Clean Run - July 2013 - 59

Busting the Myths

You Can Talk,
You Can Smile,
You Can Have Fun!
By Silvia Trkman
I think that on every of my runs ever
posted to YouTube, someone from the
US will comment, “Uh, but she talks a
lot!” I do. I’m proud of it. I’m proud that
my dogs have all the necessary information at all times.
The one to blame for my early and
complete information is certainly
Bu. She is my little perfectionist that
never sets a foot wrong, my amazing
Border Collie with no power, drive, or
acceleration that consistently places
among top five at the FCI Agility World
Championships—only thanks to the
eﬃciency of her lines. As a young
dog, she would shut down if she got
information where to go next only as
she was landing because landing on
a spot that wasn’t perfect for the next
obstacle would make her worry. She
forced me to give all the information
super early since she likes to land on a
perfect spot for the next obstacle and
demands to know where the next obstacle after the next one is at all times.
Of course, she reads it from my body
language, too, but since I’m not always
in a perfect spot and because double
information is always better than no
July 13

| Clean Run

information, I also give her lots of verbal information. She loves it! She loves
to have all the information, she loves
me to repeat my cues to give her extra
confirmation that what she is doing is
right, and she loves me to talk to her
so she can feed from my energy and
not worry about other things. Providing her with extra early and complete
information is the only way to keep
her happy. And it’s often the only way
to get the perfect lines, especially on
European courses.

out if they talk to them on a course.
Real-life experience doesn’t confirm
it or my dogs would be completely
tuned out based on how much I talk!
I’m pretty sure that whatever video
of my dogs you see, it is obvious that
they do respond to my verbal cues.
Now, I don’t say “Jump” for every jump
because I usually have more important
things to say, like what is the obstacle
after or in which direction to jump it
and how. But I do talk pretty much the
whole time and my dogs love it.

I guess verbal cues in the US got a
bad reputation when people were
using them as emergency calls when
the dog was already on the wrong
line. The verbal cues I promote are
very far from this. I train the dogs
what the cues mean and then use the
cues on a course to prepare the dogs
for what happens next—the cues are
for keeping them on the ideal line the
whole time. On our courses in Europe,
verbals make things much easier, so
the “talking is bad” myth is really an
American myth.

Don’t repeat cues? Of course not if the
dog is ignoring them, but if he is actually about to do it, you can repeat
the cue—that’s how you put names
on behaviors in the first place. What
exactly is wrong with saying, “Tunnel,
Tunnel, Tunnel,” when the dog is running full out to the tunnel? You’re just
naming the behavior, right? One can
confuse the dog with it? Really? Did
you try it? My dogs hear repeated cues
over and over again and they are definitely not confused. They are actually
brilliant at verbal obstacle discrimination because they hear the cue so
many times in the early stages of train-

My US students often explain to me
they were told the dogs will tune them

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Clean Run - July 2013

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