Mental Block Revealed

For three years Feisty has been in Elite Chances and for over two years Sinco has been Elite Chances in NADAC.  For the first time I have had a "block" on qualifying in a specific class with multiple dogs.  Going into the trial this weekend Sinco had 2 Qs and Feisty had 1 Q in Elite Chances.  I have been training all of my dogs distance skills from the time they are puppies.  Both dogs have earned many Gamblers legs in ASCA and USDAA.  I have earned many NATCHes with multiple dogs back when NADAC had the Gamblers class. 

So when Susan Perry was here I told her that I needed help figuring out why I was having so much trouble with this class.  We worked on some challenging distance sequences on Friday with both dogs in the seminar.  I was really pleased at how well both dogs did and I found a couple of things I was having a tendency to do - like moving too fast as if I was runnning with them instead of going slower when they were at a distance.  After Friday's session I felt very confident going into the trial.

On Saturday morning I handle the Elite Regular courses from significant distance. One of the courses had a "bonus box" in it and I handled quite a bit of the course from that box with both dogs.   I did a lot of distance with both dogs on both courses. 

On Saturday of the trial the Chances course felt very doable to me.  I had a plan.   I ran Sinco first and somehow I thought I had cued the rear cross flip out to the jump in a timely manner but she kept going straight ahead into an off course tunnel.  I ran Feisty and she was amazingly thoughtful and smooth and she did the course perfectly to earn her second Elite Chances Q!

I ran jumpers and handled the jumpers courses with a lot of distance 40 plus feet with both dogs and they both qualified which was really a rush!

On Sunday morning I did some distance on one round of regular and ran with the dogs in order to work on Feisty's dog walk on one run and to help keep Sinco motivated I ran with her on one of the regular rounds.

On Sunday the Chances course felt even more doable than Saturday's.  I had a plan.  I was going to be far from the line.  I ran Feisty first and she did the distance part beautifully like clockwork and then I did a front cross and came out of it blocking the aframe which is what she was supposed to take and she went into the tunnel under the aframe for an off course.  Then I ran Sinco and I somehow didn't support the "out" jump enough and she came in to me.  I was pretty upset with myself after both of those runs.  It occurred to me pretty quickly that I am mentally sabotaging myself in this class for some reason.

I ran Tunnelers and handled it with a lot of distance with Sinco and she qualified.  I did the Jumpers course from about 20 feet from the bonus line and she qualified.  I feel as though my dogs and I have distance skills.

I feel strongly that with good quality training that is consistent with strong foundation skills in handling and distance that dogs and handlers can compete in any organization they want to do.  If I have a dog with strong obstacle focus and weaker handler focus I spend most of my training time working on the handler focus.  I would be careful to not keep a dog like that in Novice very long so the dog is having to run more complex courses where they face choices in obstacles.  If I have a very handler focused dog then I would work more on distance and increasing obstacle focus and I might keep them in novice longer to develop confidence and distance.  I am always working on maintaining a balance between handler and obstacle focus. 

Therefore my dogs and my student's dogs can go from Teacup trials one weekend where spacing between obstacles is 8-12 feet to a NADAC trial the next weekend where spacing is 20 feet between obstacles to an AKC and/or USDAA trial the next weekend which is in between the two for spacing.  I do think it requires more training to have a dog who can compete in different organizations which have different niches in the market.  It is a challenge I enjoy.  I do have one small dog who does not enjoy Teacup courses and has made that very clear so she doesn't have to run in it very much.  I have another dog who stresses too much at AKC trials so she doesn't have to them for now.  So I do look at what my dogs seem to enjoy doing and will respect that.  I personally enjoy doing all of it and I enjoy the different training and handling challenges presented by each organization. 

So now that I have realized I have a mental block in one class in one organization I am determined to work on it.  I'm grateful Kathy Keats will be here soon with her Inner Power Seminar to hopefully help me overcome this particular mental block I have.

