Agility Seminar – Steve Schwarz

We got to go to another seminar! Two days this month! The last time I spent this much time at agility seminars was 2005 – yes, 11 years ago. I know I need to go to more agility seminars.

This one was to see Steve Schwarz in Youngstown at a beautiful, big training building. I’ve read Steve’s blog for many, many years and have appreciated his approach to training, thinking about training, and his enthusiasm for training.  A few of his things I especially love:

• An article I can’t find – but Steve talked about not feeling well but still doing some training – to prepare for less than ideal trial situations. I think about this a lot and some evenings after teaching I’m too tired to want to do anything with my dogs other than playing but I’ll think about this and go do a good training session.
• www.agilitycoursemaps.com –  Sometimes I’ll use this when looking for set-ups for classes or training my dogs. I wish more people would put in course maps (and I’m guilty for not doing so!) – though I know there may be some judges who don’t give permission.
•  This Recall to Heel article/video:  We do this exercise in beginners class and when teams move to intermediate they get a link to this article.  And to the whole blog as a “recommended resource.
• This training exercise/sequence generator. I don’t use it a lot, but it is a beautiful thing. I love how it is such a lovely example about how agility is not just random things, but a combination of possible elements.

old picture. Griffin likes to run.

The morning seminar was on “Can You Handle It” and looking at the various handling/dog path options. Griffin and I had a working spot and ended up being the first dog! I had not been at the seminar the previous day so we came in without knowing quite what to expect. I was tempted to ask to be moved on the list, but went with it! Good practice!

Griffin had trouble with the floor at first but then settled in and ran better. We weren’t perfect on the course but I wasn’t surprised by anything and we did well. He was trying hard, fast, and on task. We got good feedback, got to do some of the “be more mean” exercises (harder ones) with reasonable success. My favorite part was that nothing felt very hard or impossible – our skill set is definitely bigger than it was at the beginning of the year!

Griffin got a few compliments on his speed and enthusiasm and we had some nice comments on our skills as a team. The funny thing is we really are not experienced compared to many there – I think we just do a good job of the principles Steve talkes about – being good at pieces and training those to a higher level of fluency and looking at options available and not feeling restricted. Several people were amazed at his age (7). As always, we have a lot of little skills to work on and things I wasn’t 100% happy with, but those just go on our (giant) training list and we’ll work on it at some point. We got some positive comments from Steve on Griffin’s contacts and ability to hop onto the end with enthusiasm when starting sequences from a contact obstacle. After so many years of having very challenging dogs – it’s nice to have some things go well!

Steve is a great presenter – he has a plan, stays on task, gives good feedback and full attention to the teams, and knows a lot about the ‘big picture’ of agility. I would definitely encourage/feel comfortable having my students work under him.

The seminar was originally going to be about the AKC Premier class skills in the afternoon (that’s where we were going to work!) but that part got cancelled and changed to a lecture/demo on “Backyard Mastery.”  It’s definitely a talk I would like some of my students to hear – they could get a lot out of it and we talked about it in class this week a little. Many of them don’t have yards or places to go and work dogs on agility, but some of the same concepts apply to their manners/focus/groundwork skills (add variation! change an element at a time! changing something can make the task harder – don’t just do the easy version! ask ‘what if….’).

Tonks came in at lunch to do some play training. Some of our skills have been lacking recently but she came in on a (mostly) loose leash and easily, she played and responded to cues, we switched between toys and could turn to a toy behind her back, and she settled during part of the afternoon lecture! I should have put her in the car and got up to walk the courses but it seemed like a great opportunity for her. When demo teams ran on sequences she settled and watched – she’s probably only watched agility one other time and definitely needs practice learning to not care about other dogs running.

The changed schedule allowed me to get back to Columbus in time to teach evening classes without needing a sub instructor. I was tired, but it was a really great day! I’ll definitely be going up there for seminars again.