[00:00:00] Hey there. If you're an agility nerd, you are in the right place. You are 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.
Hey everyone. Today I wanna talk to you about deciding if you and your dog are ready to start competing. This is fresh on my mind as I have just recently started competing with my two year old Border Collie Sprint. And so that checklist that I went through is still very fresh. And so the first place that I start when [00:01:00] I'm deciding if it is indeed time to jump into the competition space is I want to take one big look at my goal for the team's entire career.
Now you know me, and if we talk about goal setting, Which I have in the past. I don't like to attach my personal competitive achievements to a specific dog, but , as I learn that dog and learn how they feel about the sport and competing, I do have. Pretty good ideas as to where that particular dog may take me.
And so that means that their entire training, I'm trying to prepare them for that kind of end result. Well, where are we gonna go in [00:02:00] the future? So my goals are, Primarily centered around where are we headed, not where we are currently. And this matters because I am so protective of the behaviors and habits and routines and experiences that my young dogs have in competition.
I want everything that I do from the very first time that they enter a competition. I want to support where I'm going. And I don't want to inadvertently, uh, sabotage myself for where I'm going due to kind of a lack of planning for the future. And trust me, I have done that before and I kind of vowed to myself that I would do things differently this time.
So that is what is guiding. My choices when I am deciding if we're, if a team is ready to compete, we're going to kind of telescope [00:03:00] out, think about where we want to go, where we want to end up. Even if it's several years into the future. I still want to take into account where I would like this team to head before deciding if they are ready to compete or not, because that answer is going to change.
How I decide when to compete, what competitions to enter, what classes, how many days. It's all going to make an impact on the decisions that I ultimately make. But once I have done that, I now need to take a really good look about what I currently have right now in front of me, and I need to ask myself, can the dog meet?
The expectations that I have for them in different training environments. So this means, um, the crating situation, the routine situation, [00:04:00] the obstacle situation, the following, the handling, the being in the environment. Has the dog shown you that they can go to a novel place or go to a known place with novel distractions?
And meet your expectations. And I'm not talking about a competition environment because we can't replicate the competition environment without a competition. I just want to know that I've taken the dog anywhere else rather than what's normal for them. Or like I said, somewhere that is normal for them with abnormal conditions.
And can they still meet my expectation? I don't want to find that out for the first time in a competition if I can avoid it, right? I want the best that I can to be prepared and to have a really good idea of how things are going to go. I definitely [00:05:00] have an aversion to surprises, but I definitely don't want any surprises when it comes to debuting my dog.
Okay, I want to walk in as confident as I can and that does include kind of testing to see if the things that I have been training are still holding up even in novel situations. This is mainly because of my focus on the dogs having a great experience in the competition ring. I absolutely love competing.
I am a very competitive person, and I think most of you listening also really enjoy competing and are also competitive. And if you're not ready to admit that, that's okay, you will. If you're entering a competition, you are competitive. [00:06:00] And so I want my dogs to love competing as much as I do. And that's why I'm so protective of their experience, especially those first few times.
Maybe it's even the first 10 times, it's going to be different for every dog, but ring experience is not equal all the way around. I hear it talked about a lot that, oh, that dog just needs more ring experience. Well, I would like to get more specific with that. I. It is not more experience that the dog needs.
It's more good experience that the dog needs because if the dog is going into a competition and having a bad experience, more of that same experience isn't going to help. It's going to just convince the dog that competing is a bad experience. So my main [00:07:00] focus is that the dog doesn't. Notice a difference in my routines, in my behaviors, in my expectations.
The only difference there is is that there's a little bit more excitement. I'm a little bit more excited. The people around us are a little bit more excited. There's cheering, there's maybe a few more people and a few more dogs, but that they have experienced all those things on a smaller scale and maybe even individually.
