Clean Run - February 2018 - 10

PRACTICALLY TRAINING:

Turning
Cues

© matt allison PhotograPhy

By Sandy Rogers

I hope you enjoyed the serpentine
learning from the last two months.
The next section of my "One Jump,
Two Jump" program is the section
titled "The Seven Turn Cues." This work
is now about eight years old and in
re-visiting it with you, I am thrilled
that the skills I found important then
are still the skills I find important for
handlers to perfect now. What made
me smile as I sat down to write to
you this morning was that many folks
pursing our sport today would laugh
at the thought of anyone thinking that
there were only seven turn cues. Some
individual systems boost over 30 turn
cues! If you add up all the physical
turn cues to all the verbal turn cues
you would find that we have a whole
lotta turn cues here in 2018! So, I will
now consider the seven turn cues that
I am going to be teaching you over the
next several months as my seven key
turn cues.
My training program calls for perfecting these seven turn cues. They are the
cues that I know most handlers can
excel with on American-style courses.
When my students are ﬂuent in these,
we look to more advanced cuing for
the special scenarios on course or to
accommodate the different types of
dogs and handlers that can utilize
them best. I have a problem with folks
looking to learn new turn cues to solve
turning issues that are happening
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because the dog was never properly
taught the individual elements of success on basic turn cues. My goal is to
help you determine if your basics have
any holes in them that could be preventing you from having the success
you desire.

How Many Turn Cues Are There?
I wonder if anyone knows the answer
to how many turn cues we now have
in agility. Can there really be that
many different ways to cue a dog to
turn? I can remember thinking that
seven was a lot! Maybe we should be
asking how many there are and how
many of those do we actually need?
And who needs which ones? Finding
those answers is something I love to
help students with. Once you have
your answers, you will know how to
spend your precious training time!
I am hoping my training program can
help you find those answers.
What you need to understand is that
some turn cues are named for slight
variations of one basic cue, and some
names are given to what are actually
combinations of turn cues and combinations of the variations. We all use
turn cue combinations (that article is
coming!) but not all of us choose to
give all of them different names. Some
of us have given the same cues different names and that can be confusing.

Some students find all the many and
varied names overwhelming, while
others find that having all the names
helps their comprehension. To each
his own. Think of it like this: there are
26 letters in the English alphabet. That
is how many letters it takes to form
approximately a quarter of a million
words in the English language. So,
how many turn cues can be made
from seven key turn cues? Probably
more than we have now, right? I find
it very refreshing, most of the time, to
be a student of such an evolving sport.
The rest of the time I find it very frustrating to see so many hard-working
handlers seeking to perfect skills that
are beyond the foundations they have
built for their dogs.

Jumping and Turning
Before I get into the turn cues I want
to address jumping skills and knocked
bars. We spend so much time teaching
dogs to perform contacts and weaves,
but some of us do not spend enough
time teaching dogs how to jump. Both
Susan Salo and Linda Mecklenburg
have provided us with programs to
teach dogs so many of the important
aspects of jumping. Just because a
dog does not knock bars does not
mean he knows how to use his body
safely and effectively while jumping.
Jumping in extension (like down a
long line of jumps) and jumping in
Clean Run | February 18
Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - February 2018
