What is Foundation Agility.
Foundation is where you start your agility journey. People often wonder why
they cannot start in Beginners, but first you need to learn the foundation skills.
Then you can progress to running short courses in beginners. Even
experienced agility handlers start new dogs/pups in foundation
Your dog needs to work equally well on your left and right hand sides, walking
and running with you and changing sides fluently. You need to be able to
position your dog (sit, drop or stand) on either side and to leave him in position
while you walk away. We introduce the concept of a release word meaning
your dog can break position when cued. Actually you should already be using
a release word in obedience to end a behaviour such as a stay. A prompt
recall is also necessary.
Your dog training skills will be tested as you learn to move away from luring a
behaviour and begin learning to shape the behaviour. Understanding the use
of a clicker or bridge word will be important. At this stage your dog should start
to focus on the job not on the food or toy. Hopefully this will be an ‘ah ha’
moment for you and your dog.
You will also learn to send your dog away from you, initially around a cone,
then to a jump. We introduce the tunnel which most dogs love and also some
jumping exercises – believe it or not, not all dogs jump properly or know how
to collect their bodies.
Finally you will learn how to teach your dog to weave thru 12 poles and to
negotiate the large contact obstacles safely and correctly.
Whilst we use a lot of food rewards, we also like to use toys. Teaching a tug
and retrieve to your hand is very useful.
To make any progress you need to put in time at home practicing all these
exercises. Very little equipment is required – 4 garden stakes for weaving
plus a short plank 30cm wide and as long as your dog. Jumps can be made
with a garden stake on some bricks, height is not important at this stage.
Traffic cones are useful but anything you can teach your dog to go around
such as a chair will do.
Warning: Agility is addictive😊