Hit me with the 2 x 4... or I hate the AKC "Double Q" syndrome

Lesson 1: Sinco

Ok so at Saturday's AKC trial I had qualified with Sinco in our first run in Standard - it was a lovely run.  The Jumpers with Weaves course had a section that was going to be particularly challenging for us (and for many others...).  I ran Feisty first and had messed up the section when I came out of my front cross completely not where I thought I would be and I lost track of the course so we left the course early and I never let Feisty know something was wrong.  When I ran Sinco on that course I got to the section in question which involved an offset line of jumps with a 180 degree turn from a jump into the weaves with an off course jump set 90 degrees out from the jump before the weaves.  It was difficult to get there with a fast dog without doing a rear cross.  So I rear crossed and tried to pull Sinco into the weaves.  She went wide heading to the off course jump.  I called her and even clapped - I never do that on course with her.  She came to me but missed the weave entry.  I let it go and finished the course.  I knew immediately that I had shut her down and began to ponder what I should have done differently. 

Well she is a fast dog but she is a sensitive dog and I have always vowed to let her go off course if I make a mistake and can't be clear to her.  Well that time I didn't and I did a "call off" which I abhor.  It shut her down and I felt horrible about it.  Yes she needs to be able to recover better but really it is just another course and it really is not worth shutting my dog down in order to get a Q.  The last thing I want to do is cause her to slow down and worry any more than she already does about making mistakes.  She is very fast and that is due to a lot of work to build her confidence. 

As a young dog just starting to trial she would go into stress zoomies and search for any friendly face if I even thought a mistake had been made by either one of us!  I had to work hard to always pretend as if everything was going along well.  It took a long time to get her confident enough to pull her off a start line when she broke a stay or to take her off for launching a contact.  She so rarely does either because she wants to be right.  In fact she will ask "are you sure" at the start line more often than break. 

What I should have done the second she started to come toward the weaves was praise her with "Yes!  Good girl!" instead of telling her to weave in an emphatic tone!  Out comes the 2 x 4 for me!  If I hadn't had a "double Q" on the line it would have been easier for me to let her go off course and tell myself how I should have handled it better.

Sinco also reminded me that I need to be very careful with her physical well being. She loves agility and working but she is so rarely sore that when she is the least bit sore it distracts her. I've learned to notice that if she doesn't bark before we go in the ring, doesn't bark on course, takes unexplained off courses (probably to avoid turning in a direction that hurts) and can't do the weaves that she is sore. This happened on our first run on Friday and sure enough after the run I found a muscle that was spasming. I was able to massage it and loosen it up and she ran better in the second run. This was a hard lesson I learned at AKC Nationals when she was very sore there and she and I were so disconnected as a team because she was so distracted by her own body.  Very often this kind of distractedness is not properly related back to the dog's physical well-being when it should be.  Again a lesson relearned again to first check out the physical aspects of the dog when something is not going well in training and/or trialing.

My lesson was learned and applied and we had two beautiful clean runs on Sunday that were fast and smooth.  So that was good for both of us to end the weekend on very good high notes!  I needed a reminder that no Q is worth shutting my dog down to get it or running my dog when she is sore!

Lesson 2: Feisty

Friday at the AKC trial, w ran early in the day and it was hectic so I didn't have time to watch many runs before our turn.  On our first run which was standard the judge had to move a lot to be able to judge all three contacts - it was not the greatest course design from a judging perspective.  She was moving toward Feisty as she approached the teeter which caused Feisty to veer off toward me and I had to "herd" her on to the teeter.  Then the table was three obstacles later and Feisty got on the table at the far corner from the judge and was barely on it.  After that she ran well.  I was not sure how things had been judged and whether Feisty had veered off enough to have gotten a refusal on the teeter or not but she hadn't.  I have not had her veer off toward me like that in a very long time and it caught me by surprise.  She usually veers off completely away from me and the judge.  So this was a huge lesson to me to remember to watch the judge's path before we run.  Ideally in AKC if I can watch the judge's path before I walk the course then I can have a plan that is  hopefully ideal from both a handling perspective as well as manging the environment perspective.  AKC and USDAA and sometimes CPE judges are most likely to encroach on her. 

Whenever I feel a judge is encroaching on us I always say outloud to Feisty in hopes the judge will get the hint "It's OK Feisty - its just the judge - don't worry".  In this case I think it helped because in Jumpers with weaves the same judge was especially still for our run over by the weaves.  Feisty was very slow in the weaves as she went by the same judge and was licking her lips as she weaved which is a sign of stress.  She was concerned that the judge could walk toward her at any moment. She did earn a double Q under this judge which demonstrates how well she is doing recovering from a stressful experience with a judge.  Two years ago it would have set us back months in our training.

