[00:00:00] Hey there. If you're an agility nerd, you are in the right place. You are listening to fostering Excellence in Agility. I'm Megan, your resident agility competitor, coach and mentor, and this podcast is where I break down all things agility and guide you on your path to excellence. Are you ready? Let's go.
Today I am going to be talking to you about for exhibition only and fix and go on. These two options when we are competing can be really useful in bridging the gap from training to trialing if we use them in really smart ways and pay [00:01:00] attention to the data that our dogs are giving us. So first, what are they?
For exhibition only can also be, not for competition. And you declare this either when you enter the trial or when you get to the trial, you declare it before you run. This means that you can bring in a non- audible toy and plan to reward your dog on the course. The only. Tiny little thing here is that in akc, the toy has to stay in your hand, so you can't throw it or let the dog win it.
But I do believe in all of the other organizations, you have a little bit more flexibility in that regard. Fix and continue or fix and go on means that. You begin a run for competition, you're running like normal. Something [00:02:00] goes not according to your plan, and you decide to reattempt that obstacle or that sequence of obstacles, and then you continue your run.
You can only do this once, or if you do it a second time, you will be asked to leave the course so that you do have to maybe plan to use it on your biggest priority if it comes up. So first, let's dive into the Foric exhibition only or the not for competition. The pros to this, I believe if you declare this before you run, you automatically remove a little bit of that pressure to qualify.
When we remove that pressure that a Q or a clear round is on the line, as a human, we are more likely to stick to our very good training plans. Maybe this is ideal for a young dog if you are [00:03:00] trying to maintain criteria. But also gain ring experience. But you know that you might be willing to let a contact go or let a start line go if it might end in a clear round.
This is human. This is something that we have to fight every weekend when we're seeking that immediate gratification versus the long-term gratification. So if entering for exhibition only removes some of that for you, I think this is an excellent way to do that. In fact, I did just do this for my young Border Collie Sprint's first trial.
We took a road trip up to Canada and it was an organization that I don't need scores for anyways. But on top of that, I also entered for exhibition only and it just removed all of that It felt like. I just went on a [00:04:00] road trip and I was training with a bunch of really lovely people. So it does work in that regard.
Another pro, since you can have a toy, you can set up your runs similar to training sessions, but you are in a trial environment, so this makes it a really great split if you don't have access to. Training groups or situations where you can layer in more pressure over time in your training, you can find a small trial that offers not for competition.
You can bring your toy into the ring and you can strategically plan to reward your start line the same way you do in training or. Reward your contacts, reward your weaves, reward for great collection, or a really nice turn, really nice jumping effort. So that is a huge [00:05:00] pro in my mind, is to be able to say, Hey, this is just like training.
This is training, but there's a lot more people and a lot more activity going on. Okay. The cons for me, obviously, uh, it has to be a toy, so that does. Make it not useful for a lot of the dogs that I work with, and even some of the dogs that I own. Only being able to use a toy makes it a little bit more challenging because it's not going to be every dog's preferred reinforcer.
And also this opportunity to use for exhibition only with a toy is not motivation enough for me. To put in extra effort trying to convince a dog that they should like toys. So if you're feeling like you have a dog that [00:06:00] isn't super toy motivated, but you think you should quote, make them be toy motivated so that you can use this, I don't think that that's necessary at all.
And like I said, I, it wouldn't be worth my time just for this one opportunity. There are definitely ways around this. It just may mean that you have to be more creative in training where you do have access to food. Another con for me is that. If the routines are not very clear to the dog, you could potentially drive a bigger gap between training and trialing, because then you might drive a gap between trialing and trialing.
So because of all the great things that for exhibition only gives us, it can also make it very clear to the dog that. You are normal and you maintain criteria when you have a toy in your hand, [00:07:00] but you do none of those things when you don't have a toy in your hand. It can also, like I said before, if the routines are not very clear, it could confuse the dog a little bit.
So the dog could be expecting the toy on every run, but then some runs, the toy never appears, and therefore it could produce a disappointment response in the dog. So you might actually see the opposite effect. This is why we have to. Be aware of these things. We have to try these things and then we have to pay attention to the data and pay attention to what our dogs are telling us.
Especially if you're trying to use f e o to increase motivation to compete. This is a big one because if when you have the toy, the dog is absolutely, I want to do agility, and then when you don't have the toy, they. Don't opt in. They're not as excited to start. They go a lot slower. [00:08:00] That's huge for you.
That's telling you that your dog is saying yes to the toy, not necessarily yes to agility and it doesn't mean that, you know, that's where the story ends. It just means that you're probably not going to solve it with, for exhibition only. You're probably going to have to solve this in training. Right, but that can be an episode for another day.
