I’m getting the girls ready for real Agility training now that their growth plates have closed. I started Merlot far to young and I believe it contributed to his hip and back pain in later life. Now that agility has been around a while, we are seeing the results of our early mistakes, and new guidelines have been suggested. Many now think you shouldn’t start real jump and weave training until 1.5 years on a large breed dog. As I haven’t been in a big hurry with the girls, I am following these suggestions as best anyone with a bouncing Poodle can. We shall see how they fair in 10 years.

I’m going to do a series of videos on prepping your dog for distance work. This first video is showing Mocha doing “Spot”. I had previously trained her to do the “Place” command, which I built on by decreasing the size of what she needed to stand on, and letting her know it was OK to place only her front feet on the item. A small stable step stool is ideal for my transition to “SPOT”, but anything raised will work. With a raised stool, the dog must make a conscious effort to put their feet on the item. This teaches balance, how to pivot on the item building muscle control and flexibility, and placing their feet on something will be rewarded. In short: feet placement matters. Just make sure the dog can’t tip the item over during the learning stage. In this video I start out reviewing “Spot” then I add some distance and get her to seek out her spot farther and farther away. Finally, near the end I add an even smaller ‘spot’, a lid of a food storage container. She wasn’t really sure what to do at first, she was offering me “Down” and “Sit” more than anything, but once I gave her the “YES” cue when her foot it the lid, she was grasping the concept because of the previous work on the stool. I was not doing distance work with the Lid. I stayed right by the lid and attempted to get her interested in the item enough to hit it with her paw.

In a few weeks I hope to tell her to “GO SPOT” or “Get your Spot”, point in a direction, and she should continue running until she either finds the spot or I give her a different command. At the last stage of training, I will drop “Spot” and only use “GO” or “GET” and add in “Spot” when she nears a location where a “Spot” might be located. An example might be when she hits the downside of the A-frame in agility, I can say “Spot” and she should slow down and look for it, achieving a correct and safe exit from the obstacle instead of the typical young Poodle fly off. It is a great method for teaching a dog to go away from you with control. Vital for both high end obedience and basic agility. If you can control your dog at a distance, you will have a faster dog in agility because you won’t be constantly calling the dog back or slowing the dog down. You build speed with distance control, and you develop a much stronger teamwork bond with this training.

You should also note I do most of my training off leash in front of my house. There are more distractions and the dog has a choice to stay with me or wander off. When I was filming this, one neighbor was working on his bike, another was washing his car, my daughter was wandering around. Traffic is almost nonexistent on our cul-da-sac, so it is a low safety risk. If I am doing things correctly, the dog will stay with me. I have built a relationship that I am more fun than anything else. I have more to offer, staying and playing with me is the best thing ever. This is what you should aim for in your training, and you will have a reliable dog in all situations.

Videos to Review: Teaching Place with Lincoln Demoing .

~Becky