Episode 056 - 7 Reasons to Record Your Dog Agility Training Sessions

Season #1 June 23, 2026

Show Notes

7 Reasons to Record Your Dog Agility Training Sessions

Quick Answer

Why should you record your dog agility training sessions?

Recording your agility training sessions allows you to analyze your dog’s emotional state, review your handling and cues, evaluate reward timing and placement, and track your progress over time. Video provides valuable insights that are difficult to notice while you are actively training.

Episode Overview

In this episode of the Maximum Fun Agility podcast, Lorrie Reynolds explains why recording your dog agility training sessions can dramatically improve your training results.

When you are running your dog, it is nearly impossible to observe everything happening during the exercise. Video allows you to slow down and analyze your training so you can see both your successes and the areas that need improvement.

By reviewing training footage, handlers can identify issues with timing, communication, reward placement, and criteria that might otherwise go unnoticed.

1. Evaluate Your Dog’s Emotional State

Video allows you to analyze how your dog is feeling during training.

When reviewing footage, watch for signs of:

Confidence and enthusiasm
Hesitation or uncertainty
Stress signals or distraction
Physical discomfort

Your dog should move through exercises confidently and happily. Subtle changes in posture, hesitation, or movement may indicate confusion or even a physical issue.

2. Monitor Reward Frequency

Many handlers unintentionally reward too infrequently during training.

When reviewing video, ask yourself:

How often did I reward my dog?
Did I reward attempts and progress?
Did I accidentally repeat exercises without reinforcing effort?

Maintaining a high reward frequency helps keep your dog motivated and engaged in learning.

3. Review Your Training Mechanics

Video can reveal small timing errors that are difficult to notice during training.

You can evaluate:

The timing of your clicker or marker word
When reinforcement is delivered
How your dog responds to the marker

Proper timing helps your dog clearly understand which behavior earned the reward.

4. Evaluate Reward Placement

Reward placement plays a major role in shaping your dog’s behavior.

When reviewing video, watch where your reward is delivered and how it affects your dog’s movement.

Strategic reward placement can:

Reinforce correct positions
Encourage forward motion
Prevent anticipation or position shifts

5. Analyze Your Handling and Cues

It is very difficult to know exactly what your body is doing while you are running your dog.

Video allows you to examine:

Your body language
Your timing of cues
Whether your signals match what you intended to communicate

Reviewing footage can reveal moments where your cues were unclear or late.

6. Check Whether You Maintained Your Criteria

Video helps determine whether you are consistently reinforcing your performance criteria.

When reviewing training sessions, ask yourself:

Did I reward the correct behavior?
Did I accidentally reward something below my criteria?
Did I miss rewarding improvements?

Maintaining clear criteria helps your dog learn faster and prevents confusion.

7. Track Your Progress Over Time

One of the most motivating benefits of recording training sessions is seeing how much your team improves.

Video allows you to:

Compare sessions over time
Track improvements in performance
Document successful training moments

Looking back at older recordings can be especially helpful when you feel stuck in training. It provides a clear reminder of how far your team has come.

Training Tip From This Episode

Before your next training session, take a few minutes to set up your camera or phone.

Even if you only review the footage once and then delete it, the insights you gain from watching your training session can significantly improve your communication and results.

Related Episodes

Episode 049 – Dog Agility Training Criteria: Plan Performance Criteria Before You Train
Episode 051 – How Important Are Verbal Cues for Dog Agility
Episode 045 – Are You a Good Dog Agility Navigator?

Resources Mentioned

Maximum Fun Dog Sports
https://www.maximumfundogs.com

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Episode Transcript

Lorrie Reynolds [00:00:07]:
Do you record your training sessions and review them? In this episode, we'll talk about why it is so important to record your dog agility training sessions and what you can learn from the recordings. 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, and confidence so that you can have fun and succeed on any course. Videoing your training sessions can give you valuable insights into your training. Here are 7 reasons you should take the time to video. First, video allows you to judge your dog's emotional state while you're training. Although you should always be monitoring that while you're in the ring, there are some things you might catch on video that you may not be able to see in person when you're training.

Lorrie Reynolds [00:01:00]:
While you are reviewing your video, look for your dog's level of confidence with the exercises, how he reacted to any distractions, whether he was happy to be training or not, and see whether you can detect any signs of physical discomfort or stress. What does that look like? For confidence, your dog should be performing with no hesitation, no head checks, and a happy attitude. He should show an understanding of what you're asking and a willingness to move through the exercises on his own. If your dog gets distracted, the distraction should only take your dog's attention away for a second before he returns his focus to you. He should not be anxious or scared during training. Your dog should move smoothly through the exercises with no signs of limping, unnatural slowness, refusal to take obstacles that are normally not a problem for him, or signals that he is protecting one part of his body. Sometimes small physical issues are difficult to see while you're running your dog. At one trial, Pixie missed several contacts after an entire career of missing less than 10.

