Is your dog bored with the fetch routine?

Published 8:00 am Tuesday, May 30, 2006

When Shelley Malan first encountered agility training, she thought it was a brilliant idea. “To see dogs jumping over obstacles the way horses do was exciting,” she recalled. Before long, she was hooked, first training her own dogs to compete and later, helping others enter the sport through her dog-training practice, 4 DogNite Agility Training. “What’s great about agility training is it’s not ‘heel, heel, heel,’ ” she said. “The dogs are having fun, and so are their owners.” This fun factor may account for the growing popularity of agility training: since its beginning in the late 1970s, it has spread around the world.

What kind of dog is right for agility training? According to Malan, any dog can participate: she’s worked with all shapes and sizes of dogs, from Yorkshire Terriers to Great Danes.

“Of course there are challenges,” she noted, “some dogs have to make a real effort to do it. But I’ve only seen one dog that wasn’t right for agility training: a 10-week-old Bloodhound puppy who wanted to go into the tunnel and sleep. I gave his owners their money back. But most dogs love it.”

While the sport is competitive, many people are involved just for fun: less than 20 percent of Malan’s clients compete.

What skills do owners need to have?

“So much of agility is about nuance. Dogs speak body language, and read their handler’s body language in order to know which obstacle to go over,” Malan explained. “Unfortunately, people do not speak body language very well: we flail and give the wrong signals and the dog makes a mistake. So a lot of what I do involves teaching the humans how to communicate what to do accurately, because if they can do that, the dog will execute perfectly.”

She emphasizes positive training methods with her clients. “We never make dogs do the obstacles,” she said. “It has to be their idea. If dogs have a behavioral issue we’ll use corrections, but for the agility itself there are no corrections. No matter what a dog does they should never know they were wrong. Even when they are learning they get rewarded for the effort.”

What sort of long-term benefits do participants enjoy? Malan has seen shy, timid dogs blossom in agility training and many owners have deepened their relationships with their dogs.

“Being kind and responsive to animals, learning to be patient, learning how to say things in a kind way, all these things have an impact on the quality of interaction,” she said. “Ultimately, it’s about being nice to animals. You have to put the time in. Your end product is what you put into it.”

To learn more about agility training, visit Malan’s Web site at www.4dognite.com or call (360) 638-2997. For general information about agility training, visit www4.tpgi.com.au/users/rloftus/agility.htm.

A (very) brief history of dog agility

Dog agility is a sport in which a dog handler has a set amount of time to direct an off-leash dog through an obstacle course. Agility got its start at the Crufts Dog Show in London, England in February 1979, when John Varley, a member of the Crufts entertainment committee, was assigned the task of filling a break between other events at the show. John was a horseman and he modeled his entertainment segment on stadium show jumping. It was an instant success. In agility, dogs navigate a variety of obstacles including A-frames, see-saws, tunnels, hoop jumps, weave poles and elevated dog walks. In competition, dogs are grouped with others of similar height (measured at the withers) and level of experience. In agility, a handler can give an unlimited number of commands, but may not touch either their dog or the obstacles when their dog is on the course. Dogs lose points for running past or stopping before an obstacle, taking down jump bars, failing to put feet in the contact area when ascending or descending an obstacle, or taking obstacles out of sequence.

Is your dog ready for agility?

Does your dog bark excessively, jump on people, lunge at other dogs, or ignore you when you call? If you answered yes to any of these items, your dog may need some basic obedience work before trying dog agility. According to Shade Whitesel, owner of Shade’s Dog Training in Kingston, most dog problems can be traced to disorders in the dog-owner relationship. “People think their dogs are people,” Whitesel said, “and that they will react like people. But they are not people, they are canines, and canines have very different priorities.”

Miscommunication is often at the heart of dog-owner problems. “Dogs don’t know Spanish, English, or French,” Whitesel said. “A lot of them don’t even know basic commands. Once owners get past that, then they start to understand why a dog does the things it does. First you have to learn to tell the dog what you want. Then you work on getting it do things when you want.” She noted that many people are not the leader in the relationship with their dog. All dogs should have a basic obedience repertoire that includes: coming when called, “wait” (used before going through a door or gate, for example), “leave it” (used to redirect a dog’s attention from another object or dog to the trainer) and “down-stay.” If your dog consistently makes its own decisions about how to act, some relationship-building activities are in order.

Whitesel stresses the value of doing fun things with your dog, especially walks: “A walk is like a hunt to a dog. It’s instinctual, and very fulfilling.” She also emphasizes feeding meals, rather than offering food on demand, establishing consistent eye contact with your dog, and working to develop enough trust that you can do their nails.

Shade’s Dog Training emphasizes three areas: competition obedience, dogs with aggression problems, and “wild and crazy dogs with bad manners.” For more information, visit www.shadesdogtraining.com or call (360) 297.6732. She also recommends the following books: “Don’t Shoot the Dog,” “The New Art of Teaching & Training” by Karen Pryor and “The Power of Positive Dog Training” by Pat Miller.