OB160 Ring Confidence for Obedience, Rally, and Agility

Most of the material will relate to any dog sport where you enter a ring area to be judged. Differences between the sport of obedience, rally, and agility will be specifically mentioned in each lecture and there will be a small amount of lectures specific just to obedience/rally or just to agility.

O=Obedience, R=Rally, A=agility

Week 1:

• Creating a Read to Work Cue- Squishing
• Teach a Simple Ring Entrance
• Exploding Tree: O/R
• Leash Removal:
• Adding Distance to Ring Entrance
• Using Fun Matches/ Run Throughs
• Engagement and Acclimation

Week 2:

• Adding a Simple Distraction
• Delays in Obedience and Teaching a Nose Bridge- O
• Conditioning a Ready Cue- O/R/(A)
• Drive For Setups and Startlines
• Increasing the Value of Distractions

Week 3:

• Combine Squish with Ring Entrance
• Adding a Human Distraction
• Leash Handoffs
• Ring entries: opening a gate- A
• Setting Up Inside the Ring: O/R
• Startline Routines in Agility: A

Week 4:

• Transitions Between Exercises: O
• Startline Delays: A
• Interaction with the Judge: O/R
• Performing With Human Distractions: A
• Performing with Human Distractions: O/R
• Chaining Ring Skills Together

Week 5:

• Trial Days: Acclimating & Warming Up Your Dog
• Rewards at a Distance: starting Out
• Rewards at a Distance: Building Routines
• End of Run Sequence: Leash Behaviors
• End of run Routines: Approaching the Reward
• Looking at the judge DURING exercises and rally signs- O/R
• Distractions inside the Ring

Week 6:

• Thinking about our stress
• When things go wrong in the ring

Using Fun Matches/Run Throughs

For those who have access to matches/run throughs please take advantage of them as often as possible! BUT, the focus of them should be very little about the exercises themselves until your dog has mastered the exercises we have done in this class. Especially if your dog has already been trialing and was showing signs of ring stress, you will need to continue working very hard to override that prior learning. Trial like environments need to be seen as stress free as possible for the dog!

Getting "experience" for the pure sake of getting experience is a plan that usually leads to problems. Testing to see where the dog is should be done rarely and the handler should be ready to switch over into training mode the first sign that the dog is struggling or not ready. I will repeat myself in saying that trial-like environments need to be seen as stress free as possible for the dog!

Instead, use your time in the ring to reinforce the three main goals of this class

1. The ring is a happy place to be.
2. Keep focus even with distractions
3. The ring prep routine we are working on training at home is the same in this "new" environment!

That often means breaking things way down and starting at a level you are 100% sure your dog can win at.

When you first start going to run throughs it will simply be seeing if the dog can give you good focus and energy outside of the ring before you enter and immediately party. You will stay at this step until you see your dog visibly excited to enter the ring!

At most run throughs you have a set time. As long as you let the workers know, most places are ok with you entering and leaving multiple times to do as you wish. Sometimes you will not be able to reward your dog with a food or toy in the actual ring, so in that case you can set your reward on the stewards' table or just outside the ring and exit as often as you need to in order to reward.

This may feel hard to do. Especially if you are the only one doing it! I promise you that not as many people are staring at you as you think. And some people will see this and think it's a great idea to try too!

Starting Point:

Do ring entrances to a straight party over and over until you see your dog is excited to get into that ring AND can focus on you well for your party. Remember to give your "take a break" cue and leave the ring between reps.

Every single time you feed your dog, that is your sign that the rep you just did is over. No feeding in place and continuing on to the next piece in the chain. Feed (might as well make it a party!) and either leave the ring or at least move back towards the entrance area.

Having this rule of each reward ends the rep both prevents us from being too greedy about what the dog can actually handle, and makes it so we need to be more thoughtful and not just mindlessly feeding!

Then you can add ONE more step to the chain before rewarding, then exiting the ring to tray again. For obedience that will likely look like this:

Ring entrance to a setup for a rep. Then ring entrance and leash remova for a rep(s). Then ring entrance, leash removal, and transition(s) of moving to different places to setup. And finally back to a simple ring entrance and setup but with a person in the ring. And so forth and so forth.

For agility that might look like ring entrance- leash removal-move to setup spot- (practice delay in the ring? practice leash runner? 1 jump?) Remember that each rep you're splitting it down and only doing what you know your dog can do on this day, in this moment.

Leave the ring, if possible, between each new rep so that you can work the entrance piece again!!

Having the "rule" of a reward ending that rep is a great way to help us slow down and not add in too many pieces before the dog is ready! If we know that the beginning is really tough for the dog, we will find ways to break it down and repeat it vs powering through and trying to get to the next piece!

Do not rush the process and jump to the next step if your dog is showing signs of either loss of attitude or loss of focus!

At some point you will want to "test" your dog and see what they can handle on that very first rep at a new fun mach. Great! But be prepared to abort at any point in the sequence to reward your dog for doing extra well or to support them if they start to flounder. Again testing should be done sparingly.