Lorrie Reynolds [00:02:09]:
On the video, I could see her rushing to get over the down ramp and back to level ground. As it turns out, she had a minor back issue and a visit to the chiropractor helped set her straight. It would have taken longer to diagnose without the video. A few of my friends have first noticed a minor limp or something just a little off with their dogs when they are reviewing video. A second thing you can measure if you video your training sessions is your reward frequency. We tend to get focused on what we're trying to do and communicate with the dog while we are training. We try an exercise and don't succeed, and rather than taking a few seconds to reward, we immediately send the dog back through the exercise. Sometimes with that focus, we do not reward often enough.

Lorrie Reynolds [00:02:56]:
When our reward frequency decreases, even though the dog is still putting in significant effort to try to figure things out, his motivation can suffer. Your dog should be getting rewarded every time you make a mistake. Every time he does something right, every time he attempts something new and gets close, and every time you are asking him to be idle while you consider your next task. While you are thinking, keep your dog engaged and reward for simple behaviors that you don't have to think about, like nose touches and self-control positions like sit, down, and stand. Or put your dog in a stay and periodically reward for the stay while you're thinking about or setting up for the next exercise. Video is a great place to critique your training mechanics. You can analyze the timing of your clicker or marker word, the timing of your reinforcement, and watch your dog's reaction to your reward placement. Try to determine if your marker is communicating to your dog the instant he performs the behavior.

Lorrie Reynolds [00:03:58]:
Does he respond to your marker by immediately orienting towards you or towards the reward? Reward placement can either hinder or help your training efforts. Poorly placed rewards can cause your dog to move out of position or shift to anticipate the reward. Rewards placed properly can help solidify your dog's behavior. Listen to episode 15 for more information about how reward placement can affect your training. Video is a great tool for evaluating your handling and cues whether that is agility or tricks. It can help you see if you were really telling the dog what you thought you were. It's almost impossible to know exactly what your body is doing while you are training. During my seminars, I often ask people to freeze in place during an exercise so they can see the difference between where they should be pointing and where they are actually pointing.

Lorrie Reynolds [00:04:53]:
If you don't have someone watching you perform the exercise who can pinpoint the changes that need to be made, The second best tool is video. Pay attention to your dog's responses to your cues. Was his response what you expected? Did your body language help clarify what you were asking or make it more difficult? Watch for instances where you should have rewarded but didn't because what you thought was an unsatisfactory performance was an— was actually a lack of clarity in the cues. Recording your training sessions can give you significant insight into whether you're maintaining your performance criteria or not. It can show how many times you rewarded for a performance that you shouldn't have and missed rewarding for an incremental improvement. It can also help you see how well your dog understands the criteria and give you areas to make your communication clearer for better understanding. If you're training for agility, you can look to see if your contact behaviors were solid, your turns were tight, and the dog's lines were efficient. If you are training obedience or tricks, you can check the cue response time, the body position and placement of the dog, or whether the hold was solid or not.

Lorrie Reynolds [00:06:06]:
Now for the good stuff. Video can allow you to see what went right during your dog training session and how much you've progressed from the last session. Measure how many of the things from the previous discussion topics went right. Recording your successes on video and then adding them to a training journal or planner can help you determine what you should train or focus on next. That could either be just jotting down your impressions of how the training session went or actually tracking the percentage of successful behaviors compared to cues given. By videoing your sessions, you'll have footage that you can play over and over so you can take notes on what worked perfectly for your team. You'll get video of exercises that you can show off to your instructor or your friends on social media. You might even end up catching something fun that happens unexpectedly.

Lorrie Reynolds [00:06:59]:
I happened to catch my friend's dog jumping into my arms without prompting while we were working together, and it's one of my all-time favorite clips. Whether you just view the video, journal the results, and delete it, or keep a library of clips on your hard drive, Videoing your training allows you to track your improvements over time. Watching one training session lets you see how your dog improved over the course of the training session. Keeping clips of multiple training sessions allows you to look back over time and see how far your team has come. This can be particularly helpful when you're feeling discouraged about how training is going. Looking back at where you were a few months or a year ago compared to where you are today can be a real eye-opener. Nothing is better for motivation than seeing how far you have come. Before you start your training session, take the few minutes required to set up and video every chance you get.

Lorrie Reynolds [00:07:59]:
You can judge your dog's emotional and physical state, monitor your reward frequency, review your training mechanics, make sure your reward placement is effective, critique your handling and cues, ensure you're maintaining criteria, and celebrate what went right and your team's progress. Even if you delete your recorded training sessions immediately after watching them, you can learn a lot by looking at the things we talked about in this podcast. You've made it through another episode of the Maximum Fun Agility Podcast. If you've enjoyed this episode, please subscribe and consider leaving a review. When you leave a review, it helps other dog owners find the podcast too. If you'd like to take it a step further and join our community, visit www.maximumfundedogs.com and sign up for the free weekly email that provides training tips, seminar information, bonus content, and more. Happy training!