Where To Start?

[ljaitkenhead]

BC Crazy- It sounds like Ollie is at the same stage as Stella (I love that name btw)

Thanks for all the information Buddy & Kavik - I've bought that book this morning.

I'll let you know on our improvement!

[**Super_Dogs**]

BC Crazy- It sounds like Ollie is at the same stage as Stella (I love that name btw)

Thanks for all the information Buddy & Kavik - I've bought that book this morning.

I'll let you know on our improvement!

Good luck You will enjoy this book. I wish I had this book when I was training my first agility dog. This foundation work makes a HUGE difference when you start on equipment.

Beware though......agility is addictive. :laugh:

[Kavik]

For agility, have a think about what you want your contact behaviour to be (how you want your dog to negotiate the A-Frame, Dogwalk, Seesaw) - there are a couple of common behaviours and quite a few ways of training them - do you want your dog to stop at the bottom or to run all the way through? There is foundation work you can do for either of those.

[BC Crazy]

Buddy1- Glad to hear you train for 10 min approx as I didn't want Stella to become disinterested as well. I am going to get a copy of that Shaping Success book.

I half way through watching Crate Games on DVD, very impressed. I will have to work through that with Stella. Susan made it look very simple. I really need to teach

my girl self control. At times she is very excitable. Thanks for all your advice in working order, very helpful, appreciate it :)

Ollies mum- I'm glad your in the same spot with Ollie as I am with Stella. Sometimes even though I try very hard with Stella I always feel I'm not doing enough

Glad you like her name. I waited to get her for over 12 months & she was always going to be "Stella", & funnily enough it so suits her.

Edited August 24, 2012 by BC Crazy

[Mrs Rusty Bucket]

for the handling stuff (how to signal your dog where to go), I like Greg Derrett's system and dvd

http://www.cleanrun.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_id=824

or here (in Australia)

http://www.agilityclick.com/prod185.htm

Susan Garrett mostly uses the Greg Derrett system and modifies it for slow people. But she expects you to know his stuff.

[**Super_Dogs**]

as I didn't want Stella to become disinterested

This was a mistake I made when I first started training in agility. Now having learnt from this if my dog seems disinterested and it had only been 5 minutes, I do something really fun to engage her, then I stop training. I always want to end on a high. Whereas other days I would train for 15 minutes. I think it depend also what you are doing. For example weaves poles I keep the session short.

That is great you have crate games - I highly recommend it When you get going it is really not too hard. When one of my dogs was only 11 weeks she hurt her leg and had to be contained. I had not done any crate training with her yet so I had to do a speed version of crate games. I trained with her for 1 hour using Susan's method and she was/is amazing. She loves her crate so much that sometimes when we are out it is hard to pack the crate up and she keeps runnung back it :laugh:

[BC Crazy]

Yes I certainly don't want to sour Stella for want of a better to training because she is as keen as to learn. I only have to say," want to do some tricks?" & I have her full attention :laugh:

To her it is all fun I think. She loves to play tug of war & fetch & seems to thrive on everything, learning & fun.

Let you know how we go with the grate games. Susan Garret certainly makes it look easy. Amazing you could teach that in 1 hour to your puppy. Hope it works for us too. I am needing to separate my 2

dogs from one another from time to time as Stella is a very needy girl & is leaning on Sonny too much emotionally instead of learning how to work things out & cope on her own. So if I can get her really

happy about going into her crate at random times during the day & not just over night as she does now, I can start taking Sonny out more on his own & visa versa hopefully. Well that's the plan

[pie]

I agree Shaping Success is a good place to start - the best thing I learned from this book was to teach each obstacle individually until I was happy with it, and then link them into sequences, so the dog understands each obstacle properly.

ETA: Also - something I will do differently next time is change the criteria to more speed rather than more accuracy, I think the accuracy is easier to get in time - speed not so much. I was too focused on accuracy too soon and regret that now.

Edited August 24, 2012 by amypie

[**Super_Dogs**]

ETA: Also - something I will do differently next time is change the criteria to more speed rather than more accuracy, I think the accuracy is easier to get in time - speed not so much. I was too focused on accuracy too soon and regret that now.

This is a hard balance. Some say teach it right then focus on speed, but it does not always happen!! My first agility dog can be very slow at getting into position. I also think it is because I did not do as much foundation work with her, more specifically drive work. I think what helps is alot of shaping work, like 100 things with a box, to get them to offer and reoffer quickly.

