Clean Run - June 2012 - 29

It is a very gentle action and the dog’s natural reaction is usually to move his back feet toward me. As soon as I get any movement toward my side, I click and treat. Subsequently I want to see more and more movement from the dog, initiated by my hand moving toward the lead and beginning the slide down the lead. You may find a dog resists moving at all. In this instance just use very gentle pressure on the collar. He may, initially, still not move. But keep the gentle pressure on and usually the dog will eventually move just to change position.You can take the opportunity to click and treat when you see movement to the side. Once my dog knows how to move all the way into position when I move to take the lead, then I will say the word (e.g., Side), wait 2 seconds, and then move my hand forward to help.The dog will realize that the new cue (e.g., Side), always precedes the old cue (hand on lead) and start to predict the action on the new verbal cue. Teaching a positive version of a wait on the start-line will be covered in next month’s article. Positive Training Routines During training you can make your dog’s experience positive by following these points: 1. Always reward for handling sequences. Your dog will never be wrong where handling is concerned because you should be using his system and not yours. 2. Don’t keep repeating sequences. You don’t want to pattern your dog, you want him to watch and react to your handling. You also don’t want him to get bored. This means walking sequences properly in the first place. I don’t get my dog up to run him unless I am pretty confident I have a good chance at succeeding with my dog on that sequence. 3. Small dogs particularly: speed is a habit, so only allow him around agility equipment when you are ready to run a sequence. I only train my small dogs for a maximum of 10 minutes at each session. In between each minute or two I train, I put my dog away so I can think properly about the next sequence. Quality not quantity is required for our small and some ABC (Anything But a Collie) dogs. 4. Your rewards should be given for the dog actually doing agility.This sounds simple but lots of people just hand their dog a treat and think they have rewarded him for doing agility. But they have actually only rewarded the dog for slowing or stopping and coming to them. Dogs need to see the reward arriving forward as they drive toward the last piece of equipment. Then you are rewarding drive over the obstacles. In particular, never turn and face your dog before rewarding him as this means he is getting rewarded for stopping, not driving. 5. Make sure the equipment and course is safe for your dog.The collapsed tunnel should be pulled straight, the angles onto the contacts should be safe, and check there aren’t any higher off-course jumps left up because if he tries to
June 12 | Clean Run 29

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Clean Run - June 2012

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - June 2012