The routines that I'm talking about is this ready to work protocol that I use with my dogs in training and in competition, and essentially I'm asking well-known questions of my dogs about their reinforcers. That also tells the dog what contingency is on the line for them right now. So when I go to my training field and I'm training skills, I do my ready to work routine with the reinforcement strategy that I intend to use for that training session.
So if I'm using tossed food, I'm gonna [00:09:00] show the dog that I have food, I'm gonna toss food for them. And I'm gonna make sure that A, they want that food and B, they come back after eating that food. Same thing if I'm using, you know, striking a toy from my hand or picking a dead toy off the ground. Any of those things, I'm asking them, do they want that today?
And can they return after they've collected it? So the way that works when I'm competing or practicing competing is I put the food or the toy. Off of my body and a little bit away from the training space or outside of the ring at a competition, and I ask the dog, are you okay with walking away from this reinforcer?
Because if they are, and I've practiced this many, many times since they were very young, that they can choose to leave that reinforcer because they know I will always bring them back to that after a certain amount of work. When they're young, the [00:10:00] work is literally two seconds. Maybe they walk away from it, 10 feet, they do a hand touch and they go right back to it.
And over time, as their skills grow, we also learn how to move away from a reinforcer, do two or three minutes of work. Right. So getting in line to wait your turn, ring entry, setting up, doing an entire course, getting your leash on at the end, exiting the ring, and walking back to the reinforcer. It can sometimes be several minutes that they are away from their reinforcer, and so if that is very clear to the dog, I can use for exhibition only more.
Easily and without the risk of confusing the dog or building that gap between trialing with a toy and trialing without a toy, because I'm telling the dog when I get them [00:11:00] out of the crate, Hey, we're going into that ring, but this is just a training session and I'm gonna have the toy on me, versus, Hey, we are getting outta the crate.
We're going into that ring, and this is a work situation, so the toy's gonna be on the table. Is that gonna be okay with you? And that's kind of oversimplifying it, but that is the idea that I'm after, is I want it very clear to the dog what they are opting into and what they are working towards.
So if I were to use for exhibition only, I would be thinking about setting. The situation up, like training, but I'm in a trial environment and I will put in the show notes a YouTube video of me doing exactly this in a UKI trial with a dog a few [00:12:00] years back, so I broke the course down into several sequences and I told myself, I'm going to reward her at this spot and then play with her.
And start from here and do these obstacles and reward here, and then so on. And I planned maybe three or four reward spots. And I told myself that I was going to get her to those places and reward her no matter what. And it was very smooth. No one was frustrated. I had a plan. I wasn't just holding onto the toy and then giving it to her at the end.
I was strategic about rewarding skills that had historically been difficult for her, especially in a trial environment, and I think it was really important part of our process together for her to see that it can be the same other ways that I would [00:13:00] think about using. for exhibition only is,
something that if I'm retraining or the dog is, uh, learning something new and I'm not seeing the results from my training show up in competition, I would absolutely use the route of bringing in the toy to bridge that gap just like I was talking about.
Now let's talk a little bit about using fix and go on. The pros of this are being able to react in a trial the same way you do in training. So this could be reattempting a weave pole entry at speed. This could be reat attempting, a contact at speed within the sequence. This could be resetting the start line, any of those things.
Maybe it's stopping to reset a bar and then reattempt that sequence before [00:14:00] continuing on. I think this is an excellent way to use this if you know that the dog has that skill. So I would only be tempted to use this if the dog has demonstrated to me in the past that they can do the thing that I've asked in that context.
So I need a little bit of data before I am willing to kind of tell the dog that. They were wrong. I need to know that they understand how to be correct because we are the ones that see things in right or wrong. They just see things in terms of it was reinforced or it wasn't reinforced. So that being said, I'm also very protective of the dog learning that the training and the trial is different.
So with a young dog, I [00:15:00] may not be entering all the classes all the days so that if something does pop up that they're unable to do, I'm not going to be tempted to have them do it again. Because what if they get it wrong again or hold them to some criteria that they can't meet? Okay, so the pro is that I get to.
React in the same way, at least once. Like I mentioned before, you only get to do this once, and if you do it again, you're going to have to leave, which may be fine, but you also don't wanna make a habit of intentionally breaking the rules like that. It is pretty disrespectful to the sport and the judges' time.