Through preparation and through training, and now all of those things that they have experienced outside of competition are just all together in one place on the same day. So my main focus is giving the dog good experiences. And so as I'm kind of thinking about the dog that I have right now, the dog that I am considering entering in a competition, Are [00:08:00] they prepared for what is likely to occur at the event?
And this also goes for the human end of the leash. I'm a very experienced competitor, so I didn't take as much time on my half of the equation here because, uh, I don't wanna count right now, but I've debuted many dogs, I've competed for many years. I am familiar with how. Competition works and the flow of the day and things like that.
But I did take a lot of time to go over the class schedule, the approximated run times. I planned my day. I make a big effort to make sure that my experience is also a good one, so that I'm also not surprised by things that happen on the day that are out of my control. So I do want to be sure that the entire team is prepared for the competition.
So if you've never competed [00:09:00] before, you really should reach out to your instructor or an experienced friend or find a mentor that can help you be prepared for what's going to happen at the event and. Definitely go to an event and experience the event without having entered the event so you can gain that experience for yourself.
So first and foremost, I want the entire team prepared for what is likely to occur at the event. And so that means I am planning the events that I'm choosing based on. What the team is prepared for. So this may mean that I am trying to seek out a specific, uh, ring setup, a specific location, a specific judge, a specific slate of classes.
[00:10:00] Maybe it's a specific organization, and then I'm slowly building up from there. This usually means that I'm not entering all of the classes. Usually means that I'm not entering all of the days of the event or some combination that fits the needs of the team. Okay. And mostly this is because I'm, like I said, I'm protective of their experience.
I want them to love competing as much as I do. But I also, I. Want to protect the habits that they are building. Okay, so when I do decide that we're ready to compete, we're ready to dive into the ring. My dog checks all the boxes. They can complete all of the required obstacles. They understand the routines.
They [00:11:00] have shown me that they can do it in different environments, in different. Conditions and things like that. So now I have to start building this debut strategy, and this is a big change in how I've debuted dogs in the past versus how I'm doing it currently. I used to just think of, it's a debut event, it's one time, and now they've debuted and then we just kind of go to competition and maybe we enter all the classes and all the days and we see how it goes, and we go up the levels as we can and we sort of. Gain experience as we go. Right? That's kinda how I used to look at it, and I'm gonna say that it was not my best plan in the past.
[00:12:00] So I am now looking at a debut strategy, whereas I'm not considering the dog debuted until I have exposed her to. All of the individual environments that I need her to be able to perform in. So how do I do that? Because that, it seems like a big thing. But as dog trainers we're very good at taking really big projects and splitting them down into doable pieces.
So your debut strategy needs to be. About your big picture. So go back to those goals. Go back to where you would like to be with this dog in three years and five years and 10 years. You know, what, what would you have liked to accomplish with this dog? And then I want you to think about those [00:13:00] locations.
You know, what do you need from this dog in his entire agility career, which, Situations, are you going to need them to be able to compete and function and thrive? Which locations are you going to be able to need to compete in and thrive in and bring your A game to? And then I want you to break that down into as small of a split as you can so that from.
Training to your first competition, there's not such a huge leap. Okay? So if you primarily train outdoors and then you go to an indoor event with more than one ring, that is a massive leap and your dog is likely to notice that leap, right? Especially. [00:14:00] If you think of your dog as kind of, of being aware of their environment where novelty is something that they do respond to and that you notice a difference when the context changes.
So leaping from primarily training outdoors to competing indoors might create a divide from training to competition that you don't want. So think if you primarily train outdoors, then definitely look for an outdoor event. And then multiple rings is definitely going to be more difficult than a single ring event, right?
Because when you've got multiple rings, you're gonna have more people, you're gonna have more stimulation, you're gonna have more dogs, you're gonna have more excitement, you're gonna have more adrenaline. In a one ring event, things just tend to. Go a little bit quieter, little [00:15:00] bit less, you know, buzzy and a little less noisy.
