[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.
This is episode 33. Today, I would like to unpack in great detail sprint's debut strategy, or at least the first eight days of it. In the last episode, I talked about the prerequisites that I have. For entering my dogs in their first competitions, and I went into a [00:01:00] conversation about how to debut our dogs so that we can maximize their confidence in us and our cues.
We can maximize our confidence and their ability to follow those cues and to minimize. The amount of ring wise behaviors or trial only behaviors that sometimes crop up pretty early in a dog's career. So I want to say that Sprint turned two years old. At the beginning of May, and she attended her first agility competition at the end of May, so just a couple of months ago.
And in the last two months, she's had eight days of competition. And so first I'm going to, Quickly go through kind of the progression of the [00:02:00] context. So the progression of the trial environment. So her first three days of competition was a one ring trial that was out outdoor on grass. It was a very small trial, so maybe 20 or 30 people at the most, and we limited ourselves to two runs a day.
Okay, and I only asked for a very small number of like contact and weave pole performances. I knew that they weren't super solid in training when I entered the event, so I made sure to limit the number of times I was going to ask her just in case there was a major problem. The next event she did two days and it was again, a one ring trial.
But it wasn't totally outdoors. It was in an undercover arena. So it was a little bit more, [00:03:00] uh, enclosed in some situations, but it was still very open. There was a lot of space around the arena. We did a lot of waiting outside. And again, it was fairly small, so not a huge number of dogs in activity going around.
And she did two runs on one day and three runs the next, and still very limited in the number of contacts and weave poles that I asked her for. Then at the next event, she did one day. And this was a outdoor trial that had two rings running at the same time, and she did three runs at that trial. This was the, definitely the most weave poles I had asked of her in competition, but still kind of on par with her contacts.
Um, then at the next competition, she again only did one day. [00:04:00] But it was completely indoors, so it was a location that she had been before. The previous two events were at the same location, but it's kind of nice that the trial location had these different areas that we had the opportunity to compete in.
So one ring of competition indoors. She did four runs that day. So that is the highest number of runs she had ever done in a day. So absolutely the highest number of non jumps as well. So as we went along, she was telling me that she was in improving and she was capable. So she got entered in more classes and then finally, Her eighth day of competition was again, just one day, but now at a new facility that was running two rings indoors, and she ran two runs.
So [00:05:00] we kind of, I made that a little bit easier for her just because the two rings indoors was probably the biggest jump up that we've had in the whole debut strategy. So that was the. Order that I chose for her to minimize the changes in the environment. None of these events yet, um, have been very large, so there hasn't been an overwhelming number of people or dogs.
So I am taking that into consideration as I look ahead to what's coming next for her. In the fall, but this progression of the venue has been really, really helpful to her. Uh, because I did see probably in the first, definitely in the first two events, I noticed that [00:06:00] Sprint was being a bit more thoughtful.
I. In the ring then I'm used to her being, and she is not a reckless dog by any means, but she does have opinions about things. And so in training, I am used to her, uh, not necessarily doing things. Yeah, exactly how I imagine them because she has her own ideas and at those first couple of trials, I really felt like she was being thoughtful, that she was working extra hard and almost harder than she does in training.
And so I do assume that this was her taking in the environment not able to immediately close that tab like she can do in training. But also she ha hadn't had experiences with competing before, so she was also having to make [00:07:00] sure that everything was the same. Okay. Because as I went through these days of competition, the one thing I really noticed was by about that third event.
So by about the sixth day of trialing. She was showing me that she 100% understood the routine. And of course she has shown me that she understands the routine in training, but Sprint didn't know that agility got more exciting than training. And so she took a minute, five days of competing. About seven runs of competing to realize that it is also the same in competition.
So I did start to see her intensity in the routine in increase. So she actually acclimated more quickly. She was able to do longer down stays by about that third [00:08:00] competition by about that sixth day. So, Then when I did move indoors, which was the one that I thought would be the hardest, it was actually the easiest for her so far.
And I don't think it's because indoors is easier than outdoors. I just think it was well placed in the strategy. I think moving indoors on her seventh and eighth days of competing, I. Helped her because she already had some evidence that the routines are the same and that the expectations are the same, and I talked about that in at length in the previous episode about why I think debuting in this way is so important.