Right. So I don't want to. All weekend fix two things and, have the judge be kind of thinking about me long after my run is over. Right? [00:16:00] So the cons would then be, What if they get it wrong a second time? What am I left with? Well, I am left with quite a bit of information, right? Like I said, I don't wanna ask my dog to do something that I don't think that they can do or that they haven't proven to me that they can do.
So if I ask them to do it again and they get it wrong again, and then I just keep running the course anyway, they have proven to me that they don't know how to do it, and I have effectively told them that, that that's okay. So that's a pretty big con for me that be being able to ask them again can lead me down that road of that human thinking.
Well, I'll just ask them again and then if they get it right, I can continue. And if they get it wrong, what do I do? I'm kind of left with that big question mark. Um, another con would [00:17:00] be, That you get into this pattern of always getting it correct or to criteria the second time, because that's effectively what you have told the dog that it's okay if they get, if they don't meet criteria the first time, but the second time, if they do, you get to keep going and everything's fine as if you did it the first time.
This is usually going to come up more in seasoned dogs where you're trying to. Correct something that's gone wrong previously or retrain something because the dog has a habit of getting it wrong the first time, which is why you're trying to fix it in the first place. So the dog already has the habit of getting it wrong the first time, but you're really, really excited when they get it right the second time.
So you continue and that becomes the new habit instead of just getting it right the first time. I think a quick fix and go on can be more effective with a young dog where it's [00:18:00] truly just a mistake. And when I say young dog, I mean an inexperienced dog.
Whereas if my young dog were to say, pop out of the weave poles, I would legitimately think, oh. You just made a mistake. This is not a problem. This is not something I need to be overly concerned about, but I'm going to give you another opportunity to fix that and complete those weave poles at the same speed with the same handling that I just was trying to do.
And she's probably going to get it right, and if she doesn't get it right, then I absolutely know. She doesn't know the answer. So you have to be willing to take in your dog's history into account, not just who they are that day. So it really does matter what their current habit is in competition as to how fixing and go may or may not impact them.
Uh, the third [00:19:00] con for me here is cue escalation. Uh, I see this a lot even when we're repeating things in training. Our human brains want so badly to help the dog to get it right, so we change the cue we're maybe louder or we put more emphasis or we help them more physically. We turn. To help them hit the contact or we slow down to help them hit the weave pole entry.
We do something just a little bit different and then the dog gets it correct, but the dog is just learning. How to do it when you help them, and this might not be the intentional cue situation that you want to get into. So when we do fix and continue, we need to try really, really hard to offer the same antecedent arrangement if we're trying to get them to the correct answer [00:20:00] that's going to hold up the next time you ask them that same question.
Okay, so how I would use either of these,
I think it, it definitely depends on the situation, but I'm also interested in using these two options for exhibition only and fix and go on. In more creative ways instead of just going in and using the toy like its training and instead of just repeating a sequence so that they can practice that we full entry at speed.
I'm thinking about ways that we can use these proactively before the dog has made a mistake, before the dog has developed a habit of doing it. Not the way they do in training, but doing it differently in competition. I'm trying to think of ways [00:21:00] that when you look at a course and you think that there's going to be an issue, how can we proactively avoid that issue while still progressing your training?
So let's talk about, uh, maybe it's. Tight turns or jumping effort or something like that. In my jumping program, I have all sorts of skills, like multi wraps and figure eights and asking the dog to sit before a jump and then jump in collection and then continue, uh, that I teach them as part of their jumping skills and I. use that in sequencing when I'm training them at home. So if I can look at the course map and go, okay, she's going to struggle with this jumping effort, or she [00:22:00] might go wide on this turn, I can plan to help her by proactively queuing any of these situations so I can proactively cue a multi wrap so that I know she will be jumping.
Really, really nicely in really nice collection before moving on to the next obstacle. So I'm reinforcing the same habits that I'm reinforcing in training. Same thing for, you know, figure eights for slicing efforts, um, or asking her to sit in front of a jump if she needs help collecting for like a soft turn or something like that.
I can also think about how I might set my dog up for success. With the start line, uh, you might recall with the start line episode that I did with Sarah Espinoza Sokal that we did a lot of reinforcement [00:23:00] behind the dog or position changes. I can proactively cue those without waiting for the dog to make a mistake.
Right. So if I am doing for exhibition only and I chose to bring a toy, if I can leave that toy on the ground and just proactively reinforce good things, I'm not waiting for a mistake to happen to then correct a mistake. Or if I have position changes that are well trained. I can go out in a for competition run and ask my dog to do a position change, and then when they do that correctly, I can release them to agility.