Um, and then even further, let's continue to split this down. Maybe you find a really small event where the entry is expected to be low, and so now there's just not as many people either. Maybe they're not as rushed. Um, you can slowly introduce the idea of competing. Right, and that's a much smaller leap from primarily training outdoors with a small group of people, or even by yourself, to competing outdoors with a slightly bigger group of people than normal.
That's gonna be far less noticeable to you and the dog, so that when you do start competing, you are more likely to. Access the same performance that you are accessing in training. Okay? And then [00:16:00] if that goes well, then you would leap up to maybe two rings outdoors or one ring in indoors. And slowly again, if the dog is meeting your expectations, dog is performing the way you expect them to.
Then you continue to expose them to different competition environments where you are the same, your routines are the same, your expectations are the same, and their experience is that it is the same as it is in training. Their experience is a good one, and absolutely, this is not the easiest way to go about this in the short term.
But I do believe that in the long term, this is what most dogs need from us because a lot of dogs are not just generalizing, [00:17:00] training, primarily a outdoor to a two ring indoor event. They're not generalizing from one location to the other. Okay. They might take more time. If you are making that big leap, they may take more time to realize that it is the same and on the way to them realizing that it is the same, they might develop some less than ideal habits in that time.
So while stretching out your debut over six months or even a year seems tedious and seems difficult, I'm going to bet that it will gain you more in the long run. And that is the hardest part about agility is the human side of things. Maintaining that criteria and delaying. [00:18:00] The instant gratification for the long-term gratification.
However, I also realize that this isn't an option for everyone, right? Not every location has enough events to choose from within a close enough area to make this happen. This is when we do need to go the extra mile to try and prepare our dogs for competition in training. We need to try. And split this differently.
This is where maybe the things that I talked about in last week's episode for exhibition only and fix and go on. These are the things that we would then pull into play. If we have to make a big leap from training outdoors to competing indoors, then I need to.
Try and use for exhibition only so that I can at least tell the dog, Hey, we're just training [00:19:00] in a new location and I don't need to consider that my official debut. I just need, or even a debut at all. Because you're not competing, you're training, right? So we need to look for the splits regardless of how we get them done.
We do need to recognize that. From training to trialing is going to be a difference, but how big of a difference it is is up to us. So if we take some time, look at all of our options, even entering in, into, um, an organization that you really don't have an, an interest in. Competing in long term. If it fits the right profile for where you are in your debut strategy, it's worth it.
It's worth that registration fee, and it's worth that entry fee into that event to be able to have that [00:20:00] split and. The more you can kind of seek out other options like that, I think will go further longer without developing those , potential bad habits, at least. Uh, this also goes back to what I was saying about not entering all of the classes or not entering all of the days, depending on your schedule and what the dog needs.
But if you are just asking questions of the dog, and that is really what a debut strategy is about and having these small splits is you are continuing the training process with the potential to earn ribbons now. Right? So when I have a puppy and I teach them something and then I. Take them to a new location and I ask them, Hey, can you do that thing I taught you here?
I'm just continuing that conversation [00:21:00] into competition, but I don't wanna be put into a situation where I might feel pressure to continue asking a question that my dog doesn't know the answer to. So for example, if my first. Test at a competition. I enter four classes that have weave poles, and on the first class they do them correctly, but maybe they're a little bit slow.
And then on the second class they. Have huge questions, right? They're, they maybe go past them or they can't finish them. I asked them a few times and they can't complete them, and then I ask them a third time and they still can't complete them, right? [00:22:00] They still have questions. I now have in a competition environment, in a competition context, a dog that has not weaved.
More than a dog that has weaved, and that's the habit that I'm trying to avoid when I'm making these small splits in the debut strategy. And that goes back to experience. I don't want the dog to continue experiencing not weaving. , because if I, if the dog isn't weaving but then continues to run the course, I am reinforcing the weaving.
