Agility for 4-Hers

[BC Wild Child]

Ok - I know there will be several youngsters with BCs at the workshop, so I thought it would be ok to post here. I am serving as our State Agility chairperson.

 

I am working with our State 4-H dog project committee (US) to put on a spring workshop for club leaders, extension educators, parents and of course the 4-Hers and their dogs.

 

Anyone on here work with 4-H kids? Or something similar if in another country?

 

We are planning classes on:

 

How to get started which is about getting and making equipment. Include easily obtainable items to use as equipment (eg broom handle for jump bar, plungers for weave poles etc).

 

Then different levels.

 

Beginners - how to teach obstacles

 

Ready to go off leash? - to help those who are moving up to the off leash levels - focus and control. Also for those who have moved up and have no focus or control off leash (I've judged a number of those!).

 

Advanced/Senior - handling moves

 

Any suggestions/ideas are greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks,

 

Liz

[Alaska]

This doesn't really fit the 4-H agility progression, but....

 

How about introducing NADAC-style gate work? It's something anyone can work on without equipment -- you can use traffic cones or chairs or upsidedown wastebaskets or whatever instead of actual gates. And it takes the focus off the obstacles and puts it on the teamwork and communication between dog and kid. Once the basic idea is in place, you can practice at the park with trees, as part of your daily walk, etc.

 

If you need a reference on gatework, try Amanda Nelson's series in Clean Run (1st half of 2006?) or her Control at a Distance DVD.

 

Also, not agility per se but Terry Ryan has a fun little booklet called Life Beyond Block Heeling that has about 40 games you can play with a group of dogs and their kids. The games focus on building the working relationship between dog and kid in a fun-competitive atmosphere. I played a game she set up once that had a handful of objects stood on end inside a circle 20-25' in diameter, with the object being to direct your dog to knock over the objects ("destroy Tokyo") while you (but not the dog) stayed outside the circle. The other (non-BC) dogs present had a hard time grasping the goal, but my adolescent BC had them all down before I could even say a word

[runningdogs-]

BC Wild Child, I was in 4-H for three year and last year helped organize a 3 day, 2 night 4-H dog camp with two other college students. We had 8 11-16 year old girls, and spent a lot of time teaching agility.

 

I'm not sure what state you are in but one thing we figured out quickly was that just because the dogs had "done" agility before did not mean they knew the obstacle or where comfortable with them. In some cases the dogs did the obstacles because they had to, not because it was fun.

With the beginners we focused on individual obstacle, but also did some short sequences. We split up into small groups based on the dogs experience and worked on indivdual obstacle performance first. Then we did small sequences, for the beginners the obstacles in a sequence were treated as indivdual obstacles. So they'd do a jump, stop reward, tunnel stop reward, etc. It seemed to work good and gave them more of an idea of what agility is like than just doing one obstacle. For the more advanced kids we used the same sequences but asked for higher criteria and more obstacles before rewards. We added more difficult sequences later on.

 

Another thing we did was work on obstacle speed (once they were comfortable of course). We also worked on jumping form, weave poles, and contacts. We introduced basic handling(front cross mainly, some rear crosses) to all the kids, first without dogs(actually did this first night), then with our dogs, and then with their dogs if the dog was comfortable with 4-5 jumps. We knew it was to advanced for the beginner kids, but wanted them to get an idea of what agility is really like. Most of them had learned that if the dog does the obstacle, it can do agility, so we wanted to make sure they realized that there was way more to it. For the more advanced kids we introduced crosses into the sequences.

 

Our agility field did not have good fencing, so we did very little off leash work, but did do some on the long line. Its certainly something we plan to do more of this summer adn would be a greta part of a workshop.

 

I'm sure there are other things that we did that I forgot about- but its late now.... I hope that helps!