the dog learns to go ahead of the handler with speed then it will be much easier to get speed in agility as well as to get distance.  I also want dogs who are thinking.  Thinking dogs are much better at problem solving, much better at generalizing to different types of equipment and to different environments, much better and body awareness and have an easier time of having sustained focus.  If we are always luring (not that all luring is bad mind you), always showing them what we want and not ever letting them learn on their own and make mistakes then we will have dogs who are very dependent on their handlers to be able to do obstacles.  This lack of independent thinking makes training independent obstacle performance and distance very difficult.  Dogs need to be willing to go out and make mistakes in order to do well with distance in agility.

Using shaping to teach various tricks that use their bodies differently, that involve making noise, that cause movement of objects and that are complex can make agility training so much easier. 

The things I want to see in my own dog and in my student's dogs before we introduce obstacle training (aka what is taught in our sports foundations classes - pre-agility foundations)

1.  Student and dog's ability to learn new behaviors with shaping including tricks that make noise and/or use various body parts - especially rear legs.
2.  Ability to send to a mat, target and a toy with speed.
3.  Self control - demonstrated in numerous ways with various games we play in pre-agility foundations classes.
4.  Dog is comfortable walking on different surfaces including ones that move.
5.  Student understands dog management skills and can use them effectively.
6.  Student is working on loose leash walking.
7.  A good (not expected to be perfect in young dogs) recall with distractions.
8.  Able to be quiet in a crate during class time.

I have found these skills are the most useful for agility training and overall success in the hectic agility class environment as well as in other performance sports.

It is not good for herding to have your dog pull you into the arena - the sheep will read that the dog is in control and be very unsettled and not trust the dog or handler and it will be a wild ride.  When dogs walk in under control the sheep are settled and more trusting of the situation so they will be calmer which will help the run be more successful.  The same is true in agility, when a dog pulls you into the ring very often the dog is in charge on the course and the handler appears to be going along for the ride.

In the over 20 years I have been doing agility I have seen lots of dogs with different personalities.  From my perspective the most difficult dogs to work with in agility are the ones who have high reactivity to motion, noise and/or dogs.  These dogs have the most difficult time developing the sustained focus needed for performance sports and they are prone to having high adrenaline levels which interferes with the brain's ability to think clearly.

Sometimes highly reactive dogs also come in high energy packages and sometimes in low or moderate energy packages.  Sometimes highly reactive dogs can be high drive dogs in very quiet and calm settings but they have a difficult time being high drive in distracting environments.  In my mind "high drive" refers to a high desire to work with a human and a high desire to do what is asked/taught.  There are high energy dogs and/or highly reactive dogs who are not high drive, in my opinion because they are in it for their own reasons and have little use for humans in their lives.  These dogs require a lot of work to develop a good working relationship with a human. However very often high energy and/or highly reactive dogs are considered high drive without regard to how they interact with people.

I think it is important in the early pre-agility training to get to know your dog/puppy and determine whether you will need to work more on self-control exercises, more on drive/speed building exercises or an equal amount of both.  This assessment is important for channeling the handler/student's training time and resources.

These are three traits which can come in any combination in your agility dog (do the permutations and there are a lot of combinations possible here):

low, moderate or high energy
low, moderate or high drive
low, moderate or high reactivity

Personally I like moderate to high energy, high drive, and low to moderate reactivity for the ideal agility/performance dog.  These dogs tend to need an equal balance of all the exercises - if I find a dog is able to learn stays and general self control exercises very easily and has a harder time putting speed/energy into other types of exercises then I will focus more on drive/speed exercises and less on self-control.  The opposite also applies. 

Right now in my household I have a myriad of combinations of energy level, drive level and reactivity level.

I have a moderate energy dog who is very high drive - she has a strong willingness to please, strong sustained focus on tasks at hand and if going fast is what I want she is very willing to do it and if going slowly is what I want she will try to do that too. As a young puppy she was very reactive to movement, however I worked very hard on it from when she was 8 weeks old.  She could not be inside where agility was going on for more than a few seconds for most of her puppyhood.  When she was about 18 months old she was able to sit next to an agility ring while dogs ran through the tunnel and she would look at them and look back at me without making a sound!  But that took lots and lots of gradual work on learning to focus around moving dogs.  We only stayed a minute and left but that was how long it took to get to that point working on it very hard all the time.  I then started to take her to group agility classes for the purpose of working on her focus on me while other dogs are running agility.  If I always trained her by myself I never would have been able to work on that. Now at almost 5 years of age she can be crated next to the ring and she only barks when I run another dog. 

I have a very high energy and high drive dog whose high energy can interfere with her ability to focus.  She is also highly sound and energy reactive which also interferes with her ability to focus.  I took her to many group agility classes when she was around 2 years old.  This helped a lot for her to learn to focus on me in loud and busy environments with lots of different types of energy around.  When she is able to focus she is very much there and able to sustain her focus and do tasks at hand fast and accurately.  She loves to learn new things.  She likes to think things are her idea most of the time so that is a challenge but at the same time she likes to be with me all the time so ultimately she really likes doing things with me (but don't tell her that!)

I have another dog who is very high energy but has a very hard time focusing on tasks at hand.  She seems to have an attention deficit disorder no matter how hard she tries to do a task at hand she is very easily distracted by her own busy mind and busy world.  Stays are almost impossible for her.  She can do things well that involve movement but she will rarely do the same thing exactly the same way twice.  She loves clicker training and is very operant but she can get into patterns very easily and not always pay attention to the correct verbal or physical cue.  She has trouble "filtering" her environment and sorting out things that are relevant from those that are not.  I consider her to be have moderate drive but she is capable of speed when she can focus. 