I want them to be very confident in that. Training is the same as trialing, and trialing is the same as training, and there's no [00:09:00] reason to feel differently about those two situations. So my first priority, of course, was exactly that, making sure that I was holding up my end of the bargain and keeping everything very predictable for her, and that she was able to fall very easily into the routines and give me the same behaviors at.
The competition as she does at home, and for the most part, she a thousand percent did. Like I said, those first couple of events, I felt like she was a tiny bit more thoughtful than I was used to being. But I wasn't alarmed by any means because, if she did make a mistake, her mistakes weren't surprising to me.
They were very on par with the mistakes that she makes in training. And I also saw a little bit of the opposite. The things that I kind of expected her to make a [00:10:00] mistake on, she didn't. So that also supports that extra bit of thoughtfulness. So she was paying really close attention and, and not kind of letting her hair down, so to speak.
But I will say that by the time we got to that seventh and eighth day of competing, she was very much who I have in training. She was very intense. She is not having this extra layer, layer of thoughtfulness she was. A little bit more vocal, which is also what I'm used to in training, and definitely very intense, which is definitely what I'm used to on a daily basis.
So now I want to discuss the specific behaviors that I saw and maybe what I changed or tried to do differently from event to event. And overall things went really, really smoothly. [00:11:00] Uh, so first her outside the ring behaviors. If you've been listening for a while, you know how much importance and value I put on my outside the ring behaviors because of how much they impact the inside ring behaviors.
And if you haven't listened to that episode, you can go back just a few. And I talk about all of those behaviors that happen outside the ring. So, And why they're so important to me. But if we go back, um, every single event that she's gone to, she has gotten out of the car and immediately realized that we were there to do agility.
She maybe didn't know that it was any different than training, which is fine by me. She did notice that there were more dogs around, or different dogs around and different people, but that didn't concern her. Because I have done a lot of work in a [00:12:00] lot of different situations. Even if they aren't, formal training or dog show situations, she's been into crowded public places and then expected to work.
So the additional people didn't have an impact. She was ready to go even at the first event and. She was very easy to acclimate. She passed all of her ready to work questions really, really quickly. I didn't have any concerns about any of those things. She was able to be ringside in her downstays and walk around with me in all of the.
Situations and each of the events has a slightly different setup for waiting your turn. So the first event, which was three days,, we were just outside in a [00:13:00] field, so you had a lot of space. You didn't necessarily have to be right next to the ring. When it was your turn, it was a very small trial and it was very relaxed.
So you, I did sometimes take more space if I felt like she needed it. Um, there was a couple of dogs in particular, if they were really loud while they were running, that was much harder for her to deal with and I was able to address that a little bit that weekend and every competition day since, and she has improved on her ability to.
Watch ringside if a dog is barking while they run. Agility noises in general don't seem to, um, have any impact on her ability to wait. It was mostly just dogs barking when they ran. So the second event that was undercover, again, you could, you were waiting kind of outside, so not undercover, but you [00:14:00] didn't get to be as far away.
Right? So we had a few more runs to get through. We wanted the day to run a little bit more smoothly, so you did have to be a little bit closer. But , it wasn't like a clear view of the ring either. She. Could watch and she was also, uh, frequently the only dog at her height. So she had a little bit more time to enter the ring, look around, make sure she was okay before we took off to run.
And this all seemed fine. Uh, at the next outdoor event, again, it's outdoors. We did have a bit more space, but it's two rings, so we had a lot more people and dogs. So she had to wait next to dogs that. Maybe weren't waiting as patiently as she, and this did not seem to be a problem. This was about the time where she was getting more intense with understanding the routine, so she wasm [00:15:00] more and more easily able to ignore other dogs at this point.
She knew what she was there to do and the only thing she was concerned with was getting into the ring, and she knows. Through prior reinforcement history that getting into the ring is possible if she's patient and does a nice downst stay. So she really did look like she was just having a picnic before going into the ring, and she walked into the ring quite nicely even at that event.
