Teach Your Dog Directionality because every dog deserves to be a hero.
Dog Agility Training Everywhere
You don't have to be at a dog agility trial or agility school to practice basic dog agility skills. Below you can see Magic Momo warming up outside the ring, with her "show your power!" trick.
Help Yourself and Your Dog Master Dog Agility Everywhere
Dog Agility Video Check out the video below to see how Magic Momo is refining her contact stay (or stopping) skills while going for a walk in the neighborhood.
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Stairs Leading to Sidewalk
When stairs lead to a sidewalk, that a good chance to practice the "STOP" Cue and other Cues, like "Run Forward." In the accompanying video (
Agility Everywhere Two ), you can see Momo practicing another run down from the stairs exercise.
Dog Agility Training Points
When the dog runs down the stairs, give a stopping cue.
(Here I do it in a planned exercise but every time you do down the stairs with your dog you can give the cue so your dog learns it really well.)
An Old Sock can be a great tugging toy.
Tugging helps to build drive and tugging can be a fun reward.
You can teach left and right by spinning the dog to the left and saying a left turning cue at the same time. After many, many repetitions of this, your dog will be able to spin herself on cue without you having to manually spiner her.
Watch how I spin Momo in one way and then the other. Notice that after giving a release cue, sometimes I immediate offer the toy again for another tugging session. This serves as a reinforcer (reward) for releasing the toy.
Notice that Momo is very determined and holds on to the old sock until I give a release cue. I use "Thank You," as the release cue, partly because it has a nice ring to it, but mainly because I am such a polite person. Too bad the lady dog agility handlers don't yet recognize that. Haha!
After the first tugging session, I send Momo back up the stairs. This time I use a "run forward," cue to send her up the stairs off leash. I put her in a stay and run back toward the camera (a SoloShot 3 in manual mode). After giving the release and I did not (but probably should have) given the STOP cue again, so Momo just dashed toward me.
I run with Momo out of the frame, but bring her back to show you how an old sock can be a toy. Notice how Momo eyes the sock intently before I encourage her to go for it. The Thank You followed by putting on the leash ends our training session.
A missing piece, not shown here, is that Momo gets her favorite treat as a final reward for participating in the training session.
Caution: when doing an exercise like this off-leash, be sure to do it at a time when other dogs are not likely to be around. Also, check before starting to make sure the "coast is clear.."
If another dog shows up, be able to control your dog with voice commands or...
...use a "dogulator" -- unlike a calculator which we use to count cows, a dogulator counts dogs.
A Dogulator can actually stop a dog in his tracks (in a very humane way) and is a great training tool. More about dogulators and how to use them is coming soon.
