How do I start teaching agility?

To start teaching agility, when we first start teaching our dogs agility, most of us are taught that we want our dogs to pay attention to us and know that everything good comes directly from us. It helps build more value for what we are doing as a team than for things the dog might find in the environment. However, once we WANT the dog to start moving away and performing independently, we’ve built a long reward history that includes the dog coming directly to us, or at least close to us, for a reward. If we always reward close to us, the dog has absolutely no reason to work at a distance. In order to encourage the dog to work away from us, we have to REWARD away from us. That can happen in a variety of ways – a tossed toy or treat, a “dead” toy at the end of the sequence, an empty bowl that we rush to drop food in, etc. If you are trying to increase your dog’s distance on the agility course or for a distance trick, it is vitally important that you reward while the dog is at a distance. If the dog performs a trick 10 feet away or does a series of jumps and you reward when he comes back, he learns that rewards only come when he is next to you, and will have no incentive to work away.

That doesn’t mean you can’t start teaching the foundations that will set you up for success on the agility course though. You can also introduce your dog to low-level agility equipment to get them used to it, which will pay off in spades when they hit the high jumps in the future. Before you hit the agility course, there are some foundation behaviours that you need to master. Your dog will need to master basic dog training cues such as sit, down and stay. Start by teaching these in a quiet environment, then progress to practising them in busier, more distracting places until your dog can sit on cue anywhere. Using a toy as a reward can be a brilliant way to keep your dogs attention. You can build up your dog’s ability to control their excitement by playing tug. First, start the game, and then ask your dog to stop/leave the toy before rewarding them again with a quick game.