On Saturday Feisty stopped and sat in front of the table and then bounced on and off and then stayed on in the ring with the same encroaching judge who had encroached on us the day before.  I knew for sure she was concerned about the judge.  But she did get on the table and stay and it was near the end of the course so we could just run out and have a party anyway.   On Sunday she did well in standard with a different judge and qualified. So that was also huge recovery for her to get on the table perfectly with a different judge. She has come a long way!  She ran in Jumpers with Weaves with the judge who had bothered her and I watched the judge's path carefully before I walked the course.  I noticed that the judge would walk behind dogs while they were in the weaves and I noticed where she stood relative to a hard part of the course.  So I stayed close to Feisty in the weaves and reminder her to weave - she slowed down at pole 10 and started to sniff but I was there to remind her to weave and she did.  I know she felt the presence of that judge walking up behind us in the poles.  After that she sped up but she was not as speedy as she can be so I know she was watching the judge.  I stayed close to her in spots where I knew the judge would put pressure on  her and she may feel it.  We earned a Q on that run and she doubled Q'd too.  I feel that she did well on that course in part because her recovery skills and coping skills are improving all the time in dealing with stressful ring situations and because I paid close attention to things that might bother her so I was there to support her at those points on the course.

While I would like to be able to handle Feisty as if there were no issues I know that it is in her best interests if I handle the course in a way that supports her.  What I won't do is handling moves that she is not used to me doing just to try to avoid an environmental/judge issue.  I will always only use handling techniques that she is comfortable with because that will also build her confidence. 

So I had the hard reminder this weekend that I must do what is best for my dogs regardless of the Q on the line - it is about the journey, it is about the progress we continue to make and it is about having fun doing it!  Feisty is proof that patience does pay off and attention to details is very important in trialing and training.  Also she has taught me that it is not always the most obvious thing that is the stressor.  What is stressful for one dog may not be stressful for another. 

Training Sessions

I am frequently asked by students how long a training session should be, what does a training session look like, how often should I train etc. 

My answer is almost always "it depends".  My general guidelines are that a training session with a puppy/young dog should be about 5 minutes for one exercise.  This may or may not include your set-up time for the exercise.  I don't let my puppy run amok when I'm setting up.  it is a good time to practice being tied up or crated or staying on a mat while I set-up.   While this may seem like hardly any time if you sent a timer for 5 minutes you will be amazed at how much you can do in that amount of time. 

With a puppy/young dog shorter sessions fit well with their shorter attention spans.  You don't want to go past what their brain capacity can handle.  Some puppies may even need a 2 minute limit for a training session if they are easily distracted.  The last thing I want to do with any dog is over-face them or stress them in a training session especially when teaching something new.

With Carmine I try to do a minimum of two 5 minute sessions each weekday.  If I get a third one in on a day we are doing really well.  On the weekends I may get one session in if I'm lucky when I'm away at a trial.  If we are on the road then we do a lot of "life training" where we work on walking around distractions and new sights and smells and that is the main focus of our training.

I have a couple of exercises that I like to take with me to new places because I don't need any equipment and they are about focus, control and drive.  The one is the game I call "Ready 1-2-3" which is about focus, self control and drive when called.  I can do the game anywhere and I can do it with the leash attached if I feel I need to do so. 

The other exercises I do with my puppy/young dog in different places for quick on the fly training sessions are to work on fast sits, fast downs and fast releases to a toy.  Lastly I try to continually work on loose leash walking wherever we go and I work on not losing their mind around people and dog activity.

