Newbie Question

Take your time and enjoy:wink2:

I made all the mistakes with my lab Cadbury, he will never compete largely because we have discovered he has a fear of heights. I learned a great deal from him however.

Then I picked Merlin as my true agility dog. I have been training with him for a year, unfortunately I do not have access to much equipment at home, so I only train once a week. But I also do things like take him to events and socialise so he is confident to work in new surroundings.

In the UK a dog has to be 18 months before they are allowed to compete, I was hoping to do a comp in october but sadly it has been cancelled so I have to wait until November.

When I started with Merlin I was tempted to rush and then my trainer turned to me and said, "you have all his life to get it right, and he will, so don't stress." she was right. The more I think about it, the more I am inclined to take my time and enjoy myself. I ask myself what is the rush? This stuff only matters to me, not to Merlin. To him it is just great fun to run with me.

I am best not to take life too seriously, else I am prone to turning into a stress-bunny!
 
Athena was unusual. 3 months and she went from knowing nothing to competing and Qing/winning all 6 novice classes. We were in excellent b fast. She's not the usual though. I wouldn't do that now. I expect a lot more from my novice dogs than I knew to expect from her. I probably train for at least a year prior to competing with my others.
 
Definitely keep working on the reactivity issues. I would also suggest going to a trial (not to compete), but to see how Finley does and to get him used to the noise, dogs, etc. Work on his issues there (I'd suggest staying far away, until you think he's ready to go a bit closer to all the action).

I will say this though. Koji is reactive too. Outside of the ring, he's a crazy dog (working on it). Inside the ring, he's so focused on me and running that nothing matters outside. If Finley enjoys agility, I think he'll be like that too.

I started training Koji when he was....sheesh, I have no clue. He was under a year though. We started competing about a year after training. Hindsight being 20/20, we started WAY too early. No, let me rephrase that. We started at a good time, but I started running games with contact equipment too early. So, he could do games that only had weaves, jumps, tunnels. I shouldn't have pushed him to do contact equipment so fast as I have had to go back and retrain a lot of it.

If you want to compete and your dog isn't ready for contact equipment, enter in things like Jumpers. If you have CPE or NADAC around, you can enter other games that don't have contact equipment. But don't push your dog because you become addicted. It's not worth having to retrain everything.

I haven't competed much this year since all I've been doing is retraining and struggling w/contacts. I am watching an awesome "new" dog fly through everything. The dog has been trialing for a few months and is already in Excellent. But the dog was also trained well prior to starting. I imagine that is more fun than at year 2 of competing we basically are stopping to retrain. Sigh.
 
labgirl said:
When I started with Merlin I was tempted to rush and then my trainer turned to me and said, "you have all his life to get it right, and he will, so don't stress." she was right. The more I think about it, the more I am inclined to take my time and enjoy myself. I ask myself what is the rush? This stuff only matters to me, not to Merlin. To him it is just great fun to run with me.

I am best not to take life too seriously, else I am prone to turning into a stress-bunny!
Click to expand...
Excellent point! I'm going to remember this!
 
k9kreationz said:
I will say this though. Koji is reactive too. Outside of the ring, he's a crazy dog (working on it). Inside the ring, he's so focused on me and running that nothing matters outside. If Finley enjoys agility, I think he'll be like that too.
Click to expand...
This is what I've wondered about Finley. We went to a different class for 2 weeks when our instructor was out of town. The 1st week Finley was really freaked out about the different dogs. Once he got going on the equipment he was able to work past it. The next week he was fine, relaxed and even able to sniff and interact w/ the other dogs. I know w/ Finley it's a fear thing. I think on some level he understands that the dogs in class will not hurt him.
I'll try taking him to a trial to observe from a distance. I think there are only maybe 3-4 in our area a year. Is that enough to make a difference?
 
hrcarol said:
This is what I've wondered about Finley. We went to a different class for 2 weeks when our instructor was out of town. The 1st week Finley was really freaked out about the different dogs. Once he got going on the equipment he was able to work past it. The next week he was fine, relaxed and even able to sniff and interact w/ the other dogs. I know w/ Finley it's a fear thing. I think on some level he understands that the dogs in class will not hurt him.
I'll try taking him to a trial to observe from a distance. I think there are only maybe 3-4 in our area a year. Is that enough to make a difference?
Click to expand...

Here is where I am different I do not want my dogs sniffing and interacting with the other dogs in class. We are there to work and I should be the thing that my dogs pay attention to. You can not interact or atleast shouldn't let your dog interact at trials so why make the classes different. I make paying attention to me the best thing in the world when we are at class(treats, toys, petting, playing etc) and at trials so they don't even seem to notice or care about the other dogs or people or what is going on around them. In social situations, total different. They are given premission to go play.

