Clean Run - March 2013 - 59

veloped he will start with agility equipment. “At this point,” he explains, “they
understand body language and I don’t
have to think about that. People start
their dogs on equipment too early, and
keep them on low jumps too long.”
It’s the same principle with the poles. He
doesn’t start the weave poles until he can
be conﬁdent that he will get them trained
as quickly as possible. “If I could teach
my dogs to weave in 5 minutes, that
would be my goal.” The 2 x 2s are used
to teach entries, then he uses Weave-amatics, or V-weaves. “All of the methods have their faults. In channels they
learn to run alongside the poles, and
with 2 x 2s they are not developing the
best stride pattern. V-weaves teach them
to barge into the poles.” He sees those
common faults frequently, and thinks
that there is no one right method. “Use
each method correctly for the dog. I like
the Weave-a-matics because they teach
a good stride pattern and drive.” Those
made in England, he says are tighter so
the dog can’t push the poles out of the
way. Both Detox and Rehab learned to
weave in less than two weeks.

The Right Touch
Greg’s dogs have a mix of running contacts and stops. Detox has a running
A-frame, his young dog Rehab has a stop.
“Running contacts is the big discussion,
but I don’t think anyone has a method for
training them that is very reliable.” He
uses Susan Garrett’s nose-touch method
to teach his contacts. Detox used a target
and learned to run through it. “His contact has only been called twice,” he says,
“but I think it’s a weak method. She has
been successful more because the repetition of behavior has taught her what to
do.” The youngster has a stop because,
he confessed, he couldn’t make up his
mind. “She is a different body shape.
She is straighter in front, which doesn’t
help the running contact. She has a really fast stop.” Someone, he believes,
will develop a method for training running contacts that can be proven.

Time to Train
Running UKI and UKA agility trials,
handling responsibilities with the World
Agility Organization—the international
agility venue that he created and man-

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ages with Monica Percival, conducting
online training courses, and traveling
three months a year worldwide to present seminars, Greg is a busy man. So
how does he use the limited time he has
to train his own dogs?
“Training time for Detox is about a problem that I may have had at a trial, some
weakness or fault that I will try to ﬁx.
With the younger dog, it will be about
bringing him up the levels.” Winter
training is a lot about tidying up the elements of the dog’s foundation. Training
revolves mostly around drills.
For the 10 weeks before FCI Agility
World Championships, Detox ran courses
designed by the judges who would be at
worlds. “Anything that I was uncomfortable with, I would break down into drills.”
He keeps a record of what went wrong,
and skills he is not satisﬁed with. He discovered that Rehab, for example, had not
been taught tunnel-contact discriminations so they have been working on that.
“I keep all of the drills in a folder so that
I can reuse them on another dog, without

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Clean Run - March 2013

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