도그 어질리티 및 도그 스포츠 질문 답변 #105

rules. So, how do you connect? Now, I think it comes down to just a few things. Number one is having a consistent handling program. Obviously, Handling 360 does that for us. But that means that you do the same thing. Every time you set a sequence that looks like X, you handle it exactly the same way every time. And your dog learns that. Now, the other part of that is you put in the layers of learning so that your dog has clarity of understanding with every single cue you will ever use in dog agility. So, if I give my dog a cue to jump long over a jump, there is no way that that dog will ever turn tight when I give that cue to jump long, regardless of what my body is doing. So, clarity of handling, my execution as a handler ability to give the dog a cue, my dog's understanding of those cues through the layers of learning that I've put in. And the third one, and this might be the most difficult for some people, and that is the ability to handle your ring nerves and do what you want in a timely fashion to be able to execute regardless of how excited you are in the moment. Okay. So, those are the big three things that help you to connect with your dog best. Next question. How to give motivation a boost during a course or a training? Now, motivation comes from the way that we train our dogs. So, if a dog… think about this. Think about if you are watching, and I've used this example before. Say you're watching a basketball game and it's super exciting and you are like totally into it. Your team steals the ball, you scream, wow, you're so motivated by this game. It's just so much passion. It just, you're riveted. There's no way you're going to take your eyes off the course. Much like when I flew out to San Francisco to watch my beloved Raptors win the NBA championship in 2019. Woo, woo, woo. Okay. But I digress. Now, what if your team is losing? Like they're stinking the place out. Kind of like when Kobe Bryant dropped 81 points on my beloved Raptors. But that's another story. What if your team just is not playing well and the cheerleaders come over and go, Hey, let's inject some joy. How about you, you know, give me a R. And you're like, okay, yeah, right ever. R. Like you might play along or you might not. That's what it's like when you're trying to inject motivation into a dog who isn't motivated by what they have in front of them. If you do your job right as a dog trainer and you've transferred the value that goes from whatever the dog loves into what you would like that dog to love, much like

what I talked about in episode 90 here on Shaped by Dog, where I talked about pre-Mac and the transfer value. If you've done your job right, your dog is like me watching the Raptors in a really good game. They are just riveted. Yeah. They don't need anybody going, Hey, give me an R. They're like, get out of my way. We're doing something I love and it's awesome. And I'm doing it with my mom and I just love it. We're having so much fun. So, if you don't have that, it isn't an injection of motivation you want. You want to go all the way back and say, where, what layer am I missing in my dog's fundamental dog training. Okay. It's the same for every single sport and it's the same for every single dog. Okay. Next question. How often do you do fitness? Now I'm assuming you mean with my dog. Now I try to do fitness at least four times a week with myself. It doesn't always work. However, with my dogs, anytime I train, I do any agility training. I start every session with at least one fitness exercise. And then two times a week they get 40 minute sessions. Now my dog, I say they, I mean my dogs, like my puppy, this and Momentum, my dogs who I'm training for agility. They get 40 minutes twice a week of just fitness. Swagger gets, you know, 10 minute sessions, two or three times a week. And of course they get things like their aerobic, they get walking and swimming and things like that. I don't include that in their fitness, but of course that is fitness training. But what I'm talking about is really like focused body awareness, much like I do when I'm in the gym. Okay. So that's what my dog's fitness program looks like. Next question. How to prevent arthritis in sport dogs? Well, much like us athletes, once they get older, sometimes you just can't prevent it, but you can delay it and you can do your best to make sure that your dog isn't riddled with arthritis. You could do things like prioritizing nutrition, warmup and cool down and fitness. Don't let your sport be what keeps your dog in shape. Intentional about the exercises you do with your dog in a way that develops their front end or their back end or their flexibility, their mobility, their balance, proprioception, things like that. Okay. So nutrition, fitness, warmup, cool down. Those are the big things that are going to help delay or maybe prevent arthritis in some cases. Okay. Next question. How do you build jump value for puppies with the uprights? Now, just getting a puppy to have value for an upright. I talked about it in episode 90, the transfer of value, but it's how do I build value for

anything? Whether it's crate games or value for, you know, not going outside before I give you your release word or whatever it is I'm training. It's all through shaping and it's all through taking what the dog really, really loves and transferring that into what I really, really want. In this case is I want my puppy to focus on an upright, if it wasn't upright and have them want that upright. Like, oh, I really want to do something. I really want to engage with that upright. Okay. So, it's just shaping transfer value. Next question. When working with directions in a tunnel and on your running contact, do you use the same cues or different cues? I use two completely different sets of cues for each of those different obstacles. How do you personally work your way up to championship level? This is a great question because what a lot of people do is they say like, for example, in here in North America, we and I know in Europe, you have different levels of competition. So, there might be what we call the novice level and then the open or intermediate level, and then the master level. And there might be like something above that. There might be three to four levels. And in England, for example, they have seven different levels of agility. And what people do, not most people, but people new to the sport, they might, okay, I'm going to train what I need to get to level one. And then I'm going to go back and train level two. It's not how it works. I train my dogs to get to level seven and have like level seven type skills because then when I go to level one, it gets dead easy for my puppy, right? When I say puppy, I mean by then my dog's two years old. And so, don't think about training in levels. Think about training in joy and complete understanding because then you won't have to retrain anything. You won't be building in mistakes because like level one would be pretty easy. I could probably get, you know, a fairly untrained dog around level one. But then you've got a lot of mistakes with the dog looking at you and you're doing agility and them, you know, turning the wrong way. All that's built into playing agility in the ring with you. That holds true for all sports. This is a good question. How do you decide when it's time to retire a dog from competition? Now I retire my dogs long time before they ever need to be retired. And I do that because I can do agility here at home with them. But how did I decide early on? It was the dog's soundness. I, of course, would never give them any kind of anti-inflammatories or

