Southdowns members info - training tips

This is a video of Jake competing in a Grade 1-3 Agility round. Overall it was a good round but the beauty of the video is I can really see where I need to improve and what looks solid.

1) You can see Jake is unsure about his DW contact, this came in to play when I changed his see-saw contact position from 2 on 2 off to all 4 on. I need to spend a bit of time reinforcing the 2 on 2 off position on the DW. He in no way would jump the contact point nor did he miss it but you can see the uncertainty in his actions. This wastes valuable time.

2) Wide turn (before the a-frame) - I need to keep reinforcing good tight turns when travelling at speed. My plan is to do this by gradually building up from 1 jump and rewarding Jake in by my side. The reward being delivered in a stationary position should reinforce the point that he is being rewarded for digging in and slowing down. A reward thrown away from me would have the opposite effect and encourage Jake to lengthen out again.

3) Crashing into jump behind A-frame / Weave Entry - If you look at the approach to the 2 jumps closely I am moving off away from them as Jake flies in. He does not check his stride and simply misjudges the jump. If I had been stationary this may not have happened BUT he has to learn to judge his own stride and collect himself. This is the same for the weave poles (and why he missed the entry). He needs to learn accuracy AND speed are important not just SPEED!!!

As you can tell from the above points you can learn an awful lot from watching you and your dog run. Once you are aware of things which can be improved write a training plan to fix them and stick to it!

Emma

Dog tricks

Teaching tricks are a good way of finding out how dogs learn.

(by Silvia Trckman- WC Agility Competitor)

Teach your dog tricks – as many as you can think of: tricks teach you how to teach, they teach your dog how to learn and they also teach the dog that learning is fun, that you’re fun. Side effect is total awareness of his body, tricks teach a dog how to use his body. I guarantee you that if you teach your dog 100 tricks, you won’t have jumping problems. Rear end and overall body awareness, balance, strength, power, flexibility and agility that my dogs excel in so much are all the side-effects of all the tricks they’ve learned. "Too much tricks" doesn't exist. If you don’t have any ideas, you can get some from the tricks video below.

2 on 2 off Contacts

Southdowns trainers teach the 2 on 2 off method of contact training. The end result should be something like this........

This is the video is provided by crazymaesy agility club.

Running Contacts

If you are interested in how to train your dogs to have running contacts there is an excellent guide for how this can be done on the Silvia Trkman website. It is immediately apparent as you read down this page exactly how hard it is to produce a reliable running contact.

In her own club environment Silvia teaches the 2 on 2 off method of contact training.

Silvia Trkman - Running contacts Method

Below is a video of Silvia and dogs trained by her methods.....