The first real rule of distance training is that the dog must know the performance of the agility obstacle. That sounds obvious. But what many dog trainers miss is that their dogs really don’t know how to do an obstacle when unattended by the handler. So much of my early training and even more of my ongoing training with a dog will be to teach the dog independent performance; understanding how to begin and finish an obstacle without me being there to micro-manage every moment and movement.

Teaching the dog to weave without me shuffling alongside or providing the weave pole dance is highly desirable. It’s not just a matter of distance work in some mystical gamblers class. Just in the work-a-day meat-and-potatoes performance of the weave poles I will be much more confident in my dog’s performance of this obstacle if I’ve taken sufficient time to teach the independent performance.

You’ll note that any time I raise the bar on the performance of an obstacle, I will wire them up to remind my dog of the entry and to stay in until the job is done.

Working the weave poles from either side can be a bit problematic. From the offside as I showed in the first exercise, the dog must actually wrap the first pole to make a correct entry. When sending from the onside however, the entire side is open to the dog. And you’ll find that many more dogs will miss the onside entry approach than the offside. [If the dog is thinking “first pole on left shoulder” it’s clear that the onside approach is the more problematic of the two.]

Over time I will make the send from greater distances and at more extreme angles. There’ll come a time that I’m confident enough in the performance that the gating wires will come off the weave poles.  

Notes on Sending

Small dog people are especially uncomfortable with sending their dogs any great distance at all. Frankly, I’ve never found that it is more difficult to teach a small dog to work at any distance than a big dog… in spite of the advantages that the big dogs have. The big dog is inclined to be moving faster and have a longer stride. These, of course, are advantages.

Many people subscribe to what I call the “pick-up truck theory of distance work”. In order to get distance on their dogs… it’s like you were going down the freeway at 70 miles an hour with the dog up on the roof of the truck. How do you get distance? You slam on the brakes and there goes the dog! Well, this surely is tricking the dog into space; you can’t say that the dog is working at a distance.

It is true that a certain amount of impulsion is required for the send. It is my objective as dog trainer, however, that the power of the impulsion required for the send comes from that narrow space between the dog’s ears. Nothing straightens the line like the certainty in the mind of a well-trained dog.

If I want to send my dog away to work I need to avoid doing those things that draw the dog back into handler focus. These might include: Flapping my arms; making a series of loud panic-stricken verbal exclamations; slamming the brakes on my movement; facing the wrong direction.

A little technical note of facing and pointing: A handler points more surely with his feet than he will ever point with his arms and hands. The feet determine which direction the handler is facing… and consequently, which direction he is pointing. If a handler points with his inside foot (the foot nearer to the dog) the body tends to open up and will surely face a direction other than where the dog is being sent. So, the handler should point with his outside foot (the foot away from the dog). Note that the outside foot doesn’t have to lead… it merely has to point, to keep the body square.

YouTube

I was playing around on YouTube in my hotel in Pocatello, and ran across a video that actually has my voice on it. Here’s the link if you want to here what I sound like: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C27wySpw6E. I was commentating the 2001 USDAA Grand Prix. Handler on the field is Mary Jo Sminkey with her marvelous little Sheltie Taz.

Questions comments & impassioned speeches to Bud Houston: BudHouston@earthlink.net. And Check out my new publication the Idea Book – Agility Training for a Small Universe available at www.dogagility.org/store.