Compairing two agility runs, two months apart

This is a comparison between two Agility runs, 2 months apart.

Ginette and Harper, a 4-year-old Belgian Tervuren, had their first agility trial at the end of October 2018. They definitely struggled. Both handler and dog had a disconnect with each other. While they did improve as the trial went on, most runs this first trial weekend were very similar.

With the help of her coaches, she spent the next two months working on her communication with Harper. Your communication with your dog is not just with your voice. Our body language plays a very big part in communicating with our dogs. If our body language is one of frustration, the dog will start doing things THEY think are good, trying to make you happy. More often than not it just adds to our frustration.

In the following video you will see a side by side comparison of her first run in Ginette’s and Harper’s first trial, and one of their runs two months later.

Notice how Ginette had become much more confident which bled right into Harper. Harper began looking to her leader for direction. This made a huge difference in their runs. Because Harper saw Ginette’s confidence, she was willing to take direction. This is very noticeable at the end of the run when Harper is ahead of Ginette, and Harper looks back to get direction. When you watch their first run, Harper never looks to Ginette for direction. That is a huge improvement. By taking the time to build their communication skills, not just agility skills, they improved both.

If your dog knows the equipment, then most of what we need is communication and control. In Agility it’s not all about having the fastest dog, it’s having a fast AND an accurate dog. Your dog can only be accurate if you have good communication. I like to think of a good agility run as having three things. First is a dog that knows the equipment. Second is good communication between you and your dog. The third is knowing your dog.

Knowing your dog is very important. How they run on different surfaces is a must. Here is a video of Victor and I doing a Premier Standard run. While I know how my dog usually runs, in this instance I had never run on pact dirt before, resulting in a longer than anticipated jump. It was a good learning experience for he and I, and I am looking forward to the next time we compete at this facility.