Want to train new behaviors faster? With fewer reps? Here’s what you need!

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AgiNotes recently published an overview of an international survey about the changes in agility over the past few years and where agility enthusiasts see the sport heading.

One of the (many) things standing out was that the higher demands of the sport require you to train more and more repetitions with your dog, extending the training time and also raising the concern of overuse injuries resulting from all the reps.

While it’s true that as agility becomes more demanding, it also needs more training. But maybe there’s a way to change the way we look at training, be smarter about what we train… and even reduce the number of actual sport exercises?

I have my own approach to keep the training repetitions under control. Want to know what it is? Check out the newest blog post at The Moving Canine

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What to do if your agility dog is scared of the high dog walk?

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Is your dog’s dog walk performance less than perfect? And you have no idea about why that is or how to fix it?

Could it be that your dog is scared of heights, leaving him uncomfortable on the dog walk and not performing at her best?

In today’s blog post I talk about the fear of heights, why this happens, how it affects your dog’s performance and how to recognize it in your own dog.

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How to get your dog from being reckless on the dog walk to running it with precision. SAFELY

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As a dog agility enthusiast you probably already know that teaching your dog to run on the dog walk can take a while. Isn’t it a well known belief that training running contacts needs lots of repetitions?!

And it quickly becomes even more challenging and time consuming with dogs who are reckless, who misplace their paws off to the side, lose balance and even fall during the training sessions.

While we may see success stories like “Amazing! She got a competition ready running dog walk in just 2 months!” on social media, we rarely see the stories of dogs who are actually struggling with running on the dog walk. Yet they are out there. And if you are reading this, chances are that you also know of a dog (and maybe it’s your own dog) who tends to have a worrying amount of dog walk incidents…

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Could this be the reason why your dog slows down on the dog walk?

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“My dog is really careful on the dog walk. In fact, she slows down when running the dog walk, so I’m not too worried about her safety”

Often when talking about the problems on the dog walk, it is easy to imagine the reckless dogs who misplace their paws and fall off, making your heart skip a beat. Because falling off the dog walk when running full speed is scary! And dangerous.

So it’s easy to think that a dog who is careful on the dog walk, even slowing down a bit, is far safer. And that slowing down may be even a good thing.

It is true that with a careful dog you don’t need to worry about the safety on the dog walk so much.

But what does make me worry is the reason behind their carefulness. Would a dog who was super comfortable slow down on the dog walk? I suspect not.

Slowing down and being careful is probably coming from a place that isn’t all happy. And maybe careful dogs would actually need help on the dog walk just like reckless dogs do?

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