'During the week days I carry out research on the evolution of pollen structure at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The rest of my time I try to spend with my dogs!
This year (2011) has been a year of highs and lows for me. I was devastated to lose Becky (‘Wildkap Wannabe’) to cancer in May when she was only 11 years old. She was my loyal shadow and my special little princess. Becky grew to think that agility is the best fun a dog can have! Due to Becky, agility took over my life during the last decade, and I took to travelling around the country to go to shows, meeting some great, lovely and inspiring people, and seeing some beautiful parts of Britain along the way. Becky reached advanced status, won The Voice points and The Eye points for two years, won finals at Supadogs and DIN, qualified both for Olympia and Crufts twice each, and won one championship certificate plus many reserves. She taught me such a lot. Although I was very low after losing Becky, my other dogs needed me to keep going, and in time have very much lifted my spirits again. Unfortunately Kaydee (‘Waggerland Wildcard’) had recurring back problems by the time she was four, and therefore I felt it best that she retired from agility in 2008. However, I have learnt a lot about fitness and injury prevention because of her problems, and much of what I learnt from physiotherapists, chiropractors and osteopaths has gone into the structure of my co-ordination and balance workshops. I currently compete with my two young dogs, Zazzy (‘Zazz Ma Girl’), who this year won up to grade 7, qualified for finals at Dogs in Need and Olympia, and won the grade 5 Agility Club points league, and Deece (‘It’s Deece’), a happy black and white collie cross (with a bit of beardie) who starting competing this season. Deece qualified for the Novice Cup final at The International Agility Festival and went on to qualify for Crufts, where he won the jumping section and won the overall competition. He also qualified for the UKA Grand Finals, and has won up to grade 5.
I am an Agility Club Approved Instructor (ACAI), and continue to have an avid interest in the ways dogs move, and how training methods, equipment, and competition courses can be improved. My hope is that our sport can continue to develop and evolve in a professional, intelligent, positive, objective and above all, safe way for our dogs, and that all competitors will strive to offer camaraderie and good sportsmanship.
I am really grateful to the lovely, helpful, fantastic people who have given me assistance, support, advice, and most importantly friendship, over the years.
I have been asked for a training tip, but have no single little magic trick to offer I’m afraid! I think a number of elements underpin a good agility performance, and the relationship that you build with your dog is the keystone! All great things come from developing a motivated dog that wants to work with you, and your ability to teach your dog what you want all hinges on how good you are at rewarding. You need to build up your dogs’ motivation, and be adept at delivering the right reward at the right time. I subscribe to the theory that ‘what you reward is what you get’. An important component of this is teaching your dog how it earns reward, for example by using tools like clicker training, recall games, and self control games (for example crate games). If you do a good job at getting your dog to understand ‘if you play this game by the rules, you get to have the thing you most want’, then everything else is easy and fun.
I also believe that before you start agility your dog should be physically prepared; by that I mean that it has a good level of basic fitness, has good co-ordination and balance, and has sound nutrition and health.
Your strong working relationship combined with your dogs’ physical capability underpins the next stage: teaching your dog how to do all the agility equipment correctly. This includes how to complete the weaves and contacts, and also how to jump, turn, and respond to handling cues. A dog needs to know how to do all the different components that might be needed on an agility course with no doubts about what is required. This is not only extremely important for safety reasons (for example understanding not to leap off the top of contact equipment which could cause injury), but also a dog that is not sure what is required of it may either go slowly to keep checking in with you, spin and bark in frustration, or charge off randomly, and in any of these cases it cannot take the best line round the course at its top speed. My experience is that it is worthwhile structuring your training, break everything down into small exercises so that you can reward exactly what you want, and be sure to cover everything your dog will need to know regularly. Keep building on, and improving, what you have; firstly teach with high reward, then practise, then test that your dogs’ understanding of what you want matches what you intended! Your aim is to always keep your dog happy and confident.
The final element is that your handling is clear and consistent. No matter how good the handler is, he/she will not be able to run a dog optimally before all the other elements are in place. Equally, inconsistent handling may cause confusion and undo all the work you have put into the rest of the training!
With all this in mind I have put together a diagram of the structure that I think builds competition performance. You can of course continue to widen your foundations throughout your dogs’ career, but if there are elements missing from the underpinning layers, the other elements relying on it will fail ...... and your performance in competition may not be everything you hoped for'.