Then I have my youngest dog who is in many ways a very ideal combination of traits.  She is  very high energy - I have never seen her walk on her own - she has a stop and a 90mph button and nothing in between - yet.  She also has incredible sustained focus for a young dog.  She is not that easily distracted from her work (for a 9 month old puppy) - whatever it is when she understands what I want.  She is very high drive - she loves to learn new things and loves to do anything and is very much of a team player.  She is more of a team player than I ever thought she would be but it is because I learned early on that toys have much higher value to her than food so once I started using toys for recall rewards instead of food she started to pay closer attention to me.  She very much wants me in the picture and if I walk away she will even drop her toy and come with me - that is huge progress for her!  I did work hard on this from the start because I knew at 3 days old she could easily become a very independent dog and I didn't want her to do that and it may have helped her that I've been the central human in her life since she was born.  I can work on an equal balance of self control exercises with drive/speed exercises and she sees them all as fun and "work" and she likes work.  She likes to do stuff.  While being a team player in herding is a long ways off she is already becoming a team player in her early pre-agility training and pre-obedience training.  I have not had a successful high drive AND high energy stock dog before so that will be a new experience for me.  High drive and high energy agility and obedience dog I can handle and will enjoy the challenge!

My retired Border Collie was probably the worst combination of traits for a successful performance dog.  He was a fast agility dog but he was highly reactive to other dogs and to movement and his adrenaline levels could escalate quickly.  This interfered with his ability to focus in a trial environment.  These dogs are the hardest ones with whom to have success in agility.  They are a rush when they run well because they are fast and they can win their class.  Then they can be eliminated on the next run. They can be very inconsistent due to their adrenaline levels getting high and out of control from being so reactive to their environments.  These dogs need to work on self control and focus from the very beginning - as young as possible and the primary exercise for these dogs is self control/focus with distractions.  I would only work on that and until I could get that I would not do agility training with a dog like this.  Managing dogs like this outside the ring is exhausting and stressful for the handler.

So this is why I strive for my students to have a good balance between drive and control so they can find their trialing experiences enjoyable and successful.

Puppy Training - nine months old and what lies ahead

I am enjoying training my puppy, Carmine, so much.  It is really fun to train a puppy that I've known since the moment she was born.  She was labelled "wild child" because she would wiggle and yell when I tried to tube feed her, she crawled backwards so fast off the cold washcloth at three days old and she would be the last one standing whenever the puppies went on an outing.  She is still very high energy and always game to go anywhere, any time.  However with a lot of help from me she actually loves being touched, she gets carried a lot around the house because she doesn't walk - she tries to run and often is leaping over elderly small dogs.  She has two speeds stop and 100mph.  It is very hard for her to walk or even trot.  I watch her play and she runs a lot when she plays and she loves games of chase and keep away with other dogs.  I play these games with her too.  It is really fun to chase her and encourage her to run away with "go go go!"  Because I play these games with her she is very ready to chase me when I run the other way.  She is motivated to pay attention to me when we play.

After having three excellent puppy seminars over the last three months and assessing my own training programs here is where I am in training Carmine.

She has 20 feet distance with the attention/recall game.
She can do a sit stay while I wave a toy or treat around and while I walk around her.
She has verbal cues for sit and down no matter where I am and she can be several feet away.
She loves to play ball but clearly has favorite toys.
She has learned a variety of tricks using shaping including backing up on objects, putting her two right feet up on a board, pawing at things, touching her hip on walls, turning both directions around a post, she can "bow" on cue, she has a stand stay on a platform, she can do hand touches and send to an empty target (plastic lid) from 20 feet away.
She can do front and rear crosses around a cone and hoop.
She does fun recalls between my legs.
She is doing well with finding heel position off leash.
She is doing well with loose leash walking in most situations.
She can focus on me around agility activities.
She can do recalls to side.
She will send to a stationary toy.
She can do a stand to a down and a sit to a stand.
She can send and stay on a mat and send to her crate.
She will play tug on a table top.
She has a verbal cue for backing up on the flat.
She regularly offers a sit before any door whether on leash or off leash.
She is learning herding.
I'm sure there are other things she knows that I've already forgotten!
I am contemplating her running contact training.  As a training challenge for me I want to teach her a true running dogwalk and aframe.  She has a very long stride and is fast so this will be a fun challenge. 


I will digress here... I have been thinking a lot about running contacts and attended Silvia Trkman's session on it,  I also watched Rachel Sanders Running Aframes and had a lesson with her about her running dogwalks and aframes.  Training a large dog to do a running dog walk is very challenging.  I have experience with small dogs on the dog walk and aframe with true running contacts. 

Many of my students morph into some form of running contact after training a 2 on/2 off either because of failing to enforce the 2on/2off or because of a desire for a running contact.  For small dogs, especially Corgis, using quick release and then fading the release works well for both aframe and dogwalk, but they first have to be patterned to go to the end of the contact so they don't leap.  Larger breeds can be more problematic because their strides can carry them right over the contact zone.  I see so many students and others creating confusion with their dogs by not having clear criteria with proper enforcement and reinforcement.  The confusion leads to slow and/or leaping contacts.  I don't ever want to reinforce a contact that is slow - no matter how accurate it is.  I will say "good dog, let's try again!"  When they do it faster then they get a treat or toy.  Too often people only focus on the accuracy and not on the speed and inadvertently train slow contacts.  Then they want to speed it up and the dog gets confused.  Almost every dog I've seen goes through a phase early in their contact training where they stop part way down the contact, pause and reflect, and then with coaxing they will step into the 2 on/2 off.  The biggest mistake people make is to reward this with a treat or toy.  As soon as I see a dog stop I want them to step in and put a hand in their collar and gently guide them into the position.  Then verbally praise (no treat/toy) and then repeat the contact again.  I have found that this gets rid of the creeping contacts very quickly. 
Going to a running contact doesn't fix this problem - it only causes confusion for the dog.  I see many dogs who have not been taught any criteria - running or stopping on the contacts.  These are the dogs who are most likely to miss/leap over the yellow zone.  In my opinion these dogs who are leaping are more likely to harm themselves than dogs doing well trained 2 on/2 off contacts.  I have seen very small dogs leap over contact zones as well as large dogs leaping off the aframe over the contact zone. 

