Lorrie [00:00:08]:
Welcome to the Maximum Fun Agility podcast. I'm Lorrie Reynolds, owner of Maximum Fun Dog Sports. We help your agility team build your relationship, communication, confidence, and fun in training so that you can joyfully succeed on any course. In this episode, we'll talk about the 5 mistakes people make when training their agility dogs. Training a dog for agility can be rewarding and fun, but if you're making one of these common mistakes, it can derail your progress faster than a greyhound chasing a rabbit. Here's how to make sure you jump ahead with your training. The first thing I want to talk about is your reward rate. Dogs do what works.
Lorrie [00:00:49]:
If they are trying to follow direction but getting few rewards, they lose interest pretty quickly. Many dogs will slow down, show signs of stress, or simply walk away. It's our job to maintain their enthusiasm by providing lots of opportunities to earn a reward. If you are working on a complex behavior, be sure to break it down into small steps that can be rewarded frequently. If your dog fails more than a couple of times, make it easier. Be sure you are rewarding for effort, not just for perfect repetitions. You can also throw in repetitions of a known behavior for a quick reward opportunity. And don't forget that if you mess up, your dog gets a screw up cookie for his efforts.
Lorrie [00:01:37]:
What are screw up cookies? Listen to episode 7 to find out. The next mistake people make is stopping the fun and fixing mistakes on course or during exercises. Have you ever watched a novice dog run and thought to yourself, "that dog has a lot of potential", only to see him again a year later running like he has no motivation? Sometimes these "broken dogs" are a result of the handler constantly fixing mistakes. Over the years, I've learned that 99.9% of the mistakes our dogs make are our fault. Either we haven't trained them well enough to perform in that environment or we miscued them without even realizing it. If you go back and fix a missed jump or correct an off course, several things happen. First, you break the flow for your dog. Imagine you are joyfully riding your bike in an area with lots of trails.
Lorrie [00:02:34]:
Your friend tells you to turn right, but then stops you and says you should have turned left. At the next intersection, your friend tells you to turn left, but then stops you again and says she should have said turn right. After a while, you are going to slow down at every intersection and make absolutely sure that your friend gives you the right directions. You probably aren't going to enjoy your bike ride very much either since the constant break in flow took you out of the zone and made you annoyed at your navigator. The same thing happens with our dogs. If we redirect them too often, we erode their trust in our cues, causing them to slow down and "make sure" and ruining their enjoyment. If there is a mistake, find a graceful way to get back on track without redirecting your dog. Mistake number 3 is drilling things over and over and over again.
Lorrie [00:03:32]:
While practicing skills on a short sequence is a great way to fine tune your handling and performance, practicing the same skill on the same sequence over and over again is not only boring to your dog, but has no value. When asked to do the exact same exercise over and over again, smart dogs can second guess themselves and assume that even though they are being rewarded, if you are asking repeatedly, they must be doing something wrong. They will then start trying other things to see if they can get it right, when it wasn't broken in the first place. Drilling skills your dog has already mastered does not increase your performance level. If your dog does something perfectly twice, change something about the exercise. Work from the other side, increase the distance, or change something else to make the exercise just a bit more difficult. You want to continuously work to improve your skills, not drill them at the same level. Mistake number 4 is not having a training plan.
Lorrie [00:04:39]:
Start each training session knowing what you are going to work on, even if it is just a high level mental list. Ideally, you will have thought through your overall goals, broken them down into skills, and written those skills down to form the beginning of a training plan. Even better if you have decomposed those skills into steps you need to teach and have them planned out for each session. Not everyone is that organized or motivated though, and that's okay. What doesn't work is just bouncing from exercise to exercise without having a clear idea of what you're working toward or how what you are doing gets you closer to your goal. Make sure to have a clear plan for your dog's agility training and adjust it as necessary as your dog's skills improve. The last mistake of the 5 is failing to define performance criteria. Defining criteria for dog agility training means knowing exactly what the final behavior will look like when it's fully mastered and knowing which steps along the way you are going to reward.
Lorrie [00:05:46]:
If you don't have a clear picture of what the end result will be, you can't teach it to your dog in any meaningful or effective way. Take the example of a stay, for the start line or elsewhere. If you just have a general idea of what you want, you may reward your dog if he stays but changes position. That would be okay if you never needed him to stay in a specific position. But does that also mean he can move his feet? How much? Six inches? One foot? Two feet? Trainers end up rewarding inconsistently when they don't have clear criteria. Dogs get confused by "sometimes if I move my feet a little, I get rewarded, but if I move them more, I don't" kinds of logic. The more concrete and clear you make your criteria and the more consistently you reward only the behavior that meets the criteria, the faster your dog will learn the task. Dog agility training is a fun and rewarding activity, but if you make any of these five mistakes, you won't progress as fast as you could.
Lorrie [00:06:52]:
Be sure to prepare ahead of time for your training session so you can avoid them. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Maximum Fun Agility podcast. If you want to learn more ways to make your dog agility training effective and fun, join us in The Agility Playground. The Agility Playground is a low-cost membership that meets you where you are on your dog agility journey and helps you propel your team to new heights. You can check out The Agility Playground and join our community at www.maximumfundogs.com. Happy training!
