[00:00:00] Hey there. If you're an agility nerd, you're in the right place. You're listening to fostering excellence in agility. I'm Megan, your resident agility competitor, coach, and mentor. And this podcast is where I break down all things agility and guide you on your path to excellence. Are you ready? Let's go.
Today I want to talk about how to recognize when things are starting to go wrong before they're really going wrong. And a lot of this comes down to being a curious observer about your training and your trialing behaviors and habits. The [00:01:00] first thing that you need to absolutely be able to recognize is your dog's or yourself or your team's baseline normal.
What does this behavior look like under normal general conditions? And if it already is looking different when you change those conditions at all, that's what we want to pay attention to. So if you can change the conditions in training and get a different response. Then I would say that behavior is not ready for the trial because that is exactly how we dig ourselves into a hole where the dog has one behavior in training and one behavior in a trial.
My general rule is that if something happens one time, I'm not going to let the dog know that I'm thinking about it, but I am making [00:02:00] a mental note that something other than normal happened, and I'm going to make that note Regardless of where I am. If I'm training in my regular training space, if I'm training somewhere novel, if I'm competing somewhere that we're both comfortable in, or if we're competing somewhere novel.
I'm going to make note of something happening one time. I'm just probably not going to do anything about it just yet. There are some exceptions, obviously, um, with most dogs. If they break their start line, even if it's the first time they've ever done it. I'm probably going to reset them. Same for any other type of stationary criteria.
There are always going to be exceptions to these things, and there's a lot of nuance depending on the individual dog, or where we are in our competition history, where we are in our training history, uh, and again, always going [00:03:00] back to what's normal. So in a very broad sense, if something happens one time, I'm not going to bring attention to that for the dog.
I'm just going to make a small mental note of it so that if it does happen again. I'm already aware of it, and I can start to recognize the pattern, now I'm very interested. Now I'm looking at what is the same about these contexts, what's different about these contexts, uh, so that I can be a better trainer, so that I can take that back to a context in which the behavior is a hundred percent.
How I want it, and then slowly layer in these changes that might produce the wrong response, and I wanna do it in a way that doesn't produce the error, but slowly builds the [00:04:00] dog's fluency around the correct behavior in the distracting context.
Now, this next part dives a little deeper, and I'll be honest, I have been accused of seeing ghosts everywhere. And this is only bad if it is paralyzing you, or if it is stopping you from making progress. So, what I mean by seeing ghosts is that I'm curious about a lot of things, and I look for variations in my dog's behavior even if they're not faultable problems.
Even if the dog's behavior is still technically correct, if there's anything that's outside that baseline of what I define as normal for the dog, I'm [00:05:00] curious about it. And this is most of the time, this is what we. see in trials, and I take that trial data very seriously. I want to look for any regression of the behaviors, not just behaviors that end in a fault.
And so, I'm looking for latency, so hesitation, slowing down where I'm not expecting them to slow down. Um, for some dogs I might even be looking at, Oh, they barked in that situation and they wouldn't normally bark. A lot of times it's nothing. , a lot of times when you get curious about something and you test something or you ask the dog some questions in training, it turns out to be nothing.
But, if you get into the habit of observing these small differences and then getting curious about those small differences, you're able to recognize When things are [00:06:00] starting to go wrong before they actually go wrong, and you can make changes and you can get your team back on track a lot faster than if you have to wait until it's a full blown problem and your dog isn't able to perform the correct behavior in the competition.
And when I'm getting curious about these things, I'm always trying to take it back to training because if I don't see those little regressions or little variations in the behavior in training, it's likely an environment problem or a mindset problem. And that's also great information to have because then we know how to direct our training.
We know how to focus our time in order to fix this. Very small problem before it turns into a very big problem. And if the problem does show up [00:07:00] in my training, that's also great because then I can dial in the different layers of fluency and build up the confidence in that behavior, just like I was talking about in the beginning of this episode.
To give you some ideas, I'm going to break down some different behaviors of sprints and what I would classify as normal or not normal for that behavior. So with regards to her start line, her criteria is that when I turn my head to look at her before releasing her, she needs to be still. This means the position that she's in is not all that important to me.
Just that she's not moving and that she's not self releasing. So it would be common for me to turn my head back and see her in a different position than when I left her. For [00:08:00] example, she will often move from her sit more into a crouchy, not quite a down, but not necessarily a sit either. It's, it looks very coiled, like she's just about to, like, spring into action.
But it would be abnormal if when I turned my head she was standing up or walking forward. Even if she doesn't self release. That's something that would make me have a mental note of, Gee, I'm going to watch the video and see if something happened behind her. Or I'm going to think about that specific lead out to determine if that was just something she was confused about or uncomfortable with.
Now, let's talk about her weaves. If she misses a weave poll entry because of lack of collection, that would be a common and normal mistake for her [00:09:00] and wouldn't make me think much other than, gee, this needs more training. But if she misses the wrong entry because she chose the wrong gap, that is abnormal for her and would make me want to get curious about why she might have done that.
Now remember, one mistake is an accident. Two mistakes is the start of a habit. So if we are in the middle of a trial, obviously I'm just going to make a mental note of it. And then if it does come up again, I know that I have some serious training to get back to. And I might even consider skipping weaves or trying to help her with the injuries with handling in some way, just so that I can keep the mistake from happening throughout the weekend.
Another abnormal [00:10:00] mistake for Sprint would be leaving the weave poles early. And if this were to be happening, I would be very curious and maybe even concerned that she was in some pain or some minor injury was starting to crop up. So injury is another great reason to be very open and curious about small variations in your dog's behavior.
Sometimes we're not even getting ahead of a problem that's going to impact their score. Sometimes we are getting ahead of an injury that is going to impact their entire career. And that leads me into the final example. For Sprint, which is following the handling and turning tight in general, slowing down and collecting in general.
Um, I know for a fact that when her feet start to hurt, turning and kind of [00:11:00] her best effort for following the handling kind of goes out the window. She doesn't collect as much, she goes a little bit longer, she kind of runs in a straighter line. I think she's avoiding. Those digging in and turning types of movements when her feet start to get sore.
And so if I'm very honest when I watch her videos and I see that start to happen I can Pause on training. I can put a pause on the competition. I can scratch runs we can You know, go home early so that I don't continue to, one, rehearse the behaviors that I don't want to see, and also keep her in any sort of discomfort or pain.
So this isn't always about more training. Sometimes it really is just about finding those small things that can tell us a lot about the dog's headspace, the [00:12:00] dog's comfort level, and yes, of course, the dog's fluency in those behaviors.
So to quickly recap how we recognize when things are going wrong before they can truly go wrong is to be a curious observer. Have a really clear understanding of what is normal behavior for your dog and when you see anything outside of that normal behavior get curious about it. It doesn't always mean anything.
But at the very least, it can give you insight into what additional layers of fluency that your dog would benefit from. And even if you don't have anything to do about it, then it's just good practice of being a good observer. Good dog trainers are good observers.
Thanks for listening. If [00:13:00] you enjoyed this episode, there are several ways you can leave me positive reinforcement. One, leave me a five star review. Two, share with your fellow agility nerds or three, share your thoughts with me on social media. Be sure to follow at FX agility on Facebook or Instagram.
