Clean Run - October 2014 - 55

Training
Multiple
Dogs at

oncE
By Amanda Shyne, photos by Alicia Dube

Recently I brought Happy, my youngest Border Collie, to a local AKC trial.
I was anxious to get him in the ring
and use the skills we had been training for the past year and a half. Confident that Happy's foundation was
solid; I believed that his performance
would be the same. The excitement
of running Happy in his first agility trial
quickly wore off as I realized I had "no
dog." Happy was so overwhelmed
with the trial environment that he
could not look at me, much less engage in any trained behaviors. When
seeing how distracted Happy was, I
knew immediately the problem was a
lack of socialization and habituation to
the trial environment. Happy grew up
at home with my 3-year-old son, not
at dog trials as my other dogs had.
The simulation of the trial was overwhelming to him! Knowing the reason
for the problem was little comfort as I
fretted over how to train Happy to focus at trials, without being able to trial
more than once or twice every two or
three months.

October 14 | Clean Run

The solution came to me later that
night: I would simply allow my other
dogs to run around, bark, and play
with toys during Happy's training
sessions at home. The next day,
Happy (on leash) struggled to look at
me while Dilly raced around the agility yard. I was thrilled! Happy's behavior was the same in the yard as
it was at the trial, which would allow
me to train him to perform better in
both situations.
My training program was very simple. I rewarded attention using a secondary reinforcer (the clicker), usually followed by a primary reinforcer,
either food or tugging. Happy already
had many skills needed for agility,
he just needed to learn to focus in
a stressful environment with other
dogs running around and distracting
him from his responsibilities.
Happy gradually improved. One
month later, after our dismal first
showing, he was in the middle of the
weave poles when Dilly ran through
pole 9 and 10. Happy continued

weaving! Clearly Happy's behavior was better, but would it hold up
at a trial? That weekend Happy was
entered in his first USDAA trial and
while his performance was far from
perfect, his focus and attention were
vastly improved. See Figures 1
through 4.
Initially when planning this article, I
intended to write about training agility dogs to lie down and wait their
turn while playing agility. But after
seeing how quickly Happy went
from a highly distractible puppy to a
focused agility dog, I thought other
people who struggle with inattention
at trials might find Happy's solution
helpful in their quest to train appropriate trial behavior.

training Dogs
to taKE turns
Early in my agility career I only
worked with one dog, Dilly; however,
as agility began taking over my life
I, like many others, began acquiring
more agility dogs. As soon as Gimmie, my second agility dog, began
55

Clean Run - October 2014

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