Waltz Across Texas

It was my great pleasure to judge the first ever TDAA trial in the great state of Texas on the weekend of February 4, 2007. They are an enthusiastic bunch down there, hospitable and by every measure salt of the earth. I got to see some really nice working dogs and will look forward to seeing some of them in top competition in future years.

One thing that really grabbed at me was the loud demonstration of negative emotion by so many of them in the working relationships with their dogs. Some of the poor animals in my ring were blamed for absolutely every error of the handler. Some of these dogs might have developed into terrific working dogs had the trainer not insisted on heaping emotional correction upon the dog’s shoulders. But a dog so treated in training learns relatively early in life that “offering” just gets him in trouble and so will plod along in carefully defined boundaries where everything is safe.

In terms of handling skills and savvy, Dallas isn’t exactly a backwater. That was pretty much the birthplace of international style agility in America as Kenneth Tatsch started up the USDAA more than 20 years ago now. So I might expect Texas, especially that bit up around Dallas, to demonstrate an exceptional jump start over other parts of the world. But no, they’re just about like everybody else. I don’t care if it’s Montana, or Memphis, Puerto Rico or Perth… people tend to demonstrate the same tendencies and learning curves when learning this sport.

I came away from judging not wanting to document some obscure or interesting handling challenge of dog training question, but to write some stuff that I find fundamental to training and handling dogs in agility.

It’s Fundamental

I take great care in the teaching of my own students that they understand how to find the opening line. So I’m always amazed when I go on the road to find a handler squaring his do up for the first jump without real regard to the direction the dog actually needs to be moving. As a course designer and judge it’s very easy for me to establish a simple test of the handler’s proper analysis of the opening of the course, as in the illustration above.

You’ll note that the handler in the illustration has exacerbated the difficulty with the opening by beginning with the dog pretty much centered on the jump so that he’ll actually have to move in the wrong direction just to get around the jump. The result of the handler’s miscalculation is fairly predictable.

Just about everything the handler has done has predisposed the dog to the wrong-course obstacle. So the real question is how should the handler solve?

It is an extremely Novice error to be fooled by the rotation of the opening jump into setting the dog to move in the wrong direction, especially if setting the dog square to the jump has the dog staring at (and being enticed by) a wrong-course obstacle.

The correct way to begin the dog is on a sight-line through the center of the jumps. If we continue the line to the take-off side of the first jump we’ve identified precisely where the dog should begin. Note that this line completely takes the wrong-course A-frame out of the dogs view of the world between the standards of the first jump.

This opening will also be a test of the handler’s lead-out from the dog. The combined effect of the handler being forward of the dog, while facing, and moving in the direction of the course, cue the dog to the direction he should move.

It is an observable phenomenon that a dog forward of his handler tends to curl back to the handler’s position. So an inadequate lead-out would have the dog surpassing the handler’s position and curling back too early, leading to refusals and wrong-course in the worst case, and a wobbly line for the dog in the least.

Skilling Up

If the handler is concerned with a dog not understanding a jump when it is presented at an angle, then it’s a matter that should be addressed in training

I try to tend to the task of a jump presented in the oblique quite early in the dog’s training, surely to coincide with the introduction of winged hurdles. The wing on a jump is typically a dog & handler’s first distance challenge.

You’ll see in this illustration that the handler glued against his dog has ensured that he’ll have to move badly both in terms of speed and direction simply in order to get around the wing of the jump. It’s fundamental that the dog will move in a path parallel to the handler’s path.

With this in mind the dog is ensured an early introduction to the obliquely presented hurdle by approaching the jump from a slant. The wing serves as a comb to peel the dog away from the side and of course the handler is allowed to move in a brisk and businesslike manner, and in a straight line.

On the original sequence that presented the dogwalk and A-frame as a bit of an obstacle discrimination problem the slanty-wise approach on the oblique actually allows for a bit of natural Kentucky windage and even encourages an energetic attack on the opening with a bold sling‑shot start.

Gunpowder Plot

The lead-out in agility is analogous in many ways to the application of gunpowder. The length of the lead-out, for example, is rather like the length of the barrel of a gun. A long lead-out fosters a straighter and more accurate shot, rather like the very accurate and straight-shooting long rifle. A short lead-out is like the barrel of a pistol. While not terribly accurate over any distance the short-barreled pistol is adequate and effective for short-range targets.

The gunpowder gets wet should the handler stop or face the wrong direction before releasing the dog. If a dog runs around the first jump or drops the first bar, 90% of the time the handler is standing still, or has faced the wrong direction, or both.

There is a special case at the start-line that I call the “grenade”. The handler standing directly aside the dog will explode the release. And, like a grenade, the energy is directionless and random. I am especially curious that some handlers will fuss their dogs into a sit or a down-stay and then explode into motion and release without so much as a single step to clue the dog to direction. Why would you need a sit-stay if you have no intention of using it?

It’s Fundamental

This weekend I am in Pittsburgh for seminar and another TDAA trial, this time at Splash & Dash (one of the preeminent clubs in the region). I’m compelled to share the opening to one of my courses with you as it nearly skunked the class.

Don’t be too put off by the closeness of the obstacles in this opening sequence. We set things closer together in the TDAA in the very real attempt to make the challenges comparable with the small dogs that big dogs must face in the big dog venues. Frankly, I was very generous with the spacing and if I were a keen handler and understood the riddle perfectly then I’m sure I could solve it even with the fastest long-strided Border Collie.

I included in the illustration the typical handling position… that very nearly skunked the class. Seeing the sharp departure from the weave poles the handlers pretty much understood that they needed to be on the dog’s right side to show the turn to jump #4. The strategy (I can only assume) was to bend the dog away into the weave poles after jump #2 after taking a modest lead-out.

Well, the results of the strategy were horrific. The dog’s were much more inclined to make a run for jump #4 after #2 than bend away into the weave poles.

It’s one of the laws of a dog in motion… the dog turns most naturally in the direction of the handler. Indeed, the handler’s presence on one side predisposes the dog to look, turn, and work to that side.

A much more effective strategy (I think I saw it only once) would be for the handler to begin with dog on right and slip into a quick/neat Front Cross as the dog commits up over jump #2. Indeed, for the quick and ballistic dogs this might have been a good opportunity to use the pre-cue lead out that is so much in vogue these days (and done so badly by so many).

By the way, another error that I saw on this opening was a problem with squaring the dog up to the first jump (see my discussion on finding the opening line early in this post). So, while it might allow the dog to get neatly into the weave poles… the dog is as likely as not to blow by jump #2 altogether because the handler didn’t leave him on a straight line offering the jump.

Competitors in the TDAA must learn to sharpen up a bit. They need to study and understand the survival skills of the big and fast dog handlers in the big dog venues. As it stands, if you have 22’ between obstacles you have room to make two handling mistakes in the interval… and survive both. In other words the real challenge for small dogs in the big dog venues will be whether the handler can remember the course, and whether he has trained his dogs to run, and perform the obstacles correctly. There’s very little handler challenge.