Clean Run - August 2018 - 12

was fine while I was on top of him, but
as soon as I was behind his line of sight,
he lost the plot again. Finally, I asked my
daughter Kris to hold his toy, flick him a
thumb's up, and then drop his food toy if
he got it right, and not to respond at all if
he went around the poles. This seems to
be working.
I'm quite quickly going to move to three
poles as I have a feeling that on their own
two poles don't have much relevance to
Dexi. Shady has to work to get through
two poles, but they are a long way away
from Dexi and perhaps aren't salient.

board before he was happy to play. We
have progressed to a small, soft ball under the wobble board, and Shady can
move into a sit then back to a stand and
then into a sit again. He can also turn
circles in both directions and is getting
good at rocking it backwards and forwards. My plan is to slowly work our
way back up to a full wobble board before trying the seesaw again.
Dexi in the meantime, is happily sequencing a full seesaw without a care in
the world. He is quite sensible and can be
relied on not to fly off of it.
My A-frame is at its lowest setting, about
4ft. high. The target mat has been removed and both dogs are doing well.
Shady occasionally gets overexcited and
goes for a one-stride performance, but
overall he's doing well. I've added a jump
after so that I can throw a reward for
him. He does work for dead toys, but not
with as much enthusiasm as he does for
a thrown toy.

Dexi runs down the A-frame happily. It
seems to have happened naturally and
he doesn't miss it, although he does leave
from the top section of the contact. I'm
gingerly upping excitement levels and
he's coping well.
With so much distance between obstacles now, I'm going to leave turns off the
equipment until the A-frame is up to full
height. We no longer see tunnels under
contact equipment to turn the dogs into,
as obstacles must now be 5m apart.

Jump Work
In our one jump work, Shady can now
perform a figure-eight around the jump
while I stand a good six paces back, and
he is learning to circle around one end.
Next month we'll start box work to refine the dogs' understanding of my cues
without the speed that makes turns so
difficult. D

Contacts
Both dogs are happy across the dogwalk
at full height, and are starting to learn
their turns to get on it. Shady is doing
well with his stop target, which I transferred to a plank and then faded. We're
now working on speed into his stop position and proofing his release. The down
side of working a deaf dog is that I sometimes forget that Shady can hear and appreciates verbal feedback. That's another
note in my training book for him!
Shady scared himself on the seesaw
and then flatly refused to get back on.
I'm not sure if he'd grown again and
was off-balance, but he flew off, unprepared for the tip, and then decided he
was going to have nothing to do with
it. There was little point going head to
head with him, so we went back to the
wobble board. I had to take it all the
way back to a pair of socks under the

This is Dexi's habitual pattern on the A-frame contact.

Notice the toy in my hand. We need
to work on forward focus again!

This shows is an ideal
performance for Shady.

I started agility training and competition in the late 1980's, about the same time I started clicker training, and have also competed in working trials and obedience. After all
these years, I still think agility is the best of all dog sports for both dogs and handlers, and clicker training is the best way to teach it. I am a positive trainer because reward
builds behavior so much faster and better than any other method. If the solution to a problem is going to upset my dog, it clearly isn't the right solution. I thoroughly enjoy
training my dogs and teaching others. Over the years I've been privileged to teach all over the world, from Australia to Japan, and across North America and Europe.
I have worked with many talented handlers and thoroughly enjoyed every moment. Contact me via my website at www.kissagility.com or via my Facebook page at
https://www.facebook.com/KISSagility.
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Clean Run | August 18

http://www.kissagility.com https://www.facebook.com/KISSagility

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