Dog Training Psychology for Dog Agility

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Dog Agility Tugging tips

How to Teach Your Dog to Enjoy Tugging
in Dog Agility Training

One of the most important things you can do in training your dog is to establish a reinforcing routine. A primary reinforcer is something that naturally increases the rating of responding of a behavior that it follows. If your dog enjoys tugging and you can teach her to tug on cue, you have a powerful way to reinforcer your dog without treats.  Food treats are also good, but they work best when a dog is hungry.  So when using food you must be careful to feed your dog just the right amount of food.  

With tugging however, food is not so much of a concern. Check out this video below for tips on tugging.

Esteban here says that we need to proof our dog in different environments to make sure that a reinforcer is still desired by a dog. But how do you do this?


In my experience, you don't need to do much about this except expose your dog to a lot of environments. When a dog is frightened because of a strange environment, interest in food or toys naturally just drops out. 


If you, yourself are in a frightening situation, do you feel like sitting down to a nice dinner or an ice cream cone ?  No, you probably want to get the * out of there.  Your dog will feel the same.  Even one of Esteband's dogs felt the same and high-tailed it out of the ring at a trial, jumping over the fence! That's where the name "Bad dog Agility" came from!  


So if you have a dog new to agility what can you do? Simple. Go to lots of "Fun Matches" or classes that simulate trials.


Be sure to walk your dog all around the grounds so Fido gets used to the place.

 This is called adaptation and was studied in thousands of experiments. Animals or birds once thought to be stupid, eventually performed as well as the rest once they were given time to adapt. So be patient. 


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Get tips from an Olympic Champion to help yourself be at your best. Understand why trying hard in dog agility competition does not work! Learn what does work.

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