Avoiding Off-course Obstacles in Dog Agility
Be Proactive in Dog Agility
To help your dog avoid off-course obstacles, here are some things you can do:
1. Identify off course obstacles. a) Walk the course as your dog.
Step over the jumps and see what your dog sees. Line yourself up at the tunnel exit to see if there is an off-course obstacle. b) Study the course map and draw a circle around cff -course "traps."
2. Proactively cue your Dog.
When approaching a situation where an off-course obstacle is looming in front of your dog, call "Here, here!" (or whatever your recall cue is.) Don't wait until your dog makes a beeline for the obstacle. Be proactive. Or use a strong non-verbal cue like a reverse spin
to guide your dog away from the off-course obstacle.
After a word from our sponsors below, you can see a video illustrating the "Here! Here!" technique for proactively calling a dog away from an off-course obstacle.
Video. See the video below featuring
music by Keiko Matsui and Magic Momo Superdog. Keiko Matsui says Momo is "Adorable.".
Magic Momo Strolls Through AKC Premier Course
In the video, here, (accompanied by music by Keiko Matsui) you can see Magic Momo Superdog running through an AKC Premier Course and avoiding several off-course obstacles.
Tunnel after dog walk. In a previous run with a similar setup
Momo turned right after the dog walk to go into the tunnel. She did that quite well in the previous run. However, in this run, Momo was not supposed to go there! She remembered the previous run and started to head again for the tunnel. I quickly called her away from the tunnel. A target for improvement, here, for me, is to be more proactive in alerting Momo to turn left away from the tunnel.
In the video
you can see where I used "Here! Here!" to call Momo away from off-course jumps. This worked very well. Other dogs didn't get that cue and ran off-course. Toward the end of the course, Momo had to run between two jumps across the field. Keeping my hand low and calling "Here! Here!" did the trick.