Civilpooch : Agility | Stories | Writing : Dog Training Made Simple : John Buginas, CTC, CPDT

November 2003

Juno and I attended our first agility class on a cold, muddy day in Albany, California. Agility is a dog and people sport where the dog goes over jumps, through hoops, tunnels, and climbs over obstacles. The handler guides the over the correct obstacles. It’s fun for dogs and people. It’s a great workout for dogs, and for people.

I thought I’d try agility to build Juno’s skills and expose her to more dogs. Nancy taught the class, so she was familiar with Juno’s behavior. Nancy had ‘difficult’ dogs wear a kerchief in her classes and was great at keeping things calm. Agility was a great way to take advantage of Juno’s skills at scaling fences and finding her way through tunnels and other obstacles in her real life as a notorious escape artist.

Why not take advantage of her natural abilities? We bring dogs into our lives to share and sometimes forget there was lots they would do if they weren’t leashed and fenced in our small houses and yards.

It was wet. It was muddy. It was fun. The park had no real fences and was surrounded by trees laden with squirrels. I was to learn a lot about getting dogs to come when called around distractions. No matter how hard you train in a classroom setting, the best way to learn obedience exercises was putting them in practice in the real world. n551783100_711039_2734

Juno did well on her first day, though I had to crawl through the tunnel to get her to come through. We had no trouble teaching her to jump on the jump table. She had developed this skill on her own at home, easily able to jump up onto anything up to about five feet off the ground and land on all fours. Dinner tables, spa covers, you name it.

We learned to get our dogs to go towards and through the obstacles by using margarine tub lids. The goal was to get the dog to run to the plastic lid wherever you placed it. You start by placing a few pieces of food in the lid and the dog runs to the lid to get the food. After a few times, you click and treat instead of putting food on the lid. Eventually, the sight of the target sends the dog running to the target enthusiastically. This simple target was a very handy way of getting a dog to where you wanted.

Juno did go for the targets, but was sometimes more interested in eating mud. You never can figure out what makes a dog tick. Showers for all after every class, muddy shoes stayed on the porch. It was a mess.

I was learning that training is in part, a process of determining the relative value of motivators and choosing the best one to use. I started to imagine food motivators as having some sort of numeric value assigned by the dog on a particular day at a particular location. That day in the park, kibble dog food probably has a value of 1. Natural Balance may have had a value of 10. String cheese may have had a value of 20. Fresh mud had a value of 50. And squirrels always had a value of 1000 for Juno. Sometimes you can’t win against the environment, which is why I constantly experimented with exotic foods, tennis balls, tug toys, pelts, raccoon tails, squeaky bears, etc. What works today may not work tomorrow. What worked five minutes ago may not work five minutes from now.

During the next several weeks, I got to know one of the assistants, Elissa Cline. Elissa showed me a lot of things to do with Juno to keep her calm in the squirrel- and dog-filled park. She showed me a ‘Find It!’ exercise. This involves saying “Find It!’ excitedly, and tossing food on the ground to turn the dog away from something; for example a squirrel or another dog. This was an extremely useful technique I immediately started using on walks with Juno. You could not only get her to turn away, but her head would be down and pointing away from the other dog. Looking away is good dog behavior so rarely sets off other dogs.

Juno was still a handful around other dogs, especially dogs that wandered through the agility field. We continued to wear a kerchief; one day we forgot to bring one, so I picked up a piece of yellow ‘caution’ tape laying on the ground and used that. From that day on, in agility, she was known as the ‘caution dog.’ I was learning to work off-leash with Juno as we went through the agility course. Initially, she dragged a leash; later we kept a four foot fine line on her. She always ran the course and stayed with me, unless there were squirrels. She also sometimes ran up to dogs that ran through the agility field. She never bit other dogs, but would stiffen, circle and sometimes went up the other dog’s back with her mouth. Technically she was biting, but she never drew blood or caused any apparent pain. I would learn years later that this meant she had good bite inhibition, or a good mouth. Still, I was concerned as she still looked like a pit bull to many so I kept her on leash except when we were actually running the course.

Juno was starting to master obstacles. Jumping over jumps, climbing over the a-frame, wobbling over the teeter-totter, jumping up on the table and zipping through the tunnels.

Juno’s favorite obstacle was the collapsed tunnel, or chute. It was a 20-foot tube of fabric fastened to a section that was round and about the size of a 50-gallon drum. The 20-foot tube was flat and the dog had to run through it, pushing their was as they went. After being coaxed through a few times with food and happy talk, Juno turned out to love this. I think it just felt good. Juno always liked being touched and the tunnel caressed her as she zipped through. Out on a walk, Juno tugs towards bunch grass or ivy, slithering through them happily. She is a very tactile being.

Over time, we would learn to use the chute as a reward for other agility behavior. I would come to know this as the Premack principle. The Premack principle was better known as the granny rule: “You can get your ice cream after you eat the green beans.” Juno got a chance run through the chute if she did a good job going over the a-frame, teeter or a series of jumps. This is am important training principle everyone should apply when possible. It can be used creatively when other forms of reinforcement are not available or not working.

We also practiced more of the ‘Watch Me’ exercise. This was to remain an important behavior to teach Juno because it was incompatible with her doing other things, like barking and lunging. Other examples of incompatible behaviors might be to have a dog touch your hand, sit or lay down -- behaviors likely to head off barking, lunging or growling.