So that might not even count as a fixing go on, depending on the organization And the judge, I assume each of them has their slightly different rules. So you can proactively think about, well, how can I reinforce my dog for good [00:24:00] habits? Without waiting for them to make a mistake. And that to me is the most effective way to use either of these tools available to us, and that is how we're going to most effectively bridge the gap between training and trialing.
We have to get creative about making sure that we are giving the same information a hundred percent of the time so that the dog can react. To that information the same way that they do in training. So other ways might be that I choose to help my dog the first time on say their teeter contact. So they are new to trialing.
We know that they're gonna be a little bit higher in competition than they are in training, most likely. So maybe we do that cue escalation first. For the first attempt, we do that cue [00:25:00] escalation and we tell them, wow, you are so great. That was so amazing. Let's go do that sequence again, and then do the handling the way you prefer to do it.
Right, so don't wait for a mistake to happen to use, fix and continue, but plan to use it strategically to show your dog that yes, they can do the same that they do in training, they can do the same in trials as well. So it does mean that you may be forfeiting some potential clear rounds. But it is definitely worth the time and the effort in the beginning, kind of delaying that gratification because you've got an entire career ahead of your dog to enjoy those clear rounds and those Qs, right?
So I want you to have that shift of using these two [00:26:00] situations. In ways that help you reinforce good habits rather than react to and correct bad ones. And I really wanna know what you think about this, so definitely comment on the Instagram post or the Facebook posts about it, because the better we can get.
About using these tools, the easier it's going to be on the dogs. So this does mean we have to have these habits in training. So if you don't have these habits in training, that's where we start and then we look for those opportunities in competition.
Okay. That's all I have on this topic for now. But before we go, I want to answer a train station member's. Question that they had for the podcast. Sarah writes how to have clear [00:27:00] markers and clear training sessions when adding a new behavior into sequencing. So for example, thinking on something like a running dog walk.
Say you've been training the running dog walk from ground up, and now it's time to add it into short sequencing. Previously, the running dog walk behavior was immediately being marked and rewarded, but now we are continuing with another obstacle or short sequence. Do you mark the running dog walk behavior with the next obstacle cue?
Are we dropping rewarding, better hits and just marking a correct performance with queuing the next obstacle? I hope this question makes sense. The question absolutely makes sense and it is a fantastic one. I often reference splitting my training into like skill acquisition versus sequencing versus practicing versus working.
You have to be very clear on what you're training because if you're just training following the handling or turns or something like that, then I am.
[00:28:00] Looking for the best hits, right? I am being selective based on my running dog walk training and my criteria of running dog walk training. But if I've already trained that skill to the point where I'm ready to put it into a sequence, I'm now training that sequence. And now I'm looking a little bit more at how am I going to react to this in the big picture, right?
So I'm going to. Put on my competitor hat and say, I need to get the dog to reinforcement no matter what. So I'm probably just going to run the sequence exactly how I would in competition, and I need to see how it's going to go, because if everything that I just said, I'm not going to tell the dog they're wrong unless they've proven to me that they can do it in that.
Situation and in those conditions. So I need to collect [00:29:00] some data. So I need to sequence and I need to forget about the perfect running dog walk performance in that moment, and I just need to finish the sequence and reward the dog for the effort of completing the sequence, and then I can make decisions from there.
If. I need to withhold reinforcement, so not rewarding the dog by continuing. If I continue a sequence and then I tell the dog, well, that was a really terrible dog walk three obstacles ago, you're not getting a reward. They don't understand that. That's a very human thing. And we can't do that to them. So if I'm going to withhold reward, I'm going to stop them in in the middle of the sequence and restart them again, similar to that fix and go that we just talked about earlier in this episode.
But essentially [00:30:00] you're correct. You're marking the dog walk, hit. Or the lack of dog walk hit, you are marking the completion of the dog walk with the next obstacle cue because the next behavior reinforces the previous one. So once I'm sequencing, I'm not worried so much about the quality of the hit. I'm just worried about are you following the handling?
And that pretty much goes for. Everything that I do, and if it is a problem, so if the quality of the hit goes down or the quality completely disappears, then that's just information for me to break that apart again, take it out of the chain, make sure that the dog does understand the skill, and then put it back together.
At a later date. So your question did make sense, and I hope my answer made sense. Thank you, Sarah, so much for the question. That is all for this week, but do come [00:31:00] back and have a listen next week when I break down whether you are ready to compete or not, and if your dog is ready to compete or not.
Thanks for listening. I'd love it if you'd leave me a review or engage with this episode on social media. You can follow me at FX agility on Facebook and Instagram. I hope you'll check out fx agility.com to learn about my online school and my wide variety of offerings so that we can continue on our path to excellence together.