The aspects of training a true running contact require a lot of keen observation and videotaping.  The first step is to find the striding that will carry the dog through the contact and having that become muscle memory when going straight ahead and then training turns.  Whether that is watching the hind feet and being sure they are apart as Silvia does or whether it is marking the dog hitting near the end of a board when running - that is the first step.  Once you have that criteria established and your dog can do it on a flat board, then slanted board, then a low dog walk and then a high dog walk and then in sequences you have the first step.  This is a long step and one I find that most people don't have the patience to do, especially if they want to retrain.  Doing it only in class on a weekly basis will make this process take much longer. It is hard to do without access to full height equipment 3-4 times a week.  2on/2off can be taught very well without access to full height equipment and that is a huge advantage of that training method.  The next step in running contacts, is having the dog go into the yellow zone and make a tight turn which can be a training challenge.  I have worked on this with small dogs and I have found that there has to be some collection/short striding when making a turn.  The dogwalk is much like a jump grid.  The way a dog does it will be different whether the dog is going straight or turning.  In a jump grid dogs will add a short collection stride in order to make a tight turn on a jump.  In full extension dogs will take fewer strides in a jump grid.  The same seems to be true of the dogwalk.  It is not unlike jump training in that you have to constantly balance the tight turns with extension so the dog is clear that it can do both and when to do which one.  Dogs will start to run overly collected if too much tight turn work is done with them or vice versa they will not know how and when to collect if they do too much training in full extension.  The same is true of the dogwalk.  The third step is making sure the dog can do the running contact not only when the end of the dogwalk requires collection but also when the entrance to the dogwalk requires collection such as a tight turn getting on to it.  This in my opinion is the hardest step from my experience with small dogs. Obviously there are many smaller steps within each of these but these are the three major training challenges I see to running contacts.  The fourth one depending on where you trial would be to work on it with slatted and slatless and rubber matting and rubber granules - all things which can affect striding.  In addition the height of the aframe can vary from 4'8" in Teacup to 5' in NADAC, to 5'3" in CPE, to 5'6" in AKC/small dog USDAA to 5'9/11" in USDAA.  Lastly the 36" versus 42" contact zone on the dogwalk can make a huge difference too.

So while I contemplate this and work on my own observation skills, my puppy is running across a flat wide board.  Yes it would be easier to train her to do a 2on/2off but I feel like I want a training challenge and I know I can also bail on it and retrain to a 2on/2off if needed. Training true running contacts is not for the faint of heart and really requires a lot of time and effort to have them be independent, fast and accurate.  Meanwhile she is also going to learn 2on/2off on a small travel size plank but it won't be applied to a full dogwalk or aframe as long as I am committed to training a true running contact. 

We'll see what happens...

Silvia Trkman seminar thoughts

I'm starting to recover from five days of work hosting a seminar at the school.  It was so worth it, most everyone enjoyed it and learned from it.

The Silvia Trkman seminar was fantastic!  She is so positive and has such a good eye for helping everyone.  I got some additional clarification and ideas to add to my training and teaching program.

I first saw Silvia in person a year and a half ago and I really learned a lot from her then.  Her handling style fits well with how I handle and teach handling.  That is an important consideration for me when bringing in someone to give a seminar.  The last thing I want to do is to confuse my students.  She also really wants to give the dogs as much information as possible so they can not only turn tightly but not injure themselves in the process.  Many dogs are injured because of lack of information or late information regarding turns.

Where Silvia competes in Europe they have very tight courses and the courses have lots of turns on them.  This is what she trains for with her dogs.  Here in the states we don't see courses like these on a regular basis.  Those people wanting to be on a World Team will want to train and prepare for these European style courses.  For most of us these courses are just good training exercises.  It can help improve your course times if your dog's turns are tighter and if the your dog has more information ahead of time.  Dogs without a lot of flat ground speed can make up a lot of time with tight turns on a course.  It also reduces the chance of injury when your dog has time to prepare for a turn on course.

In her "Turns" seminar I got a much better idea of the level of detail she has in the training of tight turns with her dogs and what specifically she is looking for when training turns.  These exercises are ones that I am going to incorporate into the training of my own dogs and that of my students.  She noted that Sinco has good tight turns that are cued by body language.  She suggested I add verbal cues to those tight turns to allow me to handle her when I can't physically get to a spot where I need a tight turn.  I have already started it and it is making a huge difference.  These cues are much more than just "left" and "right"  - there is much more to it than that and I'm glad to finally understand her detailed system of training turns much better. As part of Tay's rehab and conditioning I am going to teach her turns in this manner.  It will be very important that she be able to make turns safely and that she knows she is turning well in advance in order to keep her front end sound.  I will definitely be adding detailed verbal cues to her training. 

