Obedience for Agility - Fundamentals

danisgoat

danisgoat

Moderator
I had many people ask me about what is covered in an obediance for agility class. My trainer holds this class as a fundamentals class for puppies. It teaches the dogs/handlers some basic skills that will help them out later on when they start formal agility training. The other night, I made a list of what my trainer instructs in her Obedience for Agility class, in case someone was thinking about starting agility and wanted to know some basics that they should have "down" from the beginning.

i am in no way at ALL a professional with agility. In fact, I am currently not running a dog as my daughters are running our three shelties. So, I am basically giving you an example of what our trainer teaches and the skills that my daughters use as their foundation. I am hoping that this helps some of you out that may be thinking about starting agility.

  • Eye contact - she uses a treat in one hand and has the dog sitting in front of the handler facing the handler. When the dog looks from the treat, to the owners eye for eye contact she clicks and treats. This is to build eye contact between the dog/handler. She then repeats this drill with the dog sitting at the handlers side. Clicks and treats everytime the dog makes eye contact with the handler.
  • Grab Collar Game - Click and treat when you dog is comfortable with you grab and holding the collar.
  • Name Game - You have the dog sit and your side and you say the dogs name, and when they look at you click and treat.
  • Recall
  • load clicker and start w/sits
  • Crate games
  • verbal release - we use "ok"
  • lefts and rights - we started this with the dog in between our legs facing the same direction as us. we would say left and treat from the left. Continue this until you say left and the dog looked left. Then repeated with right.
  • Sitting before going out of all doors.
  • Ladder games
  • backing up
  • perch and turn on forehand
  • travel plank
  • wobble board
  • work on downs
  • sits with walking by and built up to running by
  • restrained recalls
  • shadow handling and work up to running.

I hope this helps those of you that were wondering what is covered in a fundamentals agility class....or for those of you with puppies that would like to start training at home before they are old enough to start agility training. Most of these skills can be searched and you can find details on how to do them properly.

-Dani
 
Great List, there's even a few on there that I don't use myself anymore, (crate & ladder games) but have in the past.

There is no dought that every pup/dog definetely should have some obiedience training, it never ceases to amaze me how many new owners neglect this, or think I can do this myself. it just makes life with dog sooo much better, and for a dog going into agility it's a must have.

Even after having and raising many dogs , we still take obiedience classes
with any new pups, more for the socilization aspect of the class for the pup then for any other reason as by now we certainly do know how to teach it with out help :wink2:,.
 
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