But I don't wanna tell the dog that they're wrong for something that I don't know if they know, because they're telling me they don't know. Right. So I want to
be aware of how many times I'm asking my dog for skills. In a given weekend and then [00:23:00] slowly increase them from there. As the dog tells me that they do know the answer, that they are confident, and I talked about it last week in the, uh, for exhibition only and fix and go episode about how I might use that to help boost the dog's confidence, how I might.
Help the dog the first time with a contact performance or a weave pull entry, and then I might go do it again, use my fix and go when they haven't even made a mistake, do it again. And like they can show me. Holy moly, I do know this. I do know the answer. This is great. Let's do this fast, let's do this more confidently.
I would rather do that. Then enter a bunch of classes with the weave poles or with the contacts, or with whatever question I'm trying to gather data about and wonder from run to run. Are [00:24:00] they gonna do it this time? Are they gonna do it this time? And so on. So I'm probably not entering all of the classes because this goes for any of the skills, the outside the ring behaviors.
The start line, the contact performance. I also want to help myself as a human as much as I can. So the more classes we enter, maybe we are starting to get that, um, itch, that desire for the clear rounds, that desire for the ribbons, that desire for that immediate gratification. I totally understand and I feel it all of the time.
So if you're only entered in limited classes, you can't give in to that feeling. You can't give in to the desire to let that start line go. You can't give in to the desire to ignore. That self-released contact [00:25:00] and things like that. So you're also helping yourself not get too ahead , in your mind, about qualifying and getting titles and things like that.
And like I said, believe me, I have these feelings all the time. And so entering limited number of classes or limited number of days, yes. Can really help that. Okay, so another point about number of days is has your dog ever experienced doing agility multiple days in a row? Okay, so if you don't train every day, competing every day might be.
A big difference to the dog, especially when competing messes up your entire schedule. So typically I recommend doing, uh, may if it's a three day event, maybe the first day and the last day, or maybe just the middle day. If you are a [00:26:00] competitor that's also running other dogs. I find this really great to, you know, run my experienced dogs maybe on the two days and just run my young dog on the middle day.
I really like that because then I don't have to worry about the conflicts because that's also something that your young dog has maybe never experienced, is a rushed or brief warmup, cool down period, which can happen if you're running multiple dogs in the same level or in multiple levels, in multiple rings.
So if that's a split that you need to do for yourself, for your own mental management, for your own practice, and also for your dog. Absolutely do that. Please separate competing with your older dogs and competing with your new dog, just to give their brain and your brain a little bit of slack, because it's also really difficult going back and forth between multiple dogs, [00:27:00] just how they run and how you're planning a strategy for them.
So all of those things matter because those little things in competition, like ring conflicts, The cooling down period running multiple dogs, those things don't tend to come up in training because when we train we tend to like stick to that one dog for 10 or 15 minutes and then we swap dogs and we have as much of a transition period as we want.
When we are competing with multiple dogs, that's not under our control. So we need to practice that and slowly dive in. So as you are planning this debut strategy, you really have to. Work hard to understand all of the differences, all of the things that could point out to your dog. Hey, this is different.
Hey, we do things differently here, and break those down and slowly expose them to those differences over time, over a debut strategy. [00:28:00] Okay? The things that are going to be different for your team are going to be different. In every team that I talk to because of those big picture items, everyone has different resources when it comes to where they train, how often they train the distractions that they have access to when they train and the goals are going to be different.
You know, a team that is going to primarily compete in the same. A couple of locations for their entire career. Maybe they're going to compete once or twice a month and take a huge break in the summer and a huge break in the winter, and there's not really any desire to travel out of state to big events and things like that.
What that team needs to be prepared for is vastly different than the team that is preparing for. Driving [00:29:00] to events all over the place, or flying to events or competing in 4, 5, 6 ring events, right? So the, the things on your list that you are hoping to expose your dog to during the debut, debut strategy and the things that you are preparing your team for are going to be different based on your goals.