So then when we moved indoors, um, the first indoor event, The warmup jumps and where you waited to go into the ring were together. So there were at some times multiple dogs off leash doing the warmup jump, and. Three to five dogs also just warming up on leash and hanging out with their people waiting to run.
So I thought this situation would be [00:16:00] difficult for her. And like I said, she is so intent on the routine that this was actually quite easy for her. She was very intense. She very much wanted to run and waiting was not her favorite, but she knows so well that waiting patiently. It gets her into the ring, so this was not a problem at all.
Then the most recent indoor competition, this one was actually a little bit surprising to me because her, she was a thousand percent in intent on doing the wait your turn, but it did bug her a little bit that she could not see into the ring and. I guess I was still under the assumption that that would be easier for her because taking away the visual stimulation might make the waiting easier, even though I know she can wait patiently when she can see.
But she's also never been in a [00:17:00] situation in training where she can't see the dog running. So luckily the dog ahead of us in the running order. Has no issues with another dog being in the ring, so I was able to go enter the ring as early as possible, and that helped her a lot. It helped her to connect the pieces that there was agility going on, and that she was going to do agility and that I wasn't just asking her for a downstate in a difficult location.
When agility wasn't on the table, and I am pretty, uh, aware that I don't want to ask for such a difficult behavior like downstays in very stimulating environments. If it's not going to pay off big time for her, and in her opinion, getting to run agility is the highest payoff that I can offer. So connecting those two was important for her to learn the behavior [00:18:00] and therefore it is important for me to always reinforce that behavior in that way.
So yes, I use downstays in less exciting situations, but I do try to limit them so, Okay, so her outside the ring behaviors maintained beautifully, and I'm not seeing any sort of regression in those behaviors at all. The next thing I want to discuss is like ring entry and taking her leash off and the start lines, because I definitely know that the start line.
Is something that could be fragile for her and could be something that is very easy to lose. It's not my best skill to make sure that I am putting enough time in between looking at her and releasing. I know I get excited. I know that I wanna run those courses, and I also know that. [00:19:00] In training, she's still pushy on her start line.
So why wouldn't she also be pushy in a competition? This is not surprising to me. So for the first event, I did quite a lot of asking her for position changes on the start line to make sure that she was listening. Um, and I did less of that in the following competitions. Um, And at the most recent one, she did kind of push the limits on a pretty difficult start line.
There was a lot going on behind her. I was running away, you know, I turned my head to open my mouth and she's like already like starting to move. So it was a little bit too late in my head. My reaction. And so I miss the opportunity to ask her to do it again, but it is my main focus for the next competition day coming up.[00:20:00]
And basically what I will do is I will include the position changes again. I will ask for her to be thoughtful and ask for something very precise on the start line. So if I leave her in a sit, I might ask for a stand or a lie down before I release her. If I turn to look at her and she moves first, I am going to use a fix and go and have her try it again.
Um, if I lead out after having Le left her in a sit, if I see that she's. In a down, I might ask for a stand or I might even cue her to back up. So I'm going to be more aware because I'm, because as the confidence grows, as her intensity grows, I want to address any of these criteria questions. Now, while the evidence is still highly in my favor of, I [00:21:00] always maintain criteria.
So there's, there's just a little bit of start line pushiness that I'm going to address. But overall, she has been really great in a variety of lead outs, so me running away, me walking away, variety and length. She has been really, really great. Um, as far as obstacle performance goes, like I said, I have slowly increased the number of like contacts and weave poles that I've asked her to do.
Um, in the first competition, the only real issue that she had was, um, getting on the dog walk. She never got comfortable with it. It was a slat less dog walk, and she never got a good approach to it. So, Her dog walk performance was not great, but I've also let that go. I didn't really even [00:22:00] include it in my data because she never got a good approach from it.
Every time she got on the dog walk, she was basically coming from a sit stay, which is her worst skill. And so that first event and having the awkward issues around the dog walk, I did sort of just remove that data from the equation. Mostly because it's not been supported since, at each event following, it's been probably a different dog walk that she's been on and she is still adding maybe one extra stride on the way up, or she's loading very low, um, because she's not a hundred percent sure, right?
