Distracted During Agility
Hi!!!
I´ve a 14 months sheltie his name is Shadow, I practice agility every weekend but ehen shadow sees other dogs he always goes with them to play so i cant practice. Can anyone help me with this problem what can I do to change this behaviour.
I have an eight month named Sadie that I'm training for agility and am working through similar issues. Sadie is extremely dog friendly so its quite a challenge keeping her attention on me and away from other dogs.
I'm no expert but I can tell you whats been working for me. These are methods that I learned from the dog trainer who is teaching Sadie and I agility and flyball.
I don't know if you let your dog play with other dogs alot (away from home) but you might want to limit the exposure so that he doesn't think its play time every time he see's a dog.
A solid base of basic obedience is really important when training for agility, especially a strong recall. If you haven't already, you might want to take an obedience class.
I work on Sadie's recall daily and give her huge rewards for returning to me. I generally get really excited (she loves that she's done good and feeds off of the attention) and I also give her some form of a physical reward. This could be her favorite treat or her tug toy. Lately I've been getting her away from treats and rewarding with the "tuggie", I don't want to give her treats all the time and make her fat!
These types of rewards, especially play rewards make your dog look forward to coming to you and also help to strengthen the bond between you and your dog. ALWAYS praise when they're good and TRY not to make a big deal when they don't listen. NEVER call your dog to you and punish it or do something it doesn't like, it will think it was punished for coming to you and won't want to come to you at all.
I practise this recall in a public place daily where there are distractions. I started small with maybe only a couple of distractions (at the park with some kids playing at the other side), then I work my way up to bigger distractions like dogs also being at the park. Its also important to know that I started with a retractable leash and didn't let her off until I was sure I could control her.
Another thing that might be useful to you is teaching your dog the "Look" command. Its is very useful in getting your dog's attention when there might be something else distracting it. Simply say "look," when your dog makes eye contact with you it gets a treat. When you master this (very easy to teach) you can pair it with your recall. Ex. "Look!" gets your dog's attention then say "Shadow Come!"
I've worked very hard at this and continue to work with her but Sadie's improved leaps and bounds using these methods. She was completely uncontrollable when dogs were anywhere near her but now she's a changed dog. In agility and flyball she can be off leash and nearly always leave other dogs alone. She's too interested in what I have to offer her and running the agility course.
I know that I really haven't talked about agility yet but if you can get your dog to listen in a public place you shouldn't have trouble in the agility ring either.
I hope this was helpful, the only other thing I can say is try not to get too frustrated, it can take a while but always look at the posative, tiny improvements that you may see!
Good Luck, let me know if you have any other questions!