anything and go out and run agility with them. So, if they can't stay sound, then I won't run agility with them. That's number one. I would say there's two number ones because the big number one is does my dogs still love it. But the way I train my dogs, they always love and they would never stop doing agility. They could be like limping their way and go, yeah, no, I still want to do it. I want to do it. So, it's the dog's joy of the sport. And as I said earlier, if your dog doesn't love the sport, just take a step back, take a month or two off and go back and build that joy into the foundational layers and then re-add those layers with tons of joy. Every dog can be trained to love the sport. Trust me on that one. And then of course, the dog's soundness. If there's any chance that the dog might not be a hundred percent sound, then I'm not going to compete in sports with them. Okay. How do you inject joy in training? Now I talked about transfer value, but for me, it all starts with, you know, tugging. My dog's tugging and crate games and playing games at the dog. You know, recaller games is the start of all of everything I do in any sport. And it's about the transfer value, having fun together as a team. Teamwork starts with just the dog chasing you, right? Anytime I go woo and run, my dogs will all chase me. If you don't have that, there's your foundation layer. How do you track the cue words? I compete in multiple venues and use some words differently. So, for me, I have a fitness journal because I use a ton of different words. I have a lot of cues in agility and I just recently changed some of them for my youngest puppy this. And so, what I did is I wrote all her cues in the back of her fitness journal. That way, Kim would know them and I know them. So, my advice to you is a spreadsheet or a journal, write them on a whiteboard somewhere where you'll see them. And every day, try to rehearse them in your head so that they just become second nature. You don't want to think out there, okay, I'm going to get my dog to turn right. What is my dog's right turn cue? Okay. So, for me, my dog, I want her to turn tight right on a jump. I would say, rye rye. If I wanted her to turn tight right on coming out of a tunnel, I would say, check, check. If I wanted her to turn tight right off of a dog walk, I would go. So, different cues. You don't ever want to have to think about them. You just want them to be there, but it starts by keeping track of them in a journal or on a whiteboard or somewhere you'll see them every day and then rehearsing them in your brain out loud every day.

How do you focus an overexcited dog at the start line? So, why is a dog overexcited? Remember, I've talked about your dog's emotions many times here in Shaped by Dog. I'm going to leave some links in the show notes to some episodes I really recommend you go and listen to. And emotions need to be dealt with first. So, some dogs are coming into a start line very anxious, maybe because they've had a history of you and your dog having mistakes out there and you may be getting frustrated with your dog or disappointed with your dog and, or maybe giving the dog a timeout and punishing them for something they did. So, that may be causing a lot of anxiety at the start line. And remember, our dogs are always doing the best they can with the education we've given them in the environment that we're asking them to perform. So, it is never the dog's issue. So, if you have problems out there, please go back, peel back the layers, build a better foundation, and never let your dog know that they haven't done anything but an amazing job for you anytime you leave the ring in agility. Okay. Now some dogs are just like joyful and excited and they love the sport and they're excited at the start line. That doesn't mean they can't give you a hundred percent focus and control. So, where does that come from? Focus forward is one of the first things that I teach my agility puppies and that it gets built into absolutely everything I do. How do I get that? Exactly. Like I said, with how do we get our dog interested in agility wing upright just by a transfer of value, right? Focus forward. That might be the skill that you're shaping today is I want you just to focus. Okay. Could you tell me about your warmup or cool down routine? I have a 20-minute warmup routine. I can do it in as small as eight, but the most important part of that warmup routine is that my dog is really, really warmed up. I personally would like to get my body really, really warmed up, but there's a number of different things that I do during that 20 minutes. But it starts and it ends with a cool down is walking. So, not trotting. I want my dog walking. And my cool down is I want my dog's breathing to get back to normal. And both my warmup and my cool down, I do some exercises with my dogs. No matter what venue I'm at, I don't need special equipment for this. I'll just do a few little exercises. And that's really, those are the big, big things is get your dogs out there walking. Don't cheat them. Even when you're practicing at home, rehearse your warmup and cool down because success in the ring comes from having a routine that your dog