The Tricks seminar was excellent because she showed how she does a number of tricks and we got to see some experienced trick trainers and some new to trick training working with their dogs.  As a result there will be a lot more trick training added to our Sports Foundations classes that will help to build confidence and body awareness, and to help condition the dogs.  However for me the most informative was to be able to observe Silvia at her lunch and dinner breaks interacting with her 9 month old puppy and to see how many new tricks she taught her puppy during her stay here.  It was very inspiring and great to see how to utilize short blocks of time to do training and conditioning at the same time with a dog.  Her techniques were interesting to watch.  I've already started to do even more shaping exercises with my puppy and her comprehension of some of exercises has improved greatly.  I had been frustrated that the luring was not working as well with her - she was going through the motions but she is so toy driven that I felt she was not thinking enough.  So now I am shaping them with a clicker and treats and the light bulb has gone on and she has it so much faster.   I shape a lot of behaviors but there have been a couple that I used to think were easier for me and for students to do with luring but now I am rethinking that approach.

The handling sessions were very interesting and challenging.  Personally I like to be challenged when I go to a seminar and I like to leave with some sense of success but also with some things to work on for "homework."  If I can do everything easily then I am not being pushed to be a better trainer and handler.  Seminars are for learning and not for showing off what we know, in my opinion.  She was fabulous in finding something positive to say about every handler and run and finding something to work on for everyone.  We can all get in a rut in our training and tend to do that which is easy and fun and not push ourselves outside of our comfort zone.  I think everyone was pushed outside of their comfort zone but in a positive way.  Silvia had some great expressions to help bring humor to situations that could otherwise be awkward.

The running contacts session was very well attended.  Silvia is well known for training running contacts.  I found it interesting when she said that more Americans are training running contacts than Europeans and when you watch FCI videos it looks like most Europeans at that level are doing running contacts.  There are "true running contacts" and there are "modified running contacts."  Most people have some form of "modified running contacts" and few have true running contacts.  True running contacts take a lot of work and require a gradual progression in training and access to boards and eventually a dogwalk and aframe to use on a regular basis.   The larger the dog the harder it is for a running dogwalk - not only for hitting the contact zone but also for having turns after the contact.  She said she does very few aframes and she trains it on the dogwalk mainly and the aframe is "free."  However she is very athletic and she can keep up with her fast dogs.  Many of us are not able to keep up with our fast dogs and a running dogwalk can be hard to keep up with on a course.  Running aframes are usually easier to train but still can take a lot of work to get a natural relaxed stride across it.  She noted something that I've observed but have not put my finger on it.  That raising the aframe slowly puts it at a height where it is hard for dogs to be successful so she goes up about several inches at a time.  That was good to hear because I've observed that as well and wondered about it.  I've successfully trained true running dogwalks and aframes with my small dogs and some of my students dogs. Training small dogs can be hard work and is not for the faint of heart.  It takes a long time to get the rhythm needed.  However it was reassuring to hear Silvia say that dogs don't always stride across the dogwalk the same way and nothing can change that and to obsess over it will only stress everyone out.  That was a relief because I've noticed that myself and yet so many people obsess that the number of strides needs to be the same every time but that is not realistic.  The striding will change depending on where they are coming from and where they are going to next from the dogwalk.  She also doesn't obsess over where in the yellow they touch and focuses on hind feet rather than front feet which is also much easier. Training larger dogs to do running aframes has been more difficult and more frustrating for students.  I am still struggling with that when the dogwalk is a stop. Teaching two on two off is much easier for me and most of my students on the dogwalk.  Many of us have a hard time keeping up with a fast dog on the dogwalk.   Carmine will be my first personal experience of training true running dogwalk and aframe with a larger dog.  She is currently 20" at the shoulder.  It is my motivation to get in to better shape to keep up with her because her ground speed is very fast.  She will know two on two off on a board as an exercise like Silvia teaches all her dogs.  So in worst case I will be able to do that.  I will also be teaching Carmine verbal cues for all aspects of turning. 

It was also good to hear how slowly she goes with her training.  I feel there is so much to train a dog in agility and I don't understand why so many want to rush it and are willing to skip steps in their training.  Every dog and handler is different and will progress at their own rate.  I try to assign homework to my students.  Training turns and jumps is the most important training and yet it is the one that we often have the least patience for doing.  Watching her with her pup and doing exercises with poles on the grounds was inspiring and it makes so much sense to have tight turns and speed with poles on the ground on jumps before adding height.  I have done this with my young dogs and my students dogs for years.   I do a lot of these kinds of things using hoops (like NADAC style hoops) because they are easy to move around, there are not poles to go rolling across the floor and yet there is still the concept of two standards for the dog to go through.  Using these to teach wraps, front and rear crosses, 270s, serpentines, sends and boxes is so easy and it teaches dog and handler about handling and about how to turn with speed.  As a bonus, if someone decides to do NADAC when their dog is older they have no problem with hoops because their dog saw them as a puppy/youngster. 

So now that the dust is settling after the seminar I am processing all that I learned and I am planning what things I will incorporate into my agility foundations and advanced level training that will be complimentary to what we already do and I will see what I want to add to my own training program.  When I go to seminars I don't like to totally change everything I do in my training and teaching program because I feel that is counterproductive.  I like to add things that will enhance my program and/or will "fix" problems I have had.  My program is pretty stable and I like to improve it all the time and make sure it grows as agility knowledge and training grows.  I like to try out new training techniques on my own dogs first before teaching it to students so I have some idea of the pitfalls there may be and the effectiveness of it.  I'm lucky to have a few dogs who have very different personalities and learning styles to work with when I want to try something new.

Agility in the US is much more diverse and open to a wider range of breeds and sizes than in Europe.  There are so many agility organizations that it is easy to find one where any given dog and handler can be successful.  We are fortunate to have more agility options here.  Just as we have diverse agility organizations we have diverse requirements in agility training.  In the US we have many more classes and organizations with distance type challenges on the courses so we tend to focus more on distance training here than in Europe.  I feel it is important to also train distance at an early age with puppies because we have a lot of distance requirements in our courses.  So for us there needs to be a balance between lots of tight turns and handler focus and distance and sends to obstacles at large distances.  This is why I am careful about what I add to my training/teaching program so that it will still fit with our trialing requirements.  We also need to have reliable contacts at a distance - 20-50 feet for some of us - that requires very special training. 