When I go to agility trials with my puppies I do not want them erupting outside the agility ring.  I have seen over and over again that there is no correlation between dogs who are reactive to the motion of dogs and people and their success/drive in the agility ring.  Often fast, high drive dogs are the ones more likely to have high prey drive and demonstrate that outside the ring.  I have seen many dogs be reactive to dogs running agility and then have a low interest in doing agility themselves.  It is prey drive that is activitated when they see a dog running so all they may want to do is chase that dog.  Some dogs do get excited to have their turn out there once they understand the game but in the beginning the puppies don't know what the game is and all they see is a dog running.  Having adrenaline levels amped up before an agility run often correlates to low productive brain function inside the agility ring.  My personal experience with my own dogs, student dogs and friends dogs has showed this to be the case time and time again.  So I work on teaching my dogs how to function well outside an agility ring so that they do not "lose their minds."  Keeping a dog below "threshhold" for adrenaline levels is very important.  Once a dog goes "over the top" they need to be removed from the situation to get the excitement level back down.  It won't go down on its own by staying in the environment.  If the adrenaline level did go "over the top" studies have shown it can take up to TWO weeks away from stimulation for levels to return to normal.  If  dog is continually and habitually in that environment they run the risk of becoming addicted to the adrenaline rush and will be more difficult to train.  I've had a dog who was what I called an "adrenaline junkie" and while he was fast in agility he often lost his mind and could not be thoughtful on course and therefore had trouble collecting, had trouble maintaining contact criteria and stays at the start line.  So I work hard to teach my puppies early on how to behave around dogs in motion.  It is the number one thing and until I have focus around motion.  This has to be the highest priority in training if you want to have a performance dog.  The agility training is far easier and can be done any time but working on self control around dogs in motion is much harder for many dogs and handlers.

In terms of being a good dog person, having a dog outside the ring barking at dogs running agility is also inconsiderate to the dog running.  It produces an intimidating environment for the dog running agility or it can provoke a dog who is running to go after the barking dog for staring at them.  So there are many reasons having a dog overly aroused around agility is inappropriate behavior. 

So I like to take my dogs around distractions early on as puppies so I can see how they can function and start to build on their focus.  In the beginning it may only be a few seconds and gradually - over months - work up to minutes of focus around distractions.  Every dog will work at its own pace.  Since my dogs don't usually get to group classes I have to be more creative in setting up distractions for my dogs.  Generally group classes provide a lot of distraction for young dogs which is why it is a hard place to train new things to a young dog.  When I have a puppy/young dog who is easily distracted by their environment I do make a point of enrolling them in group classes so they will have more exposure to those distractions and that is the main focus of my training in those classes. I make sure my dog is not going to be disruptive in a group class - then it would be too much for my dog and the other dogs.  But if I just need to do short training sessions with the distractions and the dog just needs to learn more focus then it is fine.

Again short training sessions - less is more is the key to quality dog training!  My dogs don't get a lot of time in training but they get short high quality training sessions focused on only one or two skills.

 

Enjoy training your dog! 

Different dogs, different training, different handling...

The universe continues to send me different types of dogs for my own personal training experiences so I can learn and presumably use that knowledge to help others (at least I think that is what is supposed to happen!)

This past weekend I ran Tay in  a NADAC trial in all the runs for the first time in close to two years.  She has been one of my interesting training and trialing challenges for me.  Now that she is not in pain when running she is less stressed and not avoiding obstacles as much as she was before I found out about her injury.  In training she is fast and brilliant.  She rarely makes a mistake or misses a body language cue.  She loves agility and any kind of training as long as food and running are involved.  Training her is so easy because she catches on to things quickly for agility purposes.  However trialing her is very different.  She is a very different dog in a trial setting.  She absolutely can not do a stay at the start line in a trial.  I've tried pulling her off for breaking it and it doesn't get through to her.  She is so high at a trial that she can't put that together.  By the end of a three day weekend she was tired enough that I could do very short sit stays with her on the last couple of runs.  At a trial she does not seem to pay any attention to my body language.  I really want to run quietly with my dogs and I train that way.  However there are times when I have had to be louder than I like on occasion.  With Tay it seems like I need to be loud and extremely vocal with her during the entire run.  This takes me way out of my comfort zone.  I also need to sound threatening to her in order to get her to do her contacts correctly.  I think she gets very excited and then becomes easily distracted.  She often seems to be scanning the outside of the ring when she is running.  Some of her photos show the whites of her eyes like she is very excited out there.  She really wants to play but there are times when she starts to sniff that I know she and I are not connected and she is worried - I think she loses focus and then needs me to help her get back on track.  Anyway she requires more micro managing on a course than I am used to doing.  At the trial some folks said maybe I should just train her and not trial her.  I thought about that but when you see how much she wants to run and she was trying hard to do her dogwalk contacts at the trial.  It is the first trial where she actually did her dogwalk with a 2 on 2 off (sometimes sloppily) and she stayed on course more than she has in a long time.  While she is a lot of work to keep on course I do think she is enjoying it and she is fast enough to make time in elite jumpers even when we had to fix a jump - that is pretty fast!  Everyone who watches her thinks she looks like she is having fun out there.