Like, so she's, she's not seen a ton of dog walks in her training. So each new dog walk is just, she's having to figure that out. But that being said, the dog walks that she has done, they have all been really, really good efforts. She is [00:23:00] doing like the, the best dog walk that she did was five strides, which I know she can do four, but she, I like to see that she's thinking about a five strided dog walk to make sure that she gets, I.
Low into the contact zone rather than leaving in the middle, which would be her go-to mistake if, um, if she wasn't confident or didn't understand the exit situation. So she's had a really high success rate with regards to the dog walk, and I will continue to keep that number low for now because I know that.
We don't need very many dog walks per weekend, and I know that her education around the dog walk is still in progress. So I'm going to continue to keep the number of dog walks in competition lower until she gets more experience under her belt, both in [00:24:00] training and in competition. As far as her A-frame goes, she's been a hundred percent.
Um, that was a very easy obstacle for her to learn and it has held up beautifully so far. The Teeter did give me a little bit of anxiety heading into her first trial because I had to rehab the entire behavior. Um, just this. Last winter and little bit of spring, um, she went from not wanting to be anywhere near the Teeter to then needing to compete with the Teeter.
So I wasn't a hundred percent sure how it was going to go, but I needed to run every run with the Teeter, with the confidence that I could in training and just assume that she was going to get on the Teeter and perform. As she does at home, and luckily she did. And in [00:25:00] the rehab process, I chose not to put the criteria on her for waiting for a release because again, she's not a reckless dog.
She was always waiting for it to bang. Sometimes she was waiting for me to release her, sometimes she wasn't it. I knew in the back of my head, That at some point I would need to return the wait for release, but I wasn't ready to do it until she told me she could handle it, I guess is what I'm trying to say.
That it wasn't like this, um, measurable moment that I was exactly looking for. I just knew that I would know it when I saw it and at the last two events, her teeters were getting, I. Pushier and pushier, so I could start to see that, okay, you understand you are not afraid of any of these different teeters, [00:26:00] but you are having a harder time waiting for it to hit the ground.
So I'm going to in training, add that wait for release back in. And so I have started adding that back in. She remembers it from her original Teeter training, so it is just kind of a reminder, but. Her entire competition career, and sorry I didn't add up, but she's got eight days of competition where she hasn't had to wait specifically for a release queue.
I'm usually already giving her the next queue when the board hits the ground. So there's a little bit of like, yes, I'm releasing her, but she's not waiting for the release. But I am adding that back in and reminding her of that. And so the next competition days that she has, I will enforce the wait for release.
So I'm likely looking at, [00:27:00] depending on the course, looking at using the fix and go, how I described a couple of episodes back where I will help her the first time. So I might walk, I might turn into her, I might. Give her a verbal wait cue just to remind her, and then I might take her back to do it again and ask her with the appropriate handling.
So I might use my fix and go strategy for the Teeter in the next competition days just to see if I can get that. Um, wait for release back very quickly. I don't want to, um, I don't wanna waste competition days training it. I just want to say, Hey, this is the same as training. I made a change in training.
Now I'm making that same change in competition. And so hopefully those two ideas will mesh up pretty quickly so that looking ahead to the West Coast open at the end of September, I will have the teeter that I want. So from here on, [00:28:00] that's a big focus, is making sure that the start line and the teeter.
Don't get worse, that hopefully they get much better. But we are at that point where I know that she's confident, she understands and we need that additional layer of fluency added. Um, and then her weave poles. There was a little bit of a moment. Um, her, the first competition I asked for like two sets of weave poles and she was brilliant in both of them.
And that was actually, um, a little bit surprising to me. That was that extra layer of thoughtfulness that I was seeing show up because she was making way more mistakes in training. Then that, um, and at the second event, she only, she did weave, poles in two [00:29:00] runs, no three runs, and she made a weave pole error in one of the runs.
And, um, it, I, it wasn't such a big deal. This, this is a mistake that she's making. In training too, and I'm talking like either skipping something in the middle, so like she enters correctly and she skips in the middle, or she pops out at 10. These two types of mistakes are common for her in training.