So when you are processing information from a seminar or an instructor you really want to look at how it fits in with the other things you need/want to train for success in agility.  Be thoughtful about what will work and fit into your existing program.

Puppy Training or What I Know Now that I Wish I Had Known Then!

Having a puppy around is always a time of reflection for me on my training techniques - what I want to do differently with this puppy, what this puppy needs done differently than others and what I can learn from this puppy.




Right now at ACTS we have a lot of puppies in various stages of training to be agility dogs. It is an exciting time. We are working on improving and growing our "sports foundations" program to see how we can best prepare students for the intricacies and demands of agility training as well as for the rigors of daily life training. So right now I'm spending a lot of time listening to my students, getting their feedback, tweaking the program and watching students and puppies. We are trying to do our training as much as possible without training aids such as prong collars, gentle leaders or choke collars. However there may be times when these will be needed in certain circumstances or for short periods of time. Our goal is to help students wean off of these training aids as much as possible. They can't be used in competitive sports so they need to be weaned off at some point and sooner is better. They can become crutches for the handlers if used too long and can be a poor substitute for good training if used for too long.





We try hard to help students master the art and science of shaping or what is more popularly known as clicker training. Too often students use the clicker as a positive marker for existing behaviors that have been lured. To really develop the skill of capturing a behavior takes a lot of practice. It is a really fun thing to do once the skill is developed. Thinking about an end behavior and then breaking it down into the component pieces is very helpful for training but a difficult skill to learn. It really makes you think about how many stages there are in learning a particular behavior. Getting stuck in a spot is a common problem and there are many ways to work out of it. Using tools like strategic placement of reward can be very helpful.





It is really important for my puppies and my student's puppies to learn to eagerly go and interact with objects. I find that dogs who are willing to do this and are not afraid to make mistakes will have a much easier time learning agility and learning to do it independently. If a dog has to be lured across a board, or lured through weave poles the dog is going to be thinking more about the food in the hand than about what they are doing. The food then has to be faded. A dog that is eager to go offer behaviors is more likely to be willing to walk across a board in order to get a treat or try to go through weaves to get the treat or toy. These dogs will be easier to teach to do obstacles at a distance when they are trained this way from the beginning. Will their performance be a little sloppy at first - yes. But with any of my training I would rather have a lot of enthusiasm and sloppiness than a lot of worry and carefulness. It is much easier to refine a dog's behavior who has a lot of enthusiasm and sloppiness than it is to excite a worried and careful dog. The worried dog may gain confidence over time and with that gain speed with the right training but the training has to be done with careful planning to ensure that happens and is more work for the handler.





I've been shaping behavior with dogs since the early 90s. I graduated from college with a degrees in Psychology and Biology with an emphasis in Animal Learning and Behavior and then went on to get a Masters in Educational Psychology focusing on Adult Development and Learning. Before getting into dog training I had a lot of experience with the "science" of learning. It is different from real life learning and training but it has been helpful to have worked with animals like rats, pigeons, mice and chameleons and to apply what worked with them to dogs. The big difference is that dogs live with us every day and all day. They don't live in cages 24 hours a day. So it is really important for dogs to have structure and boundaries in their lives. While some of this can be taught with operant/shaping techniques, much of it can not be. So there needs to be a balance and a thoughtful use of different types of training techniques for different situations. It would be nice to think we could do everything with shaping - click and treat but the reality in my 20 years of experience working with dogs and their humans is that does not provide enough structure for most dogs. Dogs do have free will. Dogs do have minds of their own. There are times when a dog will choose for very good reasons (in their mind) to not follow a cue/command. It is our job as the human part of the team to discern whether that reason was due to a high level of stress, due to high level of distraction, due to a lack of understanding of the cue, due to the dog's desire/preference to do something else or due to the dog's physical inability to do it (due to soreness or illness). It is this analysis that a human has to learn to do very quickly in order to determine how to respond. Sometimes we get it wrong and sometimes we are totally confused. If a dog is choosing to not follow our cues/commands because of free will then there may need to be consequences. However I never impose consequences on something UNLESS and UNTIL I am sure the dog understands the cue and can do the cue with fluency and with distractions and/or distance. Too often students want to introduce corrections before a dog has even learned the behavior by saying "no" or "eh eh" to the dog while they are teaching them something. Not only is this not fair to the dog but it can also lessen the impact of your negative marker when it is over used. I use clearing my throat as my negative marker - it is hard for that to slip out accidentally but I don't use it until I'm very certain the dog can do what I ask in the situation I am asking for it. If the distraction level is too high then I need to work more on that behavior with distractions before I can correct it.



I spend a lot of time analyzing my dog's behavior in many situations and trying to determine the underlying cause of a behavioral problem so I can determine how to best "fix it." This is when it is important to spend time getting to know a puppy. Finding out who they are, how they think, what they like, what they don't like, how they learn and how they feel physically is so important. I don't expect my dogs to respond the same even if they are the same breed or even closely related. They are all individuals. It is important to distinguish whether a dog/puppy is stressed or not. Sometimes people are too quick to say a dog is "blowing me off" when the dog is really stressed and doing what dogs do when they are stressed - sniff! Sometimes a dog is too excited in the situation to be able to focus on the desired behavior. A student needs to look at how much have they trained and proofed the dog to be able to do that behavior with a lot of distractions. Often we don't look honestly at our training programs to determine how well have we taught a given behavior. Dogs don't generalize well so they need to have lots of different experiences in order to generalize. Dogs get excited and need to know how to have self-control in stimulating environments. This all starts when they are puppies. Learn the signs of stress in your dog. Licking lips is another common sign of stress. I see it a lot in dogs on agility courses but the table, teeter and weaves. If you slow down a video of a dog in the weaves very often you can see them licking their lips. This is a huge sign of stress and should be a concern. A very low level of stress is common and should not interfere with learning but it also should not produce a lot of outward signs. The more visible the signs of stress the higher the level is.



