Yesterday we went to audit a half day sequencing seminar by Tori Self . She was wonderful with the people, great about working with where they were at and getting them to try more handling options to see if other things would work better.
A few things she said that were especially helpful:
- Train the dog to come in towards you and stay at your side. This can be helpful for parts of the course where there’s a bigger distance between two jumps and the dog will be tempted to go off and do other obstacles or take a wider curve from the handler (due to the takeoff/landing or the dog’s preference to have some personal space). I suspect Griffin can/would/does this, mostly due to our obedience work. He’s also not a border collie like most of the other dogs there, so less herding-breed-circling-tendencies.
- Train the skills for hard areas. Expect to see those challenges again and be prepared for them. Take the time to train your dog and not just get by (or hope you can) with the skills you currently have.
- Know the shortest line. This may not always be the fastest way from point A to point B due to the variables of handling choices, preferences, dog’s current training, etc.
- Know your rules and break your rules. I have way too many rules and obsess over them, especially in obedience. It’s probably better to be careful, but I should be extra aware of how it may be constricting our options.
It was great to watch all the teams work and see their choices. All of the people seemed so fast and were able to get where they needed to be. With Griffin, we can do almost any hard piece beautifully, but the more obstacles we do, the further I fall behind and then everything gets messy. Again and again everyone was getting to where they wanted and needed to be and made it work.
Notes I made from the challenge areas with the participants:
- My quest for everyone to appreciate placement of reinforcer has a long way to go. I had to hold myself back from saying anything! For most of the dogs, the toys or treats were not fed in a way that encouraged the direction of travel that the handler wanted. It was a handling seminar, not a training seminar, but dogs are always learning and it was painful to see people encouraging slower responses by tossing the toy at the dog or tossing after the dog slowed in front of the handler.
- Cueing dogs to collect was a challenge. Many people had great tight wraps around the jump standard, but any other place where dogs needed to make a tighter turn (especially 180* turns to another jump), dogs were going really wide and/or getting lost.
- Train and use some sort of settle behavior for when talking to the instructor. Many of the dogs were wandering around or practicing things they probably shouldn’t be. Many of the participants seemed torn between getting their dogs and talking to Tori after each run. I’d be fascinated to know what everyone does in class. I know I’ve been pretty good about this for a long time, since reading this article by Bob Bailey.
- Training the dog to independently take the back side of a jump (not the obvious front) would be a useful skill if that’s something we will see on course. At the very least it may be a good training project.
How this will add to/change classes:
- More straight line areas on courses. I tend to avoid them with my own dogs and in class. It’s less reinforcing because it’s harder to keep up with the dogs and there’s not as much discrete training of behaviors. We really need to work on straighter lines and wide curves to prepare everyone for the beginning level competition courses.
- More work away from the obstacles. I wish I had been present on Saturday when more time was spent on this. Everyone has too much fun with the obstacles and it reinforces me to see everyone being so happy!
- With beginners, establish rest break behaviors from the very beginning.
During morning introductions all I said was that I have golden retrievers. It was interesting how many comments I received throughout the day. A few questions about training and a few “Horray! Goldens!” I’m impatient to get back to agility with my dogs!
I’ll definitely go to a seminar with Tori again and I’d be 100% comfortable sending my students to the seminar!