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Comment by Beth on August 23, 2011 at 9:01pm

Soooo, Jack has hookworms and missed a few classes.  He was looking like a sad puppy so I rigged up an 8-inch jump using some overturned buckets and a piece of wood trim.  We practiced having him GO! ahead while I hold back, and also some rear crosses.  He Arooooeed the whole time, and was so excited and happy he was flying his jumps instead of measuring them and I had a heck of a time on his start-line stays (something he usually nails).  

And then he was so excited he made himself throw up.  :-)  Silly dog!   Next time I'll do some ground work before hauling out the jumps.  This dog lives to work.  I love him to pieces and he lives and breathes to make me happy, BUT he would have been a happier dog in a herding household, or one that can do agility most days instead of one or two a week.   He's one drivey little guy.

Comment by Cheri on August 10, 2011 at 12:12pm

If you have a corgi, you can start training! You should start with focus games and ground work. The bulk of the time on an agility course is spent getting from one obstacle to another. Teaching your dog to run with you and read turns is a vital part of agility and that work can start now!

Comment by Katie MacCallon on August 10, 2011 at 2:43am

Can't wait til my little one is old enough to start training for agility!!

Comment by Cristi on June 23, 2011 at 4:04pm

Hi Jane

Susan's comment about using a treat bag/pouch with treats in it is a good idea for the 2 x 2 method. But you can still just toss treats as well, even in grass. Just use a treat that is visible like little bits of chicken or string cheese. I have trained 4 dogs using the 2 x 2 method and used both food and toys as a reward and it was done in grass.

Comment by Susan and Merlin on June 23, 2011 at 2:18pm

you can put the treats inside of something, such as a little nylon bag, and throw that. They actually make throwable treat pouches.

 

I generally use the channel weave method to teach my dogs, I've also used WAM, but a friend of mine swears by the 2x2. I like the channel weave because you open them up to 10" at first, and all the dog has to do is run through the channel. You slowly inch them in - if the dog seems confused, you inch it back out until it's perfect, then inch it back in.

Comment by Jane on June 23, 2011 at 2:00pm

Hello everyone! We're taking a very beginner "just for fun" type of agility class, but I'd really like to teach my dogs to understand the weaves better. Our instructor uses luring, which doesn't seem like it's teaching the dog anything to me, but most of the people in the class probably aren't interested in practicing weaves forever so I can understand why she does it.

 

I've been looking up videos of the 2x2 method, but my main issue is neither of my dogs are that interested in a thrown toy, and tossed treats get lost in the grass and result in a lot of sniffing. Should I work on sending them through the 2 poles to a target maybe? They seem to understand it more if I run/walk with them, but if I stand back and try to send them out it doesn't seem to click. I want them to be thinking about what they're doing instead of just following me blindly, but I'm having a hard time lol. Any pointers?

Comment by Cheri on June 5, 2011 at 2:45pm

I'm all for positive reinforcement except in one, maybe two situations and all I do is a change of tone. My 'leave it' and 'halt' commands are "I mean business, do it NOW!" commands. I say them as loud and as ugly as necessary so they don't take whatever it is in their mouth or don't move, respectively. Either of those commands could save their life one day so I always mean business with them. I might not be able to afford to wait for the dog to decide to obey or wait for them to figure out what I want.

I think you can shape any behavior from your dog, you just have to be mindful about what you reinforce. Allowing a dog to take the lead and follow his nose reinforces doing just that. Moving the tracking into a situation where you have control rather than the dog says that the dog can sniff when you say, not when he decides the time is right. When my dogs are with me they track when they are on harness. When the line is moved to the collar, tracking is over.

Have you tried training tracking formally? Sounds like you have a natural! Exactly the qualities you'd want in a tracking dog.

Comment by Beth on June 5, 2011 at 11:59am

Thank you for all the tips!  I'll add what I learned here to my repertoire.   I see three issues that led to this development:

1) Jack has a fantastic nose.  I think with some training, someone could hunt behind him.  Once on a walk he stopped, turned 90 degrees to his right and started to try to run.  Curious, we followed him. Easily 50 yards away (possibly twice that) was half a hamburger someone had dropped.  He ran a line straight to it.  I have seen him do something similar many times to find buried poop (gross!) when we're out walking off-leash in the woods.  So I'm thinking the smell of other people's extra-yummy treats that have been dropped on the ground is overwhelming to him.  My female Corgi has a typical non-hunting breed nose and does not seem to scent-discriminate or track so naturally.

 

2) It's frequently been very hot when we do agility (over 80 degrees) and so I try to let him relax between turns.  When he's hot and panting heavily I hate to keep him "on" the whole time.  So I need to find a way to keep him sharp-ish without being on his toes.  Otherwise, he scouts out things he wants to sniff but can't reach, and when I let him off-lead he has "marked" the spot in his head and is intent on getting there, and

 

3) In order to keep him focused on me and reward him when he looks, in the hour-long class I would need to feed him more calories in treats (no matter how tiny I break them) then he normally gets in a day.  I think he'd do better with half-hour classes but in a group setting that's not possible. 

 

Finally, our instructor was insistent on all-positive, no corrections when we started.  I agree that when learning obstacles that's the approach to keep them happy.  Still, I think if I'd given some good strong "No!'s" the first few times he went to sniff I might not be in this predicament because Jack is a dog who appreciates boundaries.  He does not sulk at a "no" and is a pushy, bossy dog who will test his limits at each new venture.  He has an independent mind and likes to use it, but will deeply respect boundaries once set.  So while my female can easily be trained by exclusively cooing over her and telling her how fabulous she is, Jack does best with very positive training to learn new skills (he loves a praise party so much it makes him A-rooo with joy), mixed with very rare sprinklings of verbal correction to set boundaries of what is not allowed.  I even use "Yes" and "no" as marker words when shaping new behaviors in the way one would use "Hot" and "Cold" in that old parlor game. 

Ah well, lessons learned.

Comment by Cheri on June 2, 2011 at 8:03am

Think of the sniffing activity the same as you would a treat or tugging. When tugging is used as a reward for doing agility do the dogs stop on the course and expect you to tug with them? Do they stop at each obstacle looking to you for a treat? As they learn the game of agility the frequency of the rewards changes and the dogs get that. You just need to formalize the sniffing so it becomes a reward that you control. Never allow your dog to engage in self rewarding behavior. Allow the unstructured, self rewarding behavior and then you've lost control.

Comment by Cheri on June 2, 2011 at 7:47am

You would never teach them to sniff between obstacles, you would use it as a reward. You would not let them sniff the ground either. Set up a box with a bunch of junk and one thing with a stinky treat that they have to find. You take them to the box and let them find the treat as a reward. It directs the sniffing activity and separates it from agility. then they get to sniff, but after they've done what you want and in a controlled situation. You don't want his nose on the ground in the agility area, just where you allow the sniffing.

If the situation is just boredom in class then you need to either keep his attention with a treat (have you tried a throw bag) or take him off the course and kennel him while you get your instruction. Allowing him the time on his own only reinforces the behavior you don't want.

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