Agility…our new love
Ok so we’re not completely new to agility, but I have to say I have a renewed love for it.
We always imagined Lilli as a fantastic competition disc dog and thought of agility as a way to enforce obedience and a great alternate form of exercise. Agility has become so much more than just bubble gum (something to chew on) for us over the past several months.
We just met a great agility group in West Palm Beach and wow, what a fantastic environment! What I appreciate most is the feedback from teams of all different levels. We have some things to “un-break” – like contacts.
We never took the time to learn and enforce “2 on and 2 off”, which is an essential contact element on most obstacles. We practiced and nailed “target” no problem, BUT we never enforced it on obstacles – rather let Lilli run through them. Result: Maybe we hit our contacts, maybe we miss all of them…
2 on and 1 off means just that, the dog needs to pause, nose touch, wait for release word, whatever behaviour you want to enforce, with 2 back paws on the yellow portion of the obstacle and 2 front paws in the grass – off the obstacles. You want your dog to do this each and every time – without question.
So how will we “un-break” the “broken” behavior of Lilli running through all of her contacts? We’re using a step and a board – essentially creating our own ramp – and have her jump up and pause, nose touch, and wait for release with 2 on and 2 off. And treat and clicker the behavior. Then move further up the ramp and further away until we can lead her up the A-frame, dog walk, teeter, etc. and she stops at the end and does 2 on and 2 off.
We’ll work on this over the holidays and do some videos of our progress.
