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AGILITY IS FUN 2 Fun for the Handler Le Hammer Le Hammer has owned,trained and bred German Shorthaired Pointers for more than 35 years, she has shown 7 show champions, has dogs with titles in obedience, flyball and gundog work. During the last 10 years she has been involved in agility. With her partner, Keith Edwards, she has owned, trained and trialled 6 dogs with multiple masters titles, and represented the state with two of her dogs in National competitions. She has been an agility judge for 5 years and has judged in many different states including National competitions. In her spare time she is a qualified veterinarian and, with Keith, runs a full time agility training school called Canine Fun Sports. She can be contacted through her website at http://www.caninefunsports.com.au Just talk to a few agility competitors – they will all tell you that agility is addictive. Once you get a taste of the fun, you just keep on coming back for more. And this is because you always have fun. Whether you are competing at the elite level, or as a novice – there is always something positive you can take from your participation. There is no such thing as a bad run (well . . . perhaps occasionally). There is always something you can appreciate – a well executed turn and side change, a fast clean finish, or a good connection with your dog, even if you did accidentally send him over the wrong jump (and didn’t he do it well!) But
handlers often forget about the next principle of learning – that if a
learnt behaviour is randomly reinforced, the behaviour becomes even
stronger. Initially we throw the ball every time the dog comes out of the
tunnel. When the dog is doing this well, confidently reading our body
language, we do not need to throw the ball every time. If our dog still
accelerates over the jump we have indicated (without letting go of the toy)
we tell them they are a good dog, but do not give them a reward. We may
reward them with the toy on the next occasion, or we may wait an extra turn
or two before we reward. This random reinforcement makes
Sometimes the dog may get it wrong – and he needs to understand the
difference between when he gets it wrong, and when he got it right, but this
is not one of those times that we reward. We use a reward marker – a word
that says “that is right”, or some people use a sound such as a click from a
clicker. You should also have a word that says “Whoops. That is not what I
want. I’m not rewarding that effort.” This word should not be negative – it
should not be a reprimand. All you are saying is “You made the wrong choice
– try again”. A reprimand will make the dog less willing to try again,
because he does not want to risk getting into trouble. We want our dogs to
be willing to try again with full enthusiasm and speed. They have to be
thinking, “Well that effort did not get me a reward (or reward marker) so
hurry up and give me another chance to see if I can make the right choice
this time.” And
these principals of learning also apply to us. We already know that if
something good happens after our dog does something they are more likely to
do it again. Well, if something good happens after we do something, then we
are more likely to do it again. And that is why agility is so addictive.
There is always something good we can take away from our participation in
agility. If we are a beginner it is always such a triumph when our dog rewards us by going through the tunnel for the first time, or he figures out to go through the hoop, instead of around it. And our rewards are not always the same. Our dog may be having difficulty with a sequence of obstacles and we may be a little disappointed, but keep on trying. Remember – when something does not get rewarded every time our dogs just try harder. So do we. Then we finally have success – our dog gets it right and we have been given a jackpot reward. Of course we are going to come back to training next week. And agility trialing gives us the same random rewards. We may not get a qualifying round every time, but there is always something we can take away from a run. We can say we did a particular turn well (especially if we had trouble with it in training.) Maybe we got our contacts well without having to slow our dogs down. Perhaps we kept a good connection with our dog (even though we sent them over the wrong jump!) or we did a difficult part of the course well, even though we then missed the next easy bit. All handlers, at any level of competition, can set themselves a relevant goal. A beginner may set a goal of performing each of the obstacles well, or challenging themselves to get into certain handling positions, or just to do one particular part of the course well. At the top level of training we can be pleased with ourselves if we tightened up a sharp turn (saving ourselves .2 seconds on our time) or handled a difficult obstacle discrimination at top speed, without our dog having any doubt about where he was supposed to go (after all – those doubts lose us valuables parts of a second.) If we get all those challenges together in the one course we will get a quallie. That is our jackpot. But some of our best runs are not clear. You just feel great because your dog and you have worked as a team. You have felt that you have communicated with your dog with just a spider web connecting you – or perhaps it was true mental telepathy. It is just such a buzz.
Agility is definitely fun. Photo 1 Photo2 Photo 3 Photo 4 Photo 5 Photo 6 Photo 7
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The
principles of learning teach us that if we reward something that our dog
does, the dog is more likely to do it again. To teach our dog the tunnel we
make it easy by shortening it to a length the dog is happy to run through to
earn his reward. The dog wants to try again, and is rewarded again. We can
make the task more difficult by lengthening or, by putting a bend in the
tunnel or we can stand in a different position. We teach our dog to drive
out of a tunnel at full speed by throwing a reward, such as a toy to be
chased just as the dog exits the tunnel. If we repeat this toy throw, the
dog will start to anticipate the opportunity to chase the toy. So their
speed will increase through the tunnel. If we toss the toy in a different
direction, our dog will learn to check in with us as they exit the tunnel,
to see which direction they have to go. If we set up an exercise with three
different jumps after the tunnel and throw the toy over a different jump
each time, our dog learns to drive through the tunnel at top speed then, as
he exits the tunnel he will check in with us to see which jump to take next.
He then accelerates to top speed over that jump to grab his toy. 
the
dog try even harder. 
