Clean Run - July 2014 - 31

Help the Dog If You Can
One of the techniques we have been
using for a long time is the "grab to the
weaves." But when teaching it, we often
hear people express reluctance to try it
because they want their dogs to have
independent weave entries. We do too,
as you can see by the weave pole training we do: https://www.youtube.com/
watch?v=__kWQYNrN3A and https://
www.youtube.com/watch?v=OhO-V4FNsyo. But we also feel there are some
difficult situations or conditions where

there is an advantage in helping the dog
by doing the grab to the weaves rather
than letting him enter independently.
So if we can help the dog, let's say there
is an off-course obstacle near the weave
entry, we will. Also, on slippery surfaces
you can see dogs having problems entering the weaves correctly. Often you
see the dog going straight from the first
gap to the third or falling down, as in the
2011 FCI Agility World Championships
Large final in France where the surface
was very slippery. By using the grab to
the weaves in bad conditions, you can

control the dog's situational speed when
entering the weaves. OMD trainer Tuulia
Liuhto escorted her dog to the weaves
at the 2011 FCI Agility World Championships: https://www.youtube.com/watch
?v=8b_OFxP1CyQ.
If you master the grab to the weaves,
you can have a very high success rate in
weave entries, no matter how challenging the setup. You can help the dog to
enter the weaves on a straight and effective line, which makes the technique
not only highly accurate, but also the
shortest and fastest way to advance.

If you master the grab
to the weaves, you can
have a very high success
rate in weave entries, no
matter how challenging
the setup.

Grab to the weaves: if you can help your dog to enter the weaves on a straight and effective line,
why wouldn't you?

You can execute the grab to the weaves from either in front or behind the entry.

The main goal of our handling is to make
advancing through the agility course as
easy and unambiguous for the dog as
possible. Being able to do this consistently allows our dogs to understand
and trust our handling cues, which increases their self-confidence and helps
them to read the course independently.
We always try to help our dogs in the
agility ring to benefit their performance.

Dogs Tell Us How
For most of our handling techniques,
the way we do them has been determined by the dogs. We don't perform
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| Clean Run

techniques a certain way because we
want to do it like that. We have tried hard
to listen and interpret how our dogs see
the cues so the use of the elements of
handling in the individual techniques
is set by dogs. It would be phenomenal
to be able to see the world for one day
through the dog's eyes. Sadly their ways
of trying to make us understand their
point of view are limited and they can
only show us how they react to our cues,
not the reasons behind their responses
to our handling. So if we are willing to
try to find out and interpret how we can
use cues that are easily understood by
the dogs, we can learn a lot by following

their response to our handling cues. To
learn why some cues are unambiguous
for them can be far more complicated.

A Rule in a Curved Tunnel
One good example of the dogs' natural
response to our handling is the way they
read our positional cue on a curved tunnel. Beginner dogs always turn to the
curve in a curved tunnel. But after teaching the dogs how to perform the tunnel
in basic situations, we teach them to
turn to the backside of a curved tunnel
when our positional cue during entry is
behind the plane of the tunnel entrance.
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Clean Run - July 2014

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