Clean Run Magazine - December 2009 - 69

to have several sessions without treats to come close to seeing your dog’s competition behavior. When your dog fails to stop on the contact in training, be ready to take your dog from the training area for a few minutes. Does your handling vary in training and competition? Video yourself at a trial and at a training session. Are you closer to your dog in competition? Do you stop by your dog’s side instead of running to the next obstacle on course? Do you slow down and try to block your dog? In training do you always run past your dog no matter where the course goes? When I sequence contact obstacles I always execute the handling maneuver that the course dictates. I often hear that a handler cannot make the dog go wrong in training, but I have never failed to get a dog to either self-release or not stop at all. It is fairly easy to get a dog to release himself from the two-on/two-off position. Next time your dog does a contact, reward him with a treat and wait by his side until he has swallowed it; then without saying anything, back up behind the dog, run forward, and excitedly say Break or Free or Good Boy or anything other than your dog’s normal release cue. Most dogs happily release even though it is the wrong cue. Try running a full course or two without slowing down at the contact obstacle and without praising or reinforcing with food or toys. It is likely that your dog will fail to stop on one of the contacts. In fact this week in training my oldest Border Collie Fable, who has a pretty good two-on/two-off in competition, came flying off her dogwalk when I was rotating through a front cross! She received a short time-out on the deck and I ran another dog. Those opportunities to catch her out in training are rare but there was a meaningful consequence for the infraction. It will be several weeks now before she makes that error again. Dog is taking up the two-on/two-off position but then releasing himself. I rarely leave the competition or training ring for a self-release. I reserve that consequence for a failure to stop. I define a selfrelease as the dog has taken up the two-on/ two-off position but, after coming to a stop, does not wait for the verbal release cue and leaves the contact obstacle. This is a failure of the “wait” portion of the behavior, not the contact performance. If possible, when I see the dog leave the contact obstacle, I December 09 | Clean Run tell the dog to Stay. He should immediately stop his forward motion while I continue to run forward a few feet; then I release the dog with a verbal cue and continue. This is my ideal response to the self-release but can be difficult to execute if I am taken by surprise and cannot respond quickly enough to prevent my dog from reaching the next obstacle. If this happens, I believe it’s a case of Dog = 1/Handler = 0, so I move on and hope to do better next time. Dog stops short of the two-on/two-off position. Do you re-cue your dog after he stops short? If you re-cue your dog, you are reinforcing the initial stop as well as training a behavior chain. Have you ever released your dog from a fouron-the-board position in competition? If you release your dog from a four-on-theboard position, your dog is correct in thinking that the position required in competition is somewhere close to two-on/two-off but does not have to be exact for him to be allowed to continue. Often the dog’s slowing down results in the handler giving the release cue early. The dog now learns that the desirable activity of being released is the consequence of his slowing down or stopping short of the two-on/two-off position. When should you leave the ring for an incorrect contact performance? I do believe that the only recourse in competition where training is not allowed is to leave the course for a failure to take up the two-on/two-off position. However, I only do this under the following conditions. • If you have left the course during training and when you returned to run your dog again, he was successful on all his contacts. I only give my dog a time-out in training if I am 100% sure that he fully understands his job. • If I leave the ring three times in succession for a failed two-on/two-off performance and do not see any change in my dog’s behavior I assume that the consequence is not enough to make the dog alter his behavior or he just doesn’t understand how to make it right. The latter is nearly always the case. I go back to the training environment and work through everything again, increasing distractions and speed. My goal is to strengthen the twoon/two-off behavior and get the same or similar behavior I see in the competition ring when in the training environment.

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Clean Run Magazine - December 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run Magazine - December 2009