Having this litter of 9 puppies was one of the most educational dog experiences of my life. I could see first hand what kinds of things come "hard wired" in a dog by how they responded to things within the first two weeks. No formal learning from a human was taking place - only their own learning and interaction with the environment and processing that information was happening. I learned so much about how puppies develop and how they think and how they interact with novel stimuli and familiar stimuli from day to day. I was able to see one of the puppies was very sound sensitive and easily stressed in new places with lots of people. I immediately did a lot of intervention with this puppy to help him overcome these things. I made sure his owner new of my concerns so she could work with him from the very beginning to build his confidence. I knew which two puppies were almost over the top in energy level as they would be the only two still running and playing after two hours at a puppy party. I knew which ones were going to be easy to handle and which ones didn't like to be touched physically and were going to need lots of work with this. I knew which ones were more independent and which ones were likely going to be "one person" dogs and which ones would be good with kids and families. It was really an incredible experience. Over the course of 9 - 10 weeks I could see as they got older how they learned. I could see which ones were leaders in exploring new things, which ones were followers and which ones were watchers. As I get to see a couple of the puppies on a regular basis and work with their owners I can see how different they are and I can also see similarities to their mother - but different similarities between the puppies.


While it may be hard to see now, many people have forgotten what Sinco was like for the first two years. She was a boisterous puppy. She had a hard time with mistakes and would run around and act silly when she thought she had made a mistake or she would freeze up. However every experienced person I took her to for lessons said she was "high drive." I often shook my head because I couldn't see it since she would freeze up in learning because of her fear of being wrong. Even though I had never used even as much as a negative marker with her in training. She had a hard time with shaping. She would be reluctant to offer behaviors. I would get frustrated and lure her a couple of times and then she would get going. When she was older, about three, I started shaping games with her again and she was much more confident and much less worried and now I can shape things and she will eagerly go interact with an object if I tell her "show me something else."



Now when Carmine and I started shaping I saw her do some of the same things as Sinco. Fortunately I was at Michelle Pouliout seminar when I saw it happen. Michelle had some great ideas (I wish I had known when Sinco was a puppy). She suggested tying a string to the box or object I was trying to get Carmine to interact with and move it a bit and when she showed interest click and treat for it. She also suggested changing the object frequently and have 2-3 objects around at a time to keep it interesting. Within a week of using these different things I had a puppy who was wildly interacting with any object and not at all afraid of making a mistake. She is now an incredibly fast learner with a clicker in hand.





The other lesson I learned from my Border Collie Bryce is to put shaped behaviors on cue as soon as possible. He would offer all kinds of behaviors to me in rapid succession. He was very fun to train but I had to get things on cue quickly to prevent him from always offering his repertoire. I am having to do that with Carmine now and I've reduced how many things I teach her at a time and put things on cue before adding new things to the "list."





Tay reminded me that dogs can learn differently and have different kinds and levels of intelligence. Tay loves shaping exercises. However she is very dependent on kinesthetic learning and having an object present is a much more salient cue to her than any thing verbal or my body language. She has a hard time focusing on my body language or my verbal cues to do a behavior. She can learn very well a set behavior with a certain object. It is very hard to get her to do something different with the same object. For example I taught her to jump on a chair as an exercise to do after a run so she can get her treats. It is almost impossible to get her to do anything else with a chair present and she has generalized this to ANY chair she sees ANY time. She has a very hard time with behaviors that stand alone without any objects in the vicinity. Stay is a very hard concept for her except on a platform or a mat. She has the most reliable and awesome door behavior of any of my dogs - EVERY door she goes through she turns toward me. I rarely reinforce it with a treat but she does it almost every time.



Spring has taught me about "show me the money" games. Michelle Pouliout in her seminar talked about not having dogs see you put the food in your pockets when you are getting ready to train. Spring is definitely one of these dogs. If he sees me go for the treat jar or my pocket he will be right there with me. But he plays games at home and at trials where he won't come when called. It pushes my buttons to have a dog not come when called. It is especially strange because he and I have a great relationship otherwise. He is very fun to train and to run at trials except for the table in AKC. He has been taught "go leash" which he will do and 90 percent of the time it is rewarded with treats pretty soon after at trials or in training. So as long as I say "let's go leash" at the end of the run he will come running over and put his head in his slip lead. I make him go to the treats on leash. At home, only when he knows I'm loading up the van to go somewhere, will he play "I am going to run outside through the pet door when you call me" game. It is ironic because he loves to be a lap dog, loves to be cuddled, loves to be held, loves to have his neck scratched and he loves to go places with me. If he knows I have treats he won't play the game. But if he knows I don't have treats like in a trial, he plays the game. So I have taken to being very careful around him about what I am doing with regard to my treats. It is clearly a game. It is very different from when other dogs won't come. He is watching me the entire time, if I go out of sight he will slowly follow me and watch me and if I turn toward him he darts away. It is in his mind a very interactive game of cat and mouse. I have never seen anything quite like it and now it has carried over to trials where the table is involved. So I am trying to connect these two things and I think if I can resolve the problem game at home then I will be able to solve it at a trial. I've had a lot of advice from "walking him down" and grabbing his ruff to using air cookies. I am not fond of any of these because I don't think it will solve this kind of problem. He will go into his crate any time and any where, he will come when called in many other situations very readily. He is at my feet most of the time wanting my attention.