can predict, oh yeah, now we're going to go do agility. How should I get my energetic nine-month old pup started without risking his bone growth? Okay. First of all, any dog sport with a puppy starts the same way every good family dog training program should start. And that is with the basics, with a recall, with a retrieve, with basic manners around the house, with great focus for you and any member of the family, with consistency, with exercise, with loose leash walking. All of those things create an amazing family pet. And guess what? That's the foundation that creates an amazing sport performance sport dog. My puppy is now one year old and she has just recently gone over jumps. And when I say jumps, guess how high she's been going over. She's gone over about her knee height. So, she's really not going over huge jumps. So, I am not a person that gets all wrapped up in are my dog's bone plates closed because I know I'm more focused on what's the soft tissue fiber doing? How well are the muscles developed and the things that support the bones? I am not going to put my dog in jeopardy by doing really ballistic exercises or concussive exercises when they're under a year old. Or if I had a big dog, it would probably go out to 18 months old. Have you seen many Aussie Australian Shepherds? Win and agility. I'm asking for a friend. Quite honestly, yeah, there's been some amazing Aussies in agility. Most recently, I must admit, most of the dogs doing winning in that height class are border collies along with the odd Malinois. But you know, at the highest level of agility, it's mostly border collies. But there's a lot of talented Australian Shepherds, especially the ones with the tails left on. Next question. Which approach works best to train focus forward and agility? As I've mentioned, transfer value and shaping. It doesn't matter what you're training, you can get that through transfer value and shaping. Find something the dog loves and shape them to look at something else using what they love as their reward. Well, this is an interesting question. Remember I had like 82 or 84 questions, so I'm not going to get to them all. What are your top five body awareness exercises? Okay. Super question. And the answer is, it depends. So, my top five puppy body awareness exercises are going to be different than my top five, say competition dog exercises. And within the competition dog, it really depends on what my dog's strengths and weaknesses are. So, for example, for a puppy, sit down, stand, love them. I love them on, you know, sit down, stand on a plank where

those paws aren't going to move and I'm going to move around your body. And can you, you know, get off balance a little bit one way, a little bit the other. Sit down, stand, big, big, big fan of those for puppies. And as my dog grows up a little bit, I love sidestepping, side passing. I start quite young with my puppies. Things like back up is a great exercise where they learn how to weight, shift their body back and step in a really controlled manner. Of course, I love things like Cavaletti's for body awareness exercises and really control things like that. But I would say for sport, I really want my dog having an awareness of how to use their limbs. So, it might be lifting up one limb at a time, but it's about strength, mobility, proprioception, flexibility. So, weight shifting, those are really big things for me. We in Agility Nation, we have well over 50 different fitness exercises in there from contributors from all over the world, veterinarians, physiotherapists, specialists. I used to come up with them on my own. I don't even bother anymore because there are some people that's all they do is live and breathe fitness exercises for dogs. Why will I knock myself out when there are people out there that that's all they do? So, that's what I do. I just use what other people come up with now. Okay. What would you say is the most important part of your warm-up routine? Again, most important part I would say is my dog's warm-up. So, my dog is really ready to go. I would never want to skip that. But for me, the most important part is the thing that connects me with my dog. And that is the last thing that I do before I leave my dog at the start line is I take a deep breath in and I slowly let it out as I connect with my dog and then I lead out. I do the same thing every single time my dog predicts. Game is now on. Now, I didn't cover anywhere near the number of questions that we had here. So, I'm hoping maybe I'll come back and do this again because there's a lot of really good questions. But I would like to recommend you check out the show notes. And for those of you who have a real interest in taking a deeper dive in things like puppy training or focus forward or fitness for your dog or how to get your dog to understand how to weave or do contacts or how to get your head right. What I do for that mental preparation or when I talk about visualization, what does that mean, Susan? How do I visualize? All of those things are topics that are in our workshops in Agility Nation. And honestly, when I put this podcast together, I had zero intention

of talking about Agility Nation, but there's so many questions that would be well-served just taking a look at one of those workshops. So, let me tell you in this four-day workshop that I just ran, to audit one day of those workshops was $125. And every single person, the feedback we got, it was beyond amazing. They loved our workshops that we did, our virtual workshops. Now I'm telling you that because you could get one of my 90 workshops that are in Agility Nation for, you know, a one-month membership. But the cool thing is if you wanted to sign up for Agility Nation, which normally is closed, but because I put this together, I said to my team, let's not only let people who watch this podcast get into Agility Nation, but get in at a very special price. So, you could get one workshop for $125 or you could get them all for, I'm not going to tell you, it's a pretty special price. Go to the show notes, click on the link and you can have access to Agility Nation for a month. Get a deep dive on all of these topics because guess what? There's over 90 workshops. There's over 50 different fitness exercises you can learn for your dog as well as so many other things. Okay. So, that's all I'm going to talk about Agility Nation. If you're watching this on YouTube, please leave me a comment. Let me know what you thought of this episode. And is this something you'd like me to do a follow-up episode on, answering more questions about dog sports. And if you have any, leave them in the comments as well. I'll see you next time here on Shaped by Dog. This is where we get all vulnerable and say, are you a subscriber yet? Now, I can't get more vulnerable, but she can. Can you show them your belly? Yeah. She's asking. Please hit the subscribe button and turn on the notification bell so you don't ever miss another video. And if you're already a subscriber, hold on. Mechanics are everything in dog training, but that's for you. Go ahead and give yourself another reward. Show them your belly. So you guys later. Thank you.