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Every year dog agility seems to encourage and catapult my personal growth by leaps and bounds. What started off almost 17 years ago as a funny little hobby has turned out to be the journey of a lifetime.
It has:
The other agility job that compliments my skills is being an AKC Agility Judge. Without a doubt, I get paid to watch and boy do I watch! The last time I counted, we figured out that I’ve seen well over 100,000 agility runs. Conservatively, that’s 45,000 hours of watching dog agility runs, so believe me when I say that has given me one heck of an agility education! After all, you can learn a TON by simply watching.
So the next time you’re around, come on over, say ‘Hi!’ and share a non-agility story about yourself. When you feel comfortable, let’s talk about you and your beloved agility dog. I would be honored.
Lisa
Today I received an e-mail note from a 14 yr old girl who wrote wanting to take agility classes w/ her 10 mo. old lab. Her parents don’t have the funds and she’d like to work for her classes. I say “Hell yeah! Come and join me!”
During our conversation, she mentioned that everyone else she approached turned her down flat…I can’t help but think “Seriously???? People turned down the initiative of a 14 year old girl when all she wants to do is work with her dog????”
Be honest with yourself for a moment, what would you have done?
For me, the decision was easy and I’m going to share why.
It may be a surprise to some (and not such a surprise to others who know me), but holy cow, I was a child without limits. I wasn’t quite the demon-spawn my Mom would claim me to be, but there is no doubt that without the initiative of a few folks who stepped in here and there, I can’t even begin to imagine the trouble I would have found myself in.
As I look back now, I would bet those adults have no idea the positive impact they made on me as a child. They have no idea that 30+ years later, I still recall the brief, but positive interactions and think of them fondly. They have no idea that I’m forever grateful for that small piece of advice, momentary stability or the amazing personal example they were to me.
I’ve come to the realization that a majority of my life and the person I am now was developed because of a whole bunch of tiny pivotal moments. Dare I say hundreds or even thousands of them? The lesson I’ve learned is that we can impact people’s lives in small, but meaningful ways.
So what does my story have to do with the young lady who contacted me in hopes of working to pay for her dog’s agility lessons? Well, I’m not ashamed to hope that maybe 30 years from now she’ll think back and remember ‘that dog lady’ and if I’m lucky, I’ll have had a single and brief moment to positively impact her life.
Wouldn’t that be an amazing thing????
Maybe I am stealing the Pay-It-Forward notion, but who cares! It’s an amazing thing and I’m having fun with it.
copyright Lisa M. Selthofer 2011
I love a good laugh and this clip had me going. Partly because it showcases a real subculture of the agility world, but mostly because it exaggerates that truth into a very creative and funny skit. For me, this clip is the Agility World’s version of the movie Best In Show!
So what is the clip really saying?
Well, most of us want the best possible chance to reach our agility goals. And who can blame us?!?! Goals are a GOOD thing. They are something to be celebrated and achieving our goals is an accomplishment that makes us feel good! However, sometimes we get sidetracked during our agility journey.
I say JOURNEY because that’s exactly what agility is. Dictionary.com says the definition of journey is ‘traveling from one place to another, usually taking a rather long time.’ Like it or not, agility is about work, consistency and the long-haul.
Unlike our funny video, there is no magical booster pill, telepathic linkage or microchip that can be inserted into us or our dogs that will provide us with instant success, secret knowledge or an ‘Easy Button‘ that transports us from Newbie to Expert with just one touch. Even the most experienced trainers must go through the journey process with each new dog.
So why all the hope in fairy dust and blessed gold-tipped squirrel tails? Well, I have a few thoughts on that:
I’m sure there are other reasons, but you get the picture.
So in the title of this blog, I promised to reveal the magical secrets of agility and so I will….but in Part 2, so stay tuned!
This past week I once again treated myself to a fun working vacation with Terry Ryan which consisted of 4-days of Chicken Camp held at Legacy Canine in Sequim, WA. (To read about last year’s adventure, click on Day 1&2, Day 3 and Day 4).
This session focused specifically on Cueing, something we often take for granted in dog agility. For the heck of it, I looked up the word Cue or Cueing and here’s what I found for a definition:
So what does a cue look like? When do we introduce it? How do we train it? When do we introduce it? Don’t I cue all the time…so why do I need 4 days of chickens to teach me all about a cue? These are just some of the questions I came to Chicken Camp with.
The good news is I didn’t have to tackle all of the questions on Day 1. Instead, we focused on training our chickens on specific behaviors such as pecking at a black dot…all in preparation for cueing. As you can see by the video, we worked on specific behaviors, rewarded them and rewarded them even more.
Stay tuned for Day 2 of Chicken Camp…
I have a confession…I’m afraid of spiders. I wish I had a dollar for every time some well-meaning-soul said “They won’t hurt you!” because I would be RICH! So when I saw this commercial the other week, I just about fell over laughing!
This video captured EXACTLY what my imagination secretly had been telling me all these years…that given the chance, the little spider was going to drop kick me and then drag me away to some unknown demise! I have to admit, after watching the commercial and seeing my fears unfold before me, I’m not feeling so afraid of the multi-legged little guy.