So when they showed up in competition, it's not a big surprise. However, at the third event she made. Those same, weave pole mistakes in two of the four runs. And so in my head I was thinking that, oh my gosh, maybe is this a thing? Um, but we had like two and a half or three weeks between the third event and the fourth [00:30:00] event, and I did so much weave, pole homework and trying to make sure that she was really confident trying to solve these mistakes because.
Now I have, you know, because I'm being cautious with the number of weave poles, I'm asking her for the fact that she's making these typical mistakes half the time. I don't like those numbers. So it was gonna be really important that I put in the training time to avoid that issue moving forward. And I am very happy to say at the last two events, so at the indoor events, She did not make any of those weave pole mistakes across those six runs, so that was really cool to see how the training impacted the trialing almost immediately.
So that was fantastic. Um, her jumping has been stellar. She has kept most of the bars up by far, probably like [00:31:00] 98% of the bars up. I. Don't need to count because it's just not an issue. She's really lovely jumper and she's done most of her competitions at 24 inches and then one competition at 20 and she had no issues, um, moving between the two heights.
Um, as far as following the handling goes, she's done everything that I expect her to. Again, no surprises. There are a lot of things that we still need to train and grow as a team, and when it comes to handling, I train the skills that I need as I need them. So I will just always be kind of looking six months ahead at what I.
Event or type of competition that I'm headed to, what do those courses look like? What are, what types of challenges do those judges put out? And I will train on those courses so that there are as few surprises as [00:32:00] possible for my handling plan when I go into competition and routines. Like I said, she is living and dying by those routines, so I have not seen any.
Fallout with her routines or regression of those routines. She is very happy when we end the run. She comes straight to me for her leash. She exits the ring very politely. We walk to our toy and we play for a while and then we cool down. So all of that has been no issue. So, In any of the situations and in most of these situations, the toy is quite far away.
So we are having to exit and walk with her loose leash for a while, and I'm really, really enjoying seeing how
[00:33:00] confident and happy she is when she leaves the ring that she is. , her body is loose and relaxed and she's wagging her tail at people as we walk by on our way to the toy. She is having a really, really positive reaction to the entire thing. So all of this has been really exciting and it's almost a little bit shocking even for me.
I followed my own program. I know that my program works. But even so, it still surprises me how well it does all work and how relaxed we both are because we understand the process so well, and we can both rely on each other. So, I didn't have to do a ton of adjusting. Like I said, there were, there was just a little bit of that weave pole issue that I was [00:34:00] able to fix in between the two competitions.
And now I will be looking for ways to reinforce her start line and her teeter. And mostly we are just going to continue on the plan, and that is, One more day of competition in the month of July. Then we're probably going to take all of August off to just work on progressing all of our skills and looking ahead to the West Coast open.
That is the end of September. I might do a couple three days of agility locally, the middle of September. Just to test some of the things that I'm going to be training in August, so that I know for sure what I have when I go to the Open. But ultimately the West Coast Open [00:35:00] will kind of be the end of this, um, this debut strategy for her, uh, after the West Coast opened my plan is that then she would have a little break and I will look.
At the next six months, what I would wanna do for her at that point, choose the events and go from there. Um, this debut strategy has gone so well that I do feel like I can call her debuted at the end of the West Coast Open. The West Coast Open is important to me because it will be the biggest event, um, right.
More people, more dogs, more energy. So I want to be sure I. That she's prepared for that level of events before I make plans for an even bigger event or an even, uh, more, uh, important to me event, [00:36:00] right? I want to make sure that she can handle the West Coast open before I ask for something that might be even harder or just different, right?
So, I am sure I will be able to update you all after that, but that is how the debut strategy went
while I'm talking about sprint's agility debut, I think this is the perfect episode to address these fantastic questions from a member of the train station a about arousal and specifically, uh, questions about something that I've said in in a previous episode and some of the things that I've put.
Online as learning materials, and Joanna has questions about this idea of training the dog's [00:37:00] arousal level to go up or the arousal level to spike when I take their leash off and not before and not a little bit after. The. First question is, what exactly do I mean by arousal spike? The presence of agility or the anticipation of agility is going to increase her arousal. Moving her body is going to increase her arousal. What happens to most dogs is that they have so many anticipatory feelings that they are now higher outside the ring than they probably would be.
