Foundation Agility: Looking at A Frame Performance

This is one of the Tuesday night classes. I want to be in that class. Except I teach it...and can't multi task like that.

It's fun to spend time on things that aren't super important life skills, yet relate.  Self control. Attention to handler. Recalls. Walking with.    And training skills...cues, stimulus control, shaping, timing, observation.

With someone tonight, we looked at exactly what she wanted her dog's a-frame performance to look like.

Some questions we ultimately ended up with:
- What is the speed? Number of strides? Where does your dog hit the board going up? Where is your dog's head?
- How does he go down, when does he go down? Is this in response to your body language?
- What is his behavior at the end? Where are his front paws? His back paws? His head? Exactly where... off to the side? Straight? What is acceptable?
- How does your dog leave? His speed? His posture? How does he know when to leave? At what exact point, and what is his cue to leave?

And....despite being a dog training enthusiast...I'm worried I may have overwhelmed her.  We only picked through that one exercise, the other five I gave her straightforward instructions for the most part.

My pictures never match the topic.

To add on to that... contact behaviors are one of my favorite things. Even for some of the smaller dogs who don't move quite as fast.... everyone learns this as a foundation skill, not all dogs end up learning it on the obstacles.  It's really fun to see how quickly some teams figure it out.  The first week or two is a bit rocky.... but then they kind of get it. And then it goes well.