So once again I am adapting my handling style and techniques to the dog in order for us to be successful teammates. 

Chances - more than just a chance!

It has been hard for me to handle (no pun intended!) my abysmal Q rate in Elite Chances since December 2008 when I moved Feisty up to Elite.  I have had 16 NQs (at least that many that I recorded).  That was hard for me to take given that I teach and train distance from the time they are puppies, I have a lot of experience handling distance type classes and Feisty prefers to work away from me and loves NADAC courses.  So why was this class so challenging for me? 

For awhile I chalked it up to Feisty's quirks.  The first quirk was that she literally would balk at the gamble line.  I was able to recreate this in front of Susan Perry at one of her distance seminars.  So I spent some time working with her and a line on the ground and just getting her to ignore it whether I was doing distance or not. 

Then I moved Sinco up in April 2010 and we had 9 NQs with no Q and I was really feeling challenged.  When the going gets tough for me in dog training I can get pretty tough.

I had made notes of why we NQ'd on most of the runs.  It was never just one thing.  It was either my late timing of cues, my poor body position, my dog's lack of training for a specific skill or my dog's lack of attention.  So I decided to focus on the specific skills and started to focus my short training sessions with my dogs on improving their ability to turn away from me and find various obstacles, ability to comprehend directionals such as "right" and "left" at a distance.  Their independent obstacle performance on weaves and contacts was pretty good.  I did work on their ability to find hoops at a distance however.

My discouragement in my own inability to qualify in Elite Chances was so bad that when I decided I wanted to go to Championships this year I moved Feisty and Sinco back to Open so we could have a better shot at getting the two Chances Qs we would need and since we had 0 Elite Chances Qs.  In one weekend both dogs earned two Open Chances Qs.  This bolstered my confidence.  After that I moved them both back to Elite and  I went to Des Moines and Feisty came as close as she ever has to earning an Elite Chances Q and Sinco was wilder than I expected.   The following weekend I was in Gillette WY for a NADAC judging clinic and funraiser.  It really helped me to get some insight into the course design philosophy for Chances and to build some courses and discuss the tests and design.  Then at the funraiser both Sinco and Feisty earned their first Elite Chances Qs.  I was starting to feel like the training was paying off but I found myself paying closer attention to my handling and being more careful and thoughtful in my walking of the course. 

This weekend Sinco earned her 2nd Elite Chances Q and it was a beautiful smooth run - I was where I was supposed to be and she was taking direction beautifully - she came in and went out and did a difficult discrimination at speed. 

Now I don't pretend to think that we have it mastered but I do feel like I've made strides.  I do think in analyzing this over the last few weeks the one thing that needed to happen for me is that I needed to remember that my dogs work distance well because I trained it.  Sinco in particular is not a natural distance dog so she needs a lot of confidence to work away from me and she wants me to be perfect in my timing and position.  Feisty is a natural distance dog but that gets in the way at times because she will lock on to obstacles and if I break through her desire to grab an obstacle it is often hard to recover because she comes off the line/course too much.  So it adds a level of difficulty with her to keep her on course from the very beginning and not let her lock on to the incorrect obstacle. 

I also have to remember that training versatile agility dogs requires that I have to work harder to maintain the different skills they have and to maintain a balance.  This is one of the challenges I like in doing different forms of agility.

Now I'm looking forward to trying "EGC - Extreme Games Classes" tomorrow where there will be some different kinds of distance and handling challenges.  I've taught my dogs distance using gates as youngsters so I will find out how much they remember about them!  I am looking forward to another type of agility training challenge.

It is a good reminder that there are a lot of skills needed in agility and I need to remember to continually hone those skills and do tune ups on those that are most needed for a given type of agility.

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.