So I am extremely careful with puppies now to make sure they don't know when I have treats and when I don't for recalls. Often I call a puppy in and they have to run into their crate and then I will go and get a treat for them. I don't want to ever show them I have a treat when I'm calling them.


Agility training is difficult to prepare for because there are a lot of complex skills that are also somewhat abstract. An ideal agility dog will be able to have focus and speed at the same time and to have self-control and a willingness to work independently (meaning not overly dependent on a handler for cues or to have to be in close proximity to the handler). These can at first appear to be conflicting skills. They are in fact difficult skills for young puppies to master and definitely difficult for them to have all of them operating at the same time. All of this must be kept in mind. I play a variety of games with my puppies to turn them "on" and turn them "off." I want them to learn to self-modulate depending on various cues from me. I rev them up and then turn them off (very briefly at first) and then rev them up and turn them off. Some dogs have more natural self-control and need more help revving up and others get revved up easily and need more help with self-control. That is why it is important to work on both of these skills early and often. The games we teach in sports foundations help to develop these skills. I also have some games that teach focused speed too. I had a dog with a lot of speed and very little focus and it was a lot of work out there on an agility course to get through a course. He would see his own set of obstacles and he couldn't focus on his handler for cues at times or focus on his job in performing obstacles correctly. So focus with speed is important to develop early.




Most puppies in our classes are on average 9 months old when they move from "sports foundations" to "agility foundations." In agility foundations we do a lot of flatwork for the first 8 weeks. We do shadow handling, targeting/distance exercises, more focus and speed exercises, backing-up and learning to work with distractions. Actual agility equipment is not introduced until they are close to a year old. They have seen wobble boards, played on narrow boards, gone through hoops and around gates at this point. Developing a good working relationship and laying the groundwork for handling skills is so very important. Teaching the individual obstacles is the easy part. Building teamwork takes much longer so it is important to start that early and work on it often.


Usually by 7-9 months I can tell if a given puppy is going to have issues reacting to the motion around them of an agility class. I manage the puppies in agility foundations to minimize the stimulation and keep arousal levels down. However I am watching them for signs of problems with that and I want to intervene as early as possible if I see a puppy having trouble focusing with dogs running around. Then I feel it is best to stop agility training and work on some of the Control Unleashed/Click to Calm exercises and maybe even take our Focus in Motion class to really work on that. If a dog is getting aroused around motion there is no point in training them. They will have too much adrenaline in their system to be able to learn anything properly.




The other thing is that puppies do not fully physically mature until at least a year of age - no matter what breed. Some tiny breeds may physically be done growing earlier than that. The mental maturity in most dogs takes even longer to develop. There is no point in doing actual full size agility equipment until a dog is both physically and mentally mature. Too often I see dogs who started weave training at six months of age. They will come to me when the dogs are 12 months old or 18 months old wondering why their dog can't weave. Their bodies change, even though they may be done growing in terms of height, they still will need to fill out, their chests "drop" and muscles get stronger. These changes seriously affect things like weave poles and running contacts which rely on muscle memory. So I see no point in starting the training of these obstacles early - they will only have to be retrained in a few months or a year because their bodies have changed along the way. You may also cause undue physical and emotional stress on a dog training them this young to do complex behaviors that require a lot of balance and coordination.



Right now my puppy knows a number of tricks, she is great at interacting and offering behaviors with any object, she loves to retrieve any object (not on cue yet), she knows "ready 1-2-3" and "ready-steady" games, she has a stay on a mat, she can do a stand stay on a platform, she does recalls through my legs, she knows "sit" and "down" from a stand, she can send to a target 20 feet away, she does hand targeting, she is learning "choose to heel" and loose leash walking, she has done some cone turns (to stay one step ahead of her contemporaries so she can demo!) she is learning to be calm when greeting people and their dogs, she loves crate games, she has awesome toy drive, she can be quiet in a crate while I'm teaching class and she is learning to ride a skate board and play on the wobble board. She is over 7 months old. That is all she knows. She has yet to get on a formal piece of agility equipment.

 What she will be taught in the next few months is the foundation for a two on/two off as well as the foundation for running contacts. I plan to try to train her to do running contacts but will teach her two on/two off on a board as a back-up plan. She has a very long body and long stride so I'm not sure how well the running contacts will go but I need a new challenge. I've taught two small dogs so now to try a big dog and she is a big girl! She will learn some cone turns and shadow handling. She will do some shadow handling with cones and then with hoops. She will do some puppy jump chutes. She will learn "out" with gates and targets.




I know I will learn new things from Carmine and make new mistakes... That is what makes dog training fun for me. Sometimes the learning is harder than I want and sometimes it is not as fun as I want it to be but when we come out the other end of the tunnel it is almost always very rewarding. So I can hardly wait to see what lessons are in store for me now!

How to make the best use of agility class time or why having an agility coach is helpful

Too often we want to run the entire agility course set up in class or at run-thrus because it is there and we want to see if we can "do it"! 

However we know what our own weaknesses are as a team and that there are specific things we really should focus on when in class.  This is especially important during Minnesota winters when we can't be outside to do our own training.  We have to make the best of the class or run-thru situation. 

I have attended group classes at a number of agility schools and I have always been allowed to do part of a course and reward my dog where I wanted to reward my dog.  I've also been allowed to continue on at that point or to repeat part of it and then continue on.  This is how our dogs will learn that we like what they are doing - when we spontaneously reinforce them for what we like.  This is also a time to use a positive reward marker/word.  It is also important for us to have positive reward markers like the word "yes!" that we can take into trial competition and use with our dogs. It means that the word/marker needs to have been paired with a primary reinforcer like food or toys many many times in training before using it in a trial. I use this with my dogs and invariably they will get faster and happier when they hear that word in a trial setting. I use it a lot with contact/tunnel discriminations to let my dogs know they got it right. 

