Clean Run - April 2017 - 60

3 Secrets of
Connecting
With Your Dog
Part 3: Communicate on the Fly
By Kathy Keats

How many times have you walked a
course and then run it differently?
Maybe it just didn't run the way you
thought it would. Or perhaps some little
bobble or unexpected slip forced you to
change handling midstream.
In some ways this is agility communication at its purest. It forces you out of
your bubble, and to acknowledge the
other living being on the team. Rarely
does a plan go perfectly. Stuff happens
and you must adapt, and work together
to survive.
But how do you learn to work with your
dog as a true partner all the time, able to
let go and communicate on the ﬂy? By
taking some driving lessons.
Expect the Unexpected
A number of years ago, a friend of mine
and I were zipping along a minor fourlane highway edged with trees at around
70 miles per hour. I was on the passenger side and my friend (an off-duty
police ofﬁcer) was driving. Suddenly,
out of nowhere, a car lurched out from a
side road directly into our path.

The car seemed only inches in front of
us. With no time to react, I did what any
logical passenger would do. I closed my
eyes. I felt a jarring movement, but not
the one I expected. I tentatively opened
my eyes.
We were still sailing along the highway
(a bit slower, mind you), no car in sight.
My police ofﬁcer friend smiled sheepishly and shrugged. "We're trained drivers" was all he said.
Although we had our "road map" to
get to our destination, something unexpected happened and my friend had
to deviate from the plan... and thank
goodness he had the skills to do so. If I
had been driving that day, we'd have Tboned the other car. I haven't practiced
evasive action in the same way that my
friend has. I have no trained skills in
defensive driving. Sure, I might have
tried to swerve, but the reaction would
have been late and poorly executed at
best. If I had managed to miss the offending vehicle (which I doubt), I likely
would have rolled our car or hit a tree
or something.

instance, swerving around an obstacle
is a common skill in defensive driving, although it can apply to many
different situations-similar to a dog
starting to refuse a jump. This can
happen under different conditions, but
your basic response as a handler to
save it is similar.
But you need to train to respond instead
of just closing your eyes and praying!
You need to expect the unexpected.
It's Your "Faults"
When you train yourself to react, it becomes a "feel." You just know what to
do and respond. Communication ﬂows
from you instantly and unimpeded.
When Sully landed his plane in the
"Miracle on the Hudson," he had a feel
from years of ﬂying that he wouldn't
make an airport. His skills were so
highly trained he was able to feel how
to land the plane, even though he had
never done that speciﬁc landing before,
just as my friend had never faced that
exact situation as we rocketed toward
potential disaster on the highway.

What does this have to do with dog
agility?
Do you train to react to the unexpected?
Do you have techniques you can fall
back on instinctively to connect with
your dog? Or are you so stuck to your
plan that you're lost when the plan goes
wrong and communication breaks down?
You see, reaction is a skill, like any
other. And the situations you need to
react to have a lot of similarities. For

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