Mini Q&A With Susan: How To Keep Connection Strong And Motivation High In Dog Agility

In this mini Q&A, I’m sharing how to keep connection strong and motivation high in dog agility with simple strategies every handler can use.

Transcript:
“How do you connect with your dog better while running an entire agility course?” So, connection means you run your course, and your dog’s got to do all those obstacles, but if you don’t connect with your dog, your dog may misread what you’re telling them and go off and run a course of their own which of course in the sport of dog agility we have to do the course as the judge numbered.

Some judges are just funny that way. Actually, the truth is you have to follow the rules. So how do you connect? Now I think it comes down to just a few things. Number one is having a consistent handling program. Obviously, Handling360 does that for us. But that means that you do the same thing every time you set up a sequence that looks like ‘X’. You handle it exactly the same way every time, and your dog learns that.

Now the other part of that is you put in the layers of learning so that your dog has clarity of understanding with every single cue you will ever use in dog agility. So, if I give my dog a cue to jump long over a jump, there is no way that that dog will ever turn tight when I give that cue to jump long, regardless of what my body is doing.

So, clarity of handling. My execution as a handler, ability to give the dog cues, my dog’s understanding of those cues through the layers of learning that I’ve put in. And the third one and this might be the most difficult for some people, and that is the ability to handle your ring nerves and do what you want in a timely fashion. To be able to execute regardless of how excited you are in the moment.

So those are the big three things that help you to connect with your dog best. Next question, “How to give motivation a boost during a course or training?” Now motivation comes from the way that we train our dogs. So, think about this. Think about if you are watching, and I’ve used this example before, say you’re watching a basketball game, and it’s super exciting, and you are totally into it.

Your team steals the ball, and you scream, “Whoa!” you’re so motivated by this game it’s just, so passionate, you’re just riveted. There’s no way you’re going to take your eyes off the course. Much like when I flew out to San Francisco to watch my beloved Raptors win the NBA championship in 2019. Woo! Woo! Woo! But I digress. Now, what if your team is losing? Like they’re stinking the place out.

Kind of like when Kobe Bryant dropped 81 points on my beloved Raptors, but that’s another story. What if your team just is not playing well and the cheerleaders come over and go, “Hey, let’s inject some joy? How about you, you know, give me an R?” And you’re like, “Okay, Yeah. Rightever. R.” Like, you might play along, or you might not, you know. That’s what it’s like when you’re trying to inject motivation into a dog who isn’t motivated by what they have in front of them.

If you do your job right as a dog trainer and you’ve transferred the value that goes from whatever the dog loves into what you would like that dog to love, much like what I talked about in episode 90 here on Shaped by Dog. Where I talked about Premack and the transfer value. If you’ve done your job right, your dog is like me watching the Raptors in a really good game. They are just riveted, “Yeah!”. They don’t need anybody going, “Hey, give me an R!”

They’re like, “Get out of my way. We’re doing something I love, and it’s awesome, and I’m doing it with mom, and I just love it. We’re having so much fun.” So, if you don’t have that, it isn’t an injection of motivation you want. You want to go all the way back and say, ‘What layer am I missing in my dog’s fundamental dog training?’

It’s the same for every single sport, and it’s the same for every single dog.

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