THE HAPPINESS FACTOR.
When I go out to Compete with my dog I am doing it in my time out from the dreary reality that life often is. For many working for a living is a brutal fact of mind numbing money go round. It is the glue that makes life function on a practical level but it is also stressful and boring.
So when I am working with my dog hobby I am hopefully able to shut out that more difficult part of my life and enjoy the company of my mates, but mostly it is my dog that I want to be with. So then I want my Dog and I to be 'Happy' while we are working together. Impressing others, looking to get ahead, being impatient are all things that don't belong in my Dog Training world. So everything I do with my dog is about building a bond of Happiness and Team work.
When I start on an Agility Course I ask my dog if he is ready. Chippy and Boo, Chan and Midge and Rosie all barked an affirmative back to me. When I ask Pansy she doesn't reply. So she isn't ready and I have to keep working on her happiness factor and her excitement and her games until I have her so sucked up to me and what we are doing together that she barks her affirmative. Then we will be getting somewhere. Do you ask your dog if it is ready to compete and play with you?
THE INJURY ISSUE
If you persist in a career with your dog based solely on the Sport of Agility both you and your Dog will suffer injuries. While most people understand that when they twist their knee or wrench their thigh muscle it actually bloody hurts, those same people don't seem to understand the potential for their dogs to do exactly the same thing.
When their dog lands on top of a maxi hurdle and both hurdle and dog crash around together then there will be some sort of mental and physical injury to that animal. Time and again I see at competition bewildered shocked and unbalanced dogs simply being commanded to carry on. Their handlers actually laughing at the stupid antics of the dog. This is just shocking.
I often write stuff about how dangerous Agility is as a Sport. But it would be a lot less dangerous if handlers trained their dogs properly. If a dog is running so fast they collide with most of the equipment because they are so called 'naturally fast' and the handler thinks that is great then that is a tragedy.
Fast dogs can still hurdle properly and clear the gear, they can be taught to slow down when the corners get a bit tight. They can get a rhythm from their handlers to help them around the course. Mostly they need to focus forward and keep a peripheral eye on their handler and they need to be taught how to do this. Hurdle recognition work, hurdle bar respect work, and anti distraction focus should be basic to teaching dogs to negotiate a course.
Watching dogs belting around a course on show days week after week smashing equipment really upsets me and really it is why I stopped doing Agility last time. I had hoped that in my ten year absence there would be more sensitive handlers receiving better training by now. But that is not my experience so far. I think my older years will be spent doing Rally O so that I don't have to put up with Gung ho handlers and Kamakaze Dogs, it just breaks my heart.
If you do find yourself on the end of stern words from me on the subject of training methods then that is the first warning that I do not tolerate people using Rimadyl anti inflams to get their dogs around a course . All the while continuing to injure their dogs at competition week after week at the same time resting their dogs thinking that that is the 'normal' behavior for the sport of Agility . Then they will find themselves jettisoned from my Training Groups as it is very obvious that in spite of all my advice and all my insistence that training happens in a certain way and is completed before handlers go out to competition, is falling on deaf ears.
If I continue with those people I become part of the problem because by now the solution is impossible, given the total addiction that some handlers have to successful outcomes in the sport.
Remember Fitness for you and the dog, Social Enjoyment, Bonding with the Dog, Increased understanding of how a Dog functions, and quality Training result in a happy long lived companion, are best aims and outcomes. Don't settle for less.