Sadly we usually are more willing to correct our dogs for missed contacts, weave pole or jump in group classes and are less willing to reward our dogs when they do a contact perfectly the first time, or do a difficult weave entry the first time, or do a hard tight turn between obstacles, or send out away from us to do an obstacle on the first cue, or they stay at the start line the first time.  We tend to wait for the mistake to happen, correct it and then sometimes we reward it when they do it right after the correction and sometimes we don't.  It would be so much more effective to reward the dog when the dog does it right the FIRST time!  We all know when we walk a course what the hard parts are for us and for our dogs and so we really do know what we should reward when our dog does it brilliantly the first time! 

Coming back to using class time wisely... it is so important to positively mark the behaviors you like whenever you are training your dog. I very rarely do an entire course or even as many as 10 obstacles without stopping to reward my dog. When things are going well on a course or sequence that is the exact time to stop and reward. Far too often I see beautiful sequences go unrewarded (in spite of my loud pleadings to a student to stop and reward!) and then a bar goes down, a contact or weave is missed and negative reinforcement follows. Meanwhile the beautiful part goes unrecognized and that is the part we want the dog to remember to do again next time!

I feel it is my job as the agility instructor and coach to help students learn the proper time to reinforce their dogs as well as to correct their dogs.   Unfortunately people seem to be more quick to correct their dog than to reward them. This is as much a part of the class as helping them with handling strategies.  I feel strongly that learning proper timing of reinforcement is a huge key to successful agility training.  I try to verbally mark positively when students do things correctly (they don't always hear me but usually others in the class do and add to the cheers). 


Unfortunately I think it is human nature that we are much more comfortable with negative reinforcement than with positive reinforcement.  We are like this with each other, with our children and with our pets.  Even as humans we seem to want more negative reinforcement and are uncomfortable with the positive reinforcement.  This is a sad commentary on our own socialization. 

Think about the "terms of endearment" you have for your dogs when you are training them.  Do you refer to them as dumb, dufus, brainless, goofy, slow or other terms with negative connotations that refer to personality rather than behavior?  I try to use as many positive terms with my dogs when I'm training them and let them know that I think they are smart, brilliant, fast, cute and other descriptors that have a positive meaning.  This may seem like being picky but lots of studies have been done on how our bodies and minds respond to positive terms versus negative terms no matter how sarcastic or funny we think we mean them to be.  It becomes an overall reflection on how your feel about your dog and can affect your overall relationship with your dog.  Too often I hear people refer to their dogs in subtle negative ways which I feel can undermine the self-esteem of the relationship in the long run. 

It is clear that I am able to run entire courses will all of my dogs at trials even though I very rarely practice entire courses.  If the handler needs to practice doing all of the obstacles on a course they should do a lot of it without their dog and use the walk through time in class for that.  In some cases I have had students run their imaginary dog through a difficult sequence so they learn the sequence and handling without bothering the dog.  This is useful for students who get lost on courses.   The dogs when trained well will not have trouble putting an entire course together - it is the human who has trouble putting it all together.  Too often dogs lose motivation and drive while the human is struggling to do too many things on a course. 

I've watched many of the top agility trainers in the country train their own dogs and the most successful ones are the ones who reward what they like when they are training and don't try to get through an entire course without rewarding their dogs.  When rewarding only at the end of the course time after time it is saying that the last obstacle on the course is the one that matters most.  This is why I will often "make lemonade" out of a non-qualifying run by finding something good to mark and leave the ring immediately to reward.  For example with Feisty, if we ever NQ before the table and then she gets on the table and stays we leave the ring then to a jackpot right away to make the table associated with rewards in a trial setting.  If we have NQ'd due to my miscues or due to the dog being stressed I will often find a good note to leave on so I can find something positive for rewarding the dog. 

That isn't to say that I have times when my dogs are really wound up and they get so excited they are not paying close attention to me and do things I don't expect out there at trials on course.  So sometimes we leave early because my dog is too wired to be able to be a teammate and I'll leave early so we don't practice more of the lack of teamwork.  Sensitive dogs do not need much of this and I am usually just smiling and saying "you are naughty!" as we leave.  With a tougher dog who has more of  a tendency to be independent on a course then I will be firmer about taking them off the course to remind them that it is a team sport.  Every dog is different and I respond differently to each dog - treating them as individuals.  However even the toughest dog needs positive rewards on course and I don't let obstacles serve as rewards.  The best reward needs to come from me at all times.  I want to build value in agility obstacles but I will still have a higher value than the obstacles by using high value toys or treats as rewards.  This is really important for the teamwork.  If the obstacles have higher value than the teammate then why should the dog work with the teammate and the dog can just go and do whatever obstacles they want and will be self-rewarded.

Doing these things at a trial means we did a short course at a trial! So my dogs really never figure out that 20 obstacles is an entire course.  Whether we left for good reasons or not so good reasons my dogs only did part of the entire course. My dogs will have done a lot of short courses for one reason or another at trials as well as playing games like snooker which can force us to have short courses!  So I avoid the pitfalls of having a dog start out slow at the start line and finishing fast on obstacles 18-19-20.  I also keep the performance fresh on the various obstacles with the random reinforcement in both training and trialing.  This philosophy has been a huge part of Feisty's training and why now she is doing the table more reliably at trials when she used to avoid doing it at all in trials. 

Going to agility classes, remember it is your money for the class and it is up to you to get your money's worth from class and make your training as effective as possible for your canine teammate.  No one else knows your dog as well as you do.