Agility Training at home

[LaurieB]

I have been taking agility classes with my 2yr old BC. She work great at class, at home, she act like I am beating her. No amount of food and coaxing gets her off the porch. I am very frustrated. Any suggestions?

 

I have 2 other BC puppies, one is 10 months an the other is 4 months. I naturally keep them inside, otherwise the 2 yr old gets very pushy and won't let the other 2 any where near the jumps or tunnel.

[Shetlander]

That's kind of interesting. Dogs often do better at home than away. What do you think the difference between class and your backyard is? Can you think why she'd be more excited to do agility there?

 

Also, does she like toys? Some dogs will get more excited over toys than food (and vice versa). Quinn loves food but is way more animated for toys.

 

What about training/playing with your other dogs in her sight before she gets her turn? That sort of "competition" can make a dog keener to work. This once backfired on me when my prima donna sheltie was so disgruntled over not getting to go first, that he peed in the tunnel (in my carpeted basement, thank you very much!) while I was putting the other sheltie away. I could almost hear him thinking "MY tunnel!"

 

One last thought, maybe look how you are training. Are your exercises a little too challenging so she has a hard time being successful and so gets frustrated? Or is she bored with too simple of sequences? The prima donna sheltie hated repetition and I had to be careful not to do anything that felt like drilling to him. My Lhasa has low energy so I have to do very short training sessions. So far, Quinn loves everything except the back cross exercises which seems to bore him quickly.

 

The idea is to alway leave your dog wanting more. Better to end your session too early than too late. Even if a session is just a few minutes, lots and lots of fun and play, then end while the dog is wanting to keep going.

[Kat's Dogs]

That is strange - I know that Dazzle LOVES to work at home and hates class.

 

What about just walking around the yard on-leash? You don't want her to start thinking "Agility = bad" so don't train in the backyard if she doesn't like it. Maybe just get her playing/walking in the yard without equipment - once she is savvy with all that bring out the fun stuff and just do some stuff on-leash and see if she gets the idea that it is the same old stuff.

 

Also, what about taking some jumps to a park? Or any other place besides home and the training center? What would happen then?

 

I also agree with Liz about making sure that she is enjoying it. Peanut (shih tzu) started to hate agility - but it was only because she was bored with the easy stuff. As soon as I challenged her more, she got some speed and her trail started waggin' again!

 

Hope that helps.....

[BeezSK]

I have the same problem. I tried setting up weaves in the backyard and my dog went and laid under the porch and pretended I didn't exist. She's very motivated by other dogs though which is I think why training classes work so well. Hopefully getting a 2nd dog soon and maybe the 1st one will want to play at home a little more if she has some competition for attention

[LaurieB]

It's funny, when I have the other dogs outside, she's very aggressive, and won't let them near any of the equipment. So I started putting them inside. Maybe she's bored at home with it, since I only have jumps a tunnel and the tire, and weave poles. At school there's so much more. She's very excited at school, like it's competition btwn the other dogs. She's a wierd one. Maybe If I trick her by putting on her collar, she thinks she going in the car then maybe she'll do better. She'll do it, but it fustrating for me because she runs to the porch after each exercise and hides. She's very toy motivated, only I'm afriad if I pick up the frisbee she'll run to catch it, that's what she really loves to do in the yard, is play frisbee.

[RaisingRiver]

Throw the frisbee over the jump.... OR, get her to do a tunnel, jump, whatever, and immediately throw the frisbee as she's finishing it, ie. reward. You'll need to tuck the frisbee in the back of your pants at your waist or something - she can't know you have it at first.

 

That might get her motivated

 

It's helping mine get over her fears of the teeter & dogwalk.

[Shetlander]

You have a challenging situation on your hands. It's one of those times that our dogs give us the opportunity to really work on patience and persistence You need to convince her that Agility is the best fun possible. At the same time, if you use toys (and I really think you should) you need to patiently and cheerfully teach her to understand that access to those toys is by doing what you ask first. When I first started using toys with my Excellent level dog, I had to go all the way back to having him take one jump to get a toy. Then we worked our way to sequences and finally entire courses for a reward of playing fetch. I have special training toys that only come out when we do agility. That helps dogs to associate excitement and fun with agility. That's the big benefit of using toys.

 

You have enough equipment to be doing fun things with her. Jumps, tunnel and weaves -- that's a mini jumpers course there. What kind of things are you training right now? Backyard Dog sequences from Clean Run can be very useful. You don't need too much in the way of equipment for that and those are often fun.

 

I would caution you about letting her think she controls access to the equipment. She needs to know that you are in charge of that, not her. I could see that sort of thing becoming a problem at class or even a show where she gets cranked that any other dogs (not just your dogs) are doing agility in HER domain. But I have fairly low tolerance for much in the way of resource guarding.

[Kat's Dogs]

Don't think that a tunnel, Tire, weaves and jumps can't be made into something REALLY challenging! You don't need the really big stuff just to make it interesting! A really hard sequence of those is plenty!

 

That is really all that I have but I can make some REALLY hard stuff (the kind of stuff you see at nationals) with it! Don't underestimate the power of the jump.

[LaurieB]

I think I will start rewarding with the toys/frisbees rather than food. I do get clean run and have set up the backyard course similar to the ones in the magazine. Like I said she really gets cranked at class, she can't wait to run the course. Will be away a few days, so she'll get a rest, and I'll start fresh when I get back. Thanks for all your input, will let you know how things progress