Inside the ring. So I would like her to regulate all those anticipatory feelings. I want her to put all of that anticipation into maintaining calm [00:38:00] still behaviors, and I want. To hold off on the action behaviors, the movement behaviors, until they are useful for me. And so instead of talking about levels of arousal, or is she too high, is she not high enough?
I just want to look at behavior. So if we have anticipation going into the ring and she's moving her body and moving her body and moving her body now, asking her to be still after she's been moving her body outside the ring, that's probably going to be frustrating and probably going to lead to. Start line problems, but if I go from stationary behavior, we're calm, we're self-regulating to just another calm, stationary behavior, and then you get to do agility.
I [00:39:00] do believe that's easier regardless of the arousal level. Right? So the fact that it's happening when she takes her leash off. Or when I take her leash off, that's just anticipation. She gets to move her body for the first time and she knows that she's about to get to do agility and yeah, there's one more calm.
I need you to hold it together moment before she gets to agility. I don't think I have the ability to, Erase that anticipatory response, right? The leash coming off is just that final, yes, we're gonna get to do this, and so, and she's moving her body to get into the lineup, so, If we could see her arousal levels, like a gauge on the side of her body, I would say that it was already up outside the ring, but it was manageable and it's up when we enter the ring.
But now [00:40:00] that she's also getting to move her body, it's going to go a little bit higher. Hopefully it doesn't need to go any higher than that. So that she can hold her start line and then continue. So it's, it's kind of a complicated answer, but I do think that we should be focusing more on fluency of the skills rather than are they too high or not?
Um, your second question, how did I train the specific arousal level? Do, I mean using behaviors that tend towards a certain level of arousal? Yes. So I think I answered this question in my first answer because the, the arousal level is going to go up based on the behavior that they're doing, so, Like I said, she is definitely at a high level of arousal just upon entering an [00:41:00] agility space, but the fact that she can maintain stillness behaviors tells me that she can, can control her arousal level.
She can self-regulate, she can maintain the use of her energy, she can. Put all of that anticipation aside for the moment and focus on her downst stay. And then as soon as the leash comes off, she knows that she doesn't have to put all that energy into that and she gets to put her energy into running agility.
And that's really exciting. So, Your final question is, why do you want it right before you expect her to be still at the start line, and why not after the stay as she is released? Like I said, I don't think I have that much control over what her body's doing in that moment. I already think that waiting outside the ring, it's a, it's a [00:42:00] hard behavior, so, If she wants to have a little increased arousal as she enters the ring, and as long as she can maintain the fluency of her start line.
She's going to get access to the next piece of that behavior. So I don't view the start line as a passive behavior like I do waiting outside the ring. I teach the start line as an active behavior. It's almost always reinforced with action. So even though she's staying put, I can guarantee you every muscle in her body is activated versus when she's.
Lying down outside the ring, she looks like she's go at a picnic and she's more relaxed her. She might be hip rolled. She's looking around. She's just not as intense, but even though I want her to maintain the start line, it is an active behavior. It's no different than a [00:43:00] stopped contact or staying put on the table or really staying in the weave poles.
It's an active behavior, so I need that behavior to hold up even in high arousal. So everything about her life has been teaching me how to
maintain behaviors when she's in high arousal, because I know that this is the reality and so far. Consistency has been the main priority if I'm consistent in delivering reinforcement and finding the reinforcement that speaks to her. She understands these tasks pretty easily, so as soon as she realizes that access to moving her body was gained via self-regulating and keeping that energy level down, or keeping that [00:44:00] arousal level down and doing stationary behaviors.
She learned it very, very quickly. So Joanna, I hope this helps or at least continues the conversation. If you have follow up questions, please post them in the train station. And these questions were great. I love these types of things that make me think a little bit more about things that I've done or things that I've said, and I wish you all the best with your dog and their start line.
Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, there are several ways you can leave me positive reinforcement. One, leave me a five star review. Two, share with your fellow agility nerds, or three, share your thoughts with me on social media. Be sure to follow at FX agility on Facebook or Instagram.[00:45:00]