I had a very reactive JRT mix and I could not let her look at other dogs at all. So I taught her to ignore them. Her reactive bubble went from the whole room to 4 in(as long as the dog didn't touch her). She was fine with it and totally relaxed as she knew what to do. If youre stressed look at me. Some may disagree but it works for my dogs.
 
There is no magic to reactive dog training. Distance, duration and intensity are your friends. Dogs do what is reinforcing. I heavily reinforced for behavior I wanted and did not let my pup rehearse behaviors I did not like.
I would come to class and sit on outside and let my pup watch the class. If he could do it only for few minutes we would leave as soon as he was reaching his limits, go in hallway or outside and play games, various chase, hand touch, impulse control etc. Then return back to observe class. Leo is noise sensitive, he would fly every time teeter banged at first. I spent probably a month sitting next room to agility class when there was class in action and I worked some obedience. Every time teeter would bang I would ask for a sit.
I told my puppy he does not have to like other dogs but he has to listen to me and offer behavior I wanted. He would sit on the chair or on the mat and will get rewarded for calm nice behavior. Sometimes we got closer sometimes had to go further or even outside- Leo would tell me where he was. I never pushed just listened for his feedback.
I did use Gentle Leader and will never be without one, although Leo has not been wearing one for many months now. If I were to go into super highly arousing situation GL will go too.
We worked hard on autocheck in- VOLUNTARY look at me after looking at distraction would get jack pot- we started slow at low distraction area. At same area we developed very strong sit and down behaviors which were highly reinforced when he offered them in more distraction area.
At some point I signed up for class just to be allowed to sit inside of the gates and do the same- work on impulse control games, calm behavior, listening to mommy etc. Then we would do little of agility and return back to our sitting on the floor somewhere near the post so other people can work agility around us.
Just as Justicemom, we are there not to socialize so I was not looking for Leo to play with other dogs. Leo goes to dog park for that.
At same time I kept building agility training at home and at friend's place. "Success with one jump" DVD talks about how to build value for jumping/ obstacles, so every jump dog takes is like he just got $1000 in his account:biggrin2:
So on one hand you ask for behaviors you want and reward heavily at high distraction area of agility class...
on the other hand you practice agility in calm nice environment and develop huge value for doing it with you.
Of course, I did not do it alone, I had great teachers, we went to progressive off leash obedience classes with wonderful trainers. I felt drained after some classes because all I did was watching and reading Leo's moves and reactions.
I would highly recommend Crate games DVD. It teaches dog impulse control in fun and rewarding way.
I know there are plenty of people who have reactive dogs in agility, have seen few who would keep dog in the car- take it out to have a run and then back to the car dog goes. It is their journey.
Mine is to have a dog that I can leave in the down in the middle of 100 people doing walk thru or in the chair when other dogs are running and I know he would be calmly watching. It was/ is more important to me than doing agility itself. As far as I am concerned we already won all the ribbons that counts:wink2:
You know what you've got, you know what you want- everything between is just training. Small steps, 5 minute a day will go long way, promise.:smile2:
 
Last edited:
DON'T RUSH
foundation foundation foundation...
Other lessons I found helpful: Don't go on big equipment AT ALL until you yourself understand all the training steps involved with teaching contacts. You can teach the whole obstacle in a few sessions IF you laid the foundations for the end behaviour!

Toffee is reactive, but I can now put him in trials and he is very calm there.
I found mat work and a high reinforcement rate worked and taking time like others said to train being calm and focused on you. I also started out thinking he'd never be able to compete! Ensure you have a super positive and supportive Instructor.
Took me a little over two years to start competing and just started cautiously trialling this spring. He and I love it.

He also gets along with the dogs as long as I am vigilant and the agility crowd is surprisingly dog savvy and understand to give dogs their space MUCH better than any people at the dog park ever. I stopped going there, because you can't guarantee how the other dogs react and you can only afford to have GOOD interactions and reward those moments, one or two bad ones always set you back weeks, or months... :fl
 
Newbies

Toffee's Mom said:
DON'T RUSH
foundation foundation foundation...
Other lessons I found helpful: Don't go on big equipment AT ALL until you yourself understand all the training steps involved with teaching contacts. You can teach the whole obstacle in a few sessions IF you laid the foundations for the end behaviour!

Great advice Irene.Foundation's is where you learn it all.As, I said before "Don't Rush" or you will end up fixing things you missed and it is not fun.And most of all "Listen" to your instructor as she knows you and your dog better than anyone.
Click to expand...
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top