Clean Run - August 2017 - 38

Taking notes
What notes would you have taken from
the assessment course? I'll bet that even
while you're sitting reading this article
you know which skills you'd need to utilize to be able to run the course fluently.
What will you do with that information?
My notes would be as follows:

* Course space: Look at the course.

Do you need to hug every obstacle?

* Lateral distance: The entire course is
about lateral distance and lines
of drive.

* Distinct cues: If you want your dog to
work away you need distinct cues.

* Confidence: If you want your dog to

work away he must have faith in you
to give him the information.

* Error response: What do you do

when it goes wrong? Plan it and rehearse a response.

Whenever you attend a seminar, or with
any learning experience, you need to
have a good feel for your own dog and

your own perspective. You need a box,
or a filter. Inside that box is your knowledge and your experience. When someone gives you information, you need to
assess-does this fit into your box? Or
does it fall outside the box? Should you
expand your box?
I attend as many seminars and training days as I can on all sorts of subjects,
including but not limited to teaching,
clicker training, behavior, and agility
handling. I also take online courses and
buy interesting DVDs. When I do so I use
my filter, my box. Does the information
being presented fit with my own understanding, does it expand my understanding? If it's outside my box, and it's
being presented as science, are there
peer-reviewed studies to back it up?
In agility when someone tells me my
dog is being "naughty," my shutters
come down and my inane smile gets
plastered across my face. Anyone who
assigns an emotional interpretation to a
training situation is unlikely to be able to
help me. I'll still listen; they might have
some good ideas to add to my toolbox.

I've trained with some outrageously
compulsive trainers and still come away
with lots of good ideas to translate. I
take notes and it's those notes that are
so important.
When I get home, I leave things alone.
I let any new information percolate
through; maybe discuss a few ideas with
like-minded friends. Then I sit down and
read through my notes. Are the ideas
still relevant? Should I now incorporate
them into my training?

Assessing the notes
So if I had run the assessment course,
when I got home I would look at my
notes and make training decisions.
When I next run a dogwalk in training,
what are my aims for that piece of equipment? What are my criteria? For the
majority of the handlers at camp, they
should include lateral distance in their
training plans. The sad part is that when
asked to run the dogwalk with lateral
distance although each and every handler and dog had the capability, they'd
just fallen into a habit of running close

Are you unhappy with your dog's 2-on/2-oﬀ contact
performance or are you starting to train a new dog for
agility? Rachel Sanders has developed a clever method of
teaching a 2-on/2-oﬀ contact that does not rely on teaching
a nose touch. Instead, it uses simple garden fencing and a
travel plank to help teach the dog his end position. Training
goes quickly because the dog understands the concept of
rig from the start.
the end position right

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