048: startlines
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[00:00:00] If you train, compete, or teach dog agility, you're in the right place. Hey there, I'm Megan Foster, creator of Fostering Excellence and Agility. Join me as I share key insights on all things related to dog agility and help find your team's path to excellence and unlock your best year yet. Let's get started.
Hey there. Today's episode is going to be all about start line training. How you enter the ring, set your dog up and get your run started, can set the tone for the entire course. And I see way too many teams kind of fighting at the beginning of their run. Whether it's fighting for focus, fighting for them to stay, or fighting for them to [00:01:00] get started on course, that's not a great way to start any sort of team sport, right?
And that stress leaks into the rest of the run really, really easily. So I kind of wanna break down the things that I believe. Go into building a really robust and solid start line routine.
First and foremost, I do believe that we need to build the concept of stillness into our dog's repertoire.
I want my dogs to be confident in their ability to offer stillness. If this is a behavior that's easily offerable from them, then it's going to be easier for them to offer that stillness on the start line when the most exciting game is in front of them [00:02:00] and they cannot wait to start it. So first, that is a big part of my start line training program.
Is building that fluency and that motivation to be still. This allows me a little bit of freedom to not have to be very picky about the dog's positioning,
It means that as I'm leading out, I don't have to worry if they move their foot a centimeter or if they shift their weight forward or backwards, or if they lean forward a little bit. If I am confident in their ability to be still and to wait for a release, I don't have to be. Overly obsessive about the position that I leave them in or feel like I have to maintain an unreasonable criteria of perfectly still.[00:03:00]
This is because I view the start line behavior as an active behavior. All of their muscles are engaged. They're anticipating that release. They're preparing to leap into the air for that first jump. I don't expect most dogs to be in a passive position that is perfectly still.
I also lean on this ability to offer stillness as a part of my dog's ability to wait outside the ring, and I build that into the start line routine itself. But don't worry, I also focus on teaching really good positions and position changes. It just means that I don't have to be. Thinking about it so much that I am nervous about my [00:04:00] dog start line when I enter the competition.
Handler nerves impact a lot when it comes to start lines, which is why in the skill section of the program, there are lessons for the handler to work on their mechanics without the dog. If you know me, this does not come as a surprise to you because we know that focusing on our own mechanics and making sure that our cues.
Are clean and clear is a huge part of the dog being successful.
The second thing I'm really, really focused on in my program is how the dog is motivated to stay still, and also focusing on what's motivating them to move. So this is going to differ for each team because there are those dogs that inherently. Gain the reinforcement [00:05:00] from doing the agility itself.
Therefore using agility as both the motivator to stay and the motivator to go. Is really quite simple, but that's not going to be the case for every dog out there. And so we have to install other ways of getting that same anticipation for starting the game that we see in the dogs that have that anticipation naturally.
So we focus on building reinforcement that is ring sustainable. We bring in chase games so that the dog is learning to anticipate chasing after their handler. We incorporate pre placed rewards so that we don't have to have food on our body to encourage our dogs to stay put or go forward. We build a lot of fluency around stashed reinforcement because that's what it's going to look like at the competition.
We're going to leave reinforcement outside of the [00:06:00] ring. We have to go into the ring, get a super snappy start line, run an entire course, and then we can exit to that reinforcement. So we look at that dog as an individual and build the motivators that that dog needs in order to both build anticipation for going and build the motivation for waiting.
The third focus point of my program is to build really clear chains of behaviors.
One of the most common mistakes that I see in start line training is lack of clarity within the start line routine. So that means that the routine is very different from training to trialing.
So there's a lot of variability in what is happening and that's going to cause your dog to be confused in the competition ring when we [00:07:00] te tend to do things the same way when we are competing.
So when we're building these robust chains of behaviors, we're taking those skills that we teach about stillness and pairing them with the motivators that we are building so that we have a way to build anticipation for moving and motivation for waiting. And we pair those things together and we teach your dog a very predictable routine that puts the dog in the driver's seat of their run.
Building the really robust chains is also going to help you. Remove reinforcement from your entire performance a lot more easily, because if your dog can do an entire kind of pre-run, beginning of run, uh, start line routine without reinforcement, that amount of time is sometimes longer than the agility run itself.
And so if the dog is comfortable with a certain [00:08:00] amount of time without reinforcement. That's going to make doing a, you know, 30 45 second agility run quite easy for them.
Finally in my start line program, there's a very big focus on ring sustainability from the very first lessons. This means that right away I focus on layering in different distractions of the competition environment. So right from the beginning, I want my dog to. Build a certain level of fluency with all of these different skills around the types of distractions that they are likely to encounter at an agility event.
So these are distractions that deal with people. Dogs noise and the environment itself. .
So we focus on putting in those distractions very early [00:09:00] on so that the dogs. Really, truly know that it is the predictability of the routine and the handler's, mechanics that are the most salient cues, and that all of those other things are not relevant to how the dog performs. So by doing this on a very small scale from the very beginning, as the chains of behaviors get bigger and the time between reinforcers gets longer, the dog's behavior is actually stronger.
So there you have it. You have the skills of start lines, the motivators of start lines, the chains of behaviors that create your start line routine and the ring sustainable training habits that tie it all together. I hope this gets you thinking about the way you train start lines in a slightly different way.
And if [00:10:00] you're interested in training your start line with me. I am running my start line program as an online class starting June 2nd. Each phase, which there are eight training phases, uh, will have lessons in each of these four categories, and they are laid out in a way that each lesson kind of builds on the previous, and you will begin layering in those.
Motivators, building chains, and putting it into the context of an agility event right from the very first couple of weeks. The program will run for 16 weeks so that you have two weeks per phase to work on that material. Of course, you will be able to work at your own pace. Um. And keep that content for longer than those 16 weeks.
But within that, the working spots will be able to submit video for me [00:11:00] to review and give feedback on, and all participants will have the opportunity to ask questions about the content. In the program, I will also be having a group coaching call for all participants to come and talk about the material, how to apply it, the nuance of some of the material, and also fill in those questions of where this is headed.
So those coaching calls will also be every other week so that you have a little time with the material before and after those coaching calls to help everything sink in and make the learning really strong for yourself, because your dog will be super solid and I want you to be as well. If you're interested in enrolling in this program, you can head over to fx agility school.com/start lines that stick, and I'll drop that link in the show notes and you can always reach out to me for more information.
[00:12:00] Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, I really appreciate some feedback. You can leave me a review, engage on social media or share this with a friend. I hope you'll be back to listen to my next episode. In the meantime, you can find all of my offers on my website, fx agility.com. Happy training.