Agility fears effect us in much the same way. At times, we irrationally build the fear up and before we know it, we’re unconsciously altering our behavior. Here are some fears I’ve seen and even had to conquer on an Agility Course.
Fear can be an emotion that can be a detriment to us. For example, fear can;
On the other hand, fear can be a good thing! It can;
I’ve found the best way to conquer fear is to:
So whether your fear is a spider, your dog’s speed, a lack of training or something else, my best advice is to embrace and think of your fear as a normal part of the process.
Happy Handling! Lisa
Agility Course Map - Push Out
Dog agility handling has come a long way since I first became involved in almost 16 years ago. One of my favorite blogs, AgilityNerd, recently wrote a nice article on the “Back side jump” maneuver.
My prediction is that the back side jump challenge will be 2011′s hot new dog agility handling how to.
Why? First, it’s a legal agility course option in just about every major organization. Second, it’s new. Third, it provides trainers with an opportunity to showcase a unique dog agility training skill and fourth, who doesn’t appreciate a new challenge now and then?
As an AKC Agility Judge, I’m lucky to have a Rep who embraces my need to find unique and fun sequences. So when I forwarded this agility course on for approval (yeap, it has a push back in it), it was warmly welcomed. However, I was concerned that the handlers weren’t going to be as accepting! (fyi – to make the picture of this agility course larger, click on it)
I chose an area of the country that was known for solid handling and would probably have been exposed to USDAA‘s international-style agility courses where push backs are used more often.
I was excited to see the course run and to my surprise, I didn’t hear any complaints about the #4-6 sequence. Either these were great sports or they were quite talkers. Either way, these competitors did a fantastic job!
I intentionally made this push back simple by taking out the majority of wrong course options. In theory, the handler only needed to push on the dog’s path to prevent them from taking the front side of the jump. However, these competitors were smart and took the upcoming sequence in to account when planning their strategy.
To handle the push back at #5 and the upcoming sequence, most competitors took a straight path by keeping the dog on their right side after the dog walk, pushed toward the ring gating and followed the dog to the back side of the jump. Once on the back side of the jump, they did a front cross which put the dog on their left. The other advantage was that it allowed them to remain on the inside of the circle for the next sequence (dog on their left, while they went down the right side of the weave poles).
To the best of my knowledge, this is the first push back used in a regular AKC agility trial (i.e. not a National or other special event). Enjoy the course and I’d love to hear how it runs for you!
For more information on how to train the Push-Back, click HERE.
Well, today’s lessons were plentiful. Let me start with the non-dog related and I promise to very quickly move to the doggy stuff after that.
For this week’s agility classes, I wanted to do something a little different. A game. Something that involved a little friendly competition. A creative way to encourage people to focus on the successful agility decisions they make while out on course. Something FUN.
And this is how Red Ticket Night was born.
The goal for each person in class was to earn as many red tickets as they could and the winner was the person holding the most red tickets by the end of the hour. The prize? They got to blindly pick from a bag full of doggy goodies.
Earning a red ticket was easy. At the end of their initial run, they had an opportunity to tell the class what went RIGHT. For each good point mentioned, they earned a ticket. After they were done, anyone who added a positive point not mentioned would receive a red ticket for their input.
Since I also encourage my students to actively work to continue to improve, we implemented the “Goal Rule” which was another way to earn a red ticket. Basically, it was okay to say “I’m going to make it a goal to work on ____ (fill in the blank)” however, if they said a negative statement (i.e. our weave poles were terrible), they lost a ticket.
The course I set up was a fast, flowing course with some handling places, but contained no real surprises. This gave everyone an equal opportunity to focus on skills they already had and to work through any individual issues or goals that had been identified in the past. The course allowed dogs to run and feel a sense of accomplishment and the red tickets set the stage for a positive and successful mind set for the handler. Oh yes, let’s not forget the healthy competition and the surprise reward at the end as an incentive for all.
Yeap, the feedback was positive and I know I’m going to have to bring back Red Ticket Night at some point in the future!
The Art of Rewards
As a dog trainer and especially a dog trainer in Agility, I’ve taken the luxury to train all sorts of ways and have tried almost every method out there.
When it comes to training a new skill, hands down, I can say with confidence that a reward for correct/wanted behaviors works the absolute best in a criteria-based training program. The best part? It fits with a simple, precise and successful training/showing lifestyle!
In Blog 3 I mentioned that our job as Trainer to The Dog is to:
How we do that is purely optional.
However, when I think back on the mentors, teachers and trainers I’ve had in life, those that supported, encouraged and had my best interests at heart are the ones I remember the most and the ones who taught me the most (or was it that I was more willing to listen more?)…after years of success, trial & error, I’ve learned that it IS simple to be all of those things to our dogs.
Dear Dog – Criteria is GOOD!
Remember when I mentioned in my last few Criteria Blog posts that dog training is about the dog? Well, a reward system of training embraces that mantra. When I’m training one of the criteria steps defined in my worksheet, I start out using:
For each step in my Criteria Planning Worksheet I start all over with Treats For….(see above) and progress through the steps listed above as appropriate. It’s really that simple and my dogs love the game that I’ve created.
© 2004-2012 Spot On Agility and Lisa M. Selthofer All Rights Reserved
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