Once you've gone through the process and have a dog who can enter the ring happily, stays focused with the leash removal, and sets up nicely even with people in the ring, then you can start slowly adding actual work to the process. More than likely this won't be done in your first fun match or even your 2nd or 3rd if your dog has trialed previously. It takes time to build their new routine.

But when you see that your dog is ready, go ahead and add in that tiny bit of work. For obedience and rally it will likely be heeling, but it doesn't have to be! If your dog loves their perch, you can setup and pivot on the perch! Or bring their dumbbell and do a retrieve!

For agility, do a single tunnel or a few jumps before rewarding.

Over time you will start to add helpers to the work as well. Have your judge follow you on the heeling. Or having a ring steward sitting in a chair by the jumps, a judge standing near the weaves, etc. If your dog seems unsure, abort and either add more distance from your distraction or go back to simpler behaviors. !

For many dogs, you will want to keep up these games for your dog's entire trialing career. Setting up in the ring should always lead to the possibility of a game or the value you have created will start to slide.

And remember that your squish is a trained behavior. Your dog will stop exploding out of it with focus and enthusiasm if you stop practicing it!

Example Videos

The example videos below will show dogs at different stages and more advanced than we've discussed so far at week 1!! Please don't jump ahead to adding "more" than you've practiced. It's super important that the dog knows what to expect and has rehearsed that over and over again before doing it in a different environment!!

If you jump past what you've trained, you risk reinforcing the idea that the routine you're developing at home is very different from what will happen in a trial. It strengthens the belief that trials are different!

Here is Grace's very first run through. She handler doesn't quite do the ring entrance to party concept (she hadn't yet taken my ring confidence class!), but I do coach her on working just entering the ring, setting up and giving cookies, and then cuing to leave again! You can see her focus isn't 100% but it gets better with each ring entrance until one towards the end where I have her owner reset!

On her 2nd time slot that evening, her owner again starts with enter the ring-feed- and then leave. They do this several times before I start filming at a point where she wants to try going to the next sign. You can see the huge increase in focus here!

Note: Her owner fed her at this 1st sign and didn't leave the ring but proceeded to the next sign. I recommend having the reward be the end of that rep and at minimum feed with a cookie toss and mini party before setting back up, OR leave the ring to get it all in flow!!

While technically Grace's progression isn't quite what I would do, (I would add more play, and possibly some "transition" practice even on a rally setup), it was still a great first run through and set up the dog for success!! This team wasn't yet introduced to a lot of the concepts we'll be talking about in this class, and it was a great way to structure them to have a positive experience.

Here is an example of Ginny's first agility runthrough! I work on removing the collar once she looks at me, moving to the first jump, and I do add a few agility obstacles. The rewards are off my body and I add in leash on to exit the ring to reward before coming back in to try again. You can see that this is right at the maximum difficulty level I'm comfortable with as she had brief moments of disconnect

And now an example of Ginny's first run through for rally/obedience! This did not go as well as I planned. I thought she would be ready for enter-leash-pause-reward, and then slowly adding in some work on subsequent reps. She struggles with the activity and then really struggled with a dog who was stress barking/whining. I do a lot of cookie scatters and some movement breaks. On the positive side, you can tell we've practice ring entrances aton as she was able to do that even when stressed. What she was not able to do was leash removal! This might be because it needs more practice to be able to done under pressure, or it might be that stationary work is just harder for her to do when stressed vs movement based work (that's good to know about your dog!!) This is her entire first turn.

Loot's first run through was a bit different. He had great focus on me and I pushed a bit more on precision at the start. I also work with the toy off my body. He can't quite do everything and I feel I was a bit greedy. But overall a successful experience on entering the ring, leash removal, and adding a tiny bit of work before the reward at a distance:

Here is Ginny practicing an agility routine at class. Not officially a run-through, but it mimic what I'd do at one!

And another example of Ginny at obedience open ring time. No helpers were available, so I started with some easy ring entrances to a reward as she had never been to this location before. The first rep goes great, so I add a set up and leash removal to rep #2. Then rep #3 I continue to progress by adding in a tiny bit of heeling and transitions to set up in different places. Rep#4 I decide to add in more work and bring her dumbbell. I still skip the formality of the full exercise, and practice transitioning to a new setup and then reward. You can see how my work is super super short in all of these!

And another obedience video of Loot at an obedience "party". This time I have access to helpers! I push Loot a bit on this as he had a lot of trial prep experience already (not trialing!) and it's the people pressure I want to work on:

Overview

This class has just begun so we haven't gotten to most of the steps mentioned yet. But anytime you have the chance to go to a run through take advantage of it! Stick to the steps your dog knows or just plain ring=party.

With agility, remember the concepts are the same! How will you enter the ring, remove the leash, setup? And gradually adding more pieces that we'll get to in the lectures with a delay at the start line, a helper coming to grab your leash and getting too close to you, etc!

If at all possible, leave the ring between each new rep so that you can work the entrance piece again!!

If you can't do that, reward and move back towards the entrance area after each party.

Having the "rule" of a reward ending that rep is another great way to help us slow down and not add in too many pieces before the dog is ready! If we know that the beginning is really tough for the dog, we will find ways to break it down and repeat it vs powering through and trying to get to the next piece!