[pie]

I just see a lot of dogs here that have emphasis on speed, and when they start out it is quite messy to say the least :laugh: , but after a bit they pull it all together and are fast and accurate, and very impressive!

I think smaller dogs particularly need to be trained to run run run! The little dogs that just ran flat out around the courses really stood out to me at the nationals and made me think about how I would train my next dog.

[**Super_Dogs**]

I just see a lot of dogs here that have emphasis on speed, and when they start out it is quite messy to say the least :laugh: , but after a bit they pull it all together and are fast and accurate, and very impressive!

Very good point!!

[Kavik]

The biggest thing I would change is teach my dog to tug! Certainly following SG is hard when your dog will only tug in the yard :laugh: she has lots of great tips to help this, we have improved so much, next dog should be a cracker I hope :laugh:

[ljaitkenhead]

The biggest thing I would change is teach my dog to tug! Certainly following SG is hard when your dog will only tug in the yard :laugh: she has lots of great tips to help this, we have improved so much, next dog should be a cracker I hope :laugh:

Trying to get Ollie to tug is almost impossible! He has a really soft mouth and as soon as I place my hand on anything in his month he drops it. I've made a platted rope out of fleece and he seems to tug on that a little- I think it's the movement that he likes. Any other ideas?

[BC Crazy]

I must of been lucky as far as playing tugs with my 2 cause they just grabbed hold of the tug toy & off they went. They do have their favourite toys that they like to

play it with though & both are different. I watched a Learn to play Tug of War DVD first which was good as far as learning a few rules of thumb. Like I must be in control

of the game,I start & finish it. Sonny used to bring the tug toy to me & shove it in my face to instigate a game which I have now learnt to ignore. They both just love it &

it tires them out really quickly. I would like to try a flirt pole as they look like fun to & I'm sure my 2 would love them.

ljaitkenhead, not sure how I could help with Ollie apart from saying I was very animated when I first started to play tug with them.I make growl noises & generally act like a goose :laugh:

That & praise like mad when they pulled back on the toy in any way. I tried lots of different types of toys too. Some they wouldn't play with at all & others as soon as I moved it they

would grab it. So maybe try a variety & see if Ollie is more interested. I also throw it & have them retrieve it, then play tug again. One fav here is the Kong Wobba. I did buy a cowhide

one from Clean Run & they wouldn't have a bar of it. Good luck with the game, I do hope Ollie will catch on as it is an excellent reward for a job well done. Other much more experienced DOL's

will have lots more ideas I'm sure :)

Edited August 26, 2012 by BC Crazy

[megan_]

Greg derret says put some raw chicken in a sock and get them to tug that. If they don't, then don't feed them for a day and try again. Ine of the reasons that dogs don't tug is because we've always let them know biting and resisting is bad, being placid is good. It takes time to relearn those lessons.

[Kavik]

The biggest thing I would change is teach my dog to tug! Certainly following SG is hard when your dog will only tug in the yard :laugh: she has lots of great tips to help this, we have improved so much, next dog should be a cracker I hope :laugh:

Trying to get Ollie to tug is almost impossible! He has a really soft mouth and as soon as I place my hand on anything in his month he drops it. I've made a platted rope out of fleece and he seems to tug on that a little- I think it's the movement that he likes. Any other ideas?

I have found at first it helps to try when they are generally excited anyway - in the morning, or when you first get back from work etc, rev them up and get them excited before presenting the tug, have fun with it and be silly, experiment with different materials, start off in an environment where they are comfortable, keep the sessions short and fun.

I am now to the point of testing it a bit more, in the hope of being able to actually use it at some point :laugh: . Getting Kaos to tug as a 'balance break' when doing shaping or training with food, sending to the toy when it is 'dead' on the ground and not only in my hand, on different surfaces, working on getting the same focus and intensity in the front yard and outside the front yard as the back yard, asking for him to tug before he gets his dinner and before a walk, around treats in his food bowl and around his favourite thrown toy.

Edited August 26, 2012 by Kavik

[BC Crazy]

Greg derret says put some raw chicken in a sock and get them to tug that. If they don't, then don't feed them for a day and try again. Ine of the reasons that dogs don't tug is because we've always let them know biting and resisting is bad, being placid is good. It takes time to relearn those lessons.

Funny you should say that megan because with both of mine they did give me a bit of a confused look as if to say," hey sure this is O.K" when we first started to learn to play tug-of-war. So what

your saying makes perfect sense re the biting & resisting. Placid is a really good thing :) I am half way through Greg Derret, Foundation Agility DVD. The man is a legend & makes it all look so easy