And your resources. So definitely keep that in mind. Always grab your instructor to talk this through. Ask if they have time to sit down with you. Maybe grab a coffee outside of class and work on this list to make sure that you are splitting the training process to the competing process as best you can, and also bouncing these ideas off of other people.
To be creative in the [00:30:00] splitting process. Okay? It is worth it. You will have a better debut experience overall when you look at it this way, and my hope is that we can decrease the amount of unnecessary stress that we put on the dogs. With that gap between training and trialing, my goal is that we can create the same dog that we have in training, in trialing if we take the time to show them that it is the same.
If the differences are too big, they're too bright, they are too loud. If those differences are lit up with neon signs, . You will find it hard to convince the dog that it is the same and that you are the same, and that the expectations are the same. And it is on [00:31:00] us as the human to convince the dogs that, uh, an agility career is the career that they want.
And I think we owe that to them. So if you are thinking about getting ready to compete, I hope you will take some time with a piece of paper or a whiteboard and a friend and a sounding board and decide if you as a team are prepared for what you're going to ask of the dog, and if there are different splits in the trialing behavior that you can make to make this transition that much easier for your team.
I would love to hear your thoughts on this idea and absolutely. If you engage with this episode on social media, I will definitely be that sounding board and other [00:32:00] members of the community I think would definitely be that sounding board for you. If you need help coming up with creative ideas to build your debut strategy, I also want to mention that if you have already started competing and you're not really a fan of how it's going, you can put a pin in what you're currently doing, build this debut strategy.
Give yourself some time to kind of train the things that are already kinda giving you angst in competition. Give yourself some time, give yourself some reset, and then go back out with a different debut strategy and see if that kind of fills in the gaps that you are already seeing. It is not too late.
Even if you've been competing for a while, you can stop. You can address the issues that [00:33:00] you're having. You can address them in training, and then you can re attempt. So, With this type of debut strategy, if you are retraining a single obstacle and then wanting to ask for that retrained obstacle in competition, a debut strategy for that new behavior is probably a good idea, especially if it was a retrained behavior like contacts or something like that.
Or start line, you know, re debuting that. New behavior is also a good idea. So this type of strategy isn't just for dogs that have never competed before. It is possible to use and it's a good idea to use because splitting is a good idea. Splitting the environment and the conditions in which we want the dog to perform in is just good dog training, and we have to continue to think outside the box and [00:34:00] outside.
What is culturally normal in order to progress as trainers and competitors. So I hope this episode is helpful. I would love to hear all about your debut strategy plans, and if you have any questions, definitely engage with this episode on social media because I would love to answer those questions for you.
Okay, that's all for this week.
Before we go, I would like to answer a question from a train station member. Kristen asks, when you're coming back to agility after a significant break. Like a winter break. How do you decide what skills to start with? Do you test skills at a challenging level or test skills you think your dog should be successful with?
And then build from there? How do you [00:35:00] optimize your reps? Assuming this was a dog that has trialed before, I'm sure the answer involves going back to record keeping and if you've already answered this in another podcast, just let me know. Okay, so this is a new question for me. I think generally speaking, um, So if I've had a break or maybe I've taken a break from, for whatever reason, injury, um, just a regular winter break, I've taken a break to retrain something.
I think this question goes so well with today's episode because I can, uh, apply everything we talked about with the debut strategy to coming back from a break, even if it's just a training break as well, right? So I'm going to take a hard look at what. We ended with and what we were prepared for when we took the break.
And I'm probably going to start around there or just a little bit easier than that, right? I'm going to ease into it and I'm going to just ask questions [00:36:00] and I'm also going to look at where I would like to go in this next. Season, right? So if this next chunk of training, how far do I wanna go?
Or in this next chunk of trials, what do I want to accomplish? Or what am I hoping to accomplish? And I make a plan from just a little bit below where I left off to where I wanna head, and that's how I'm going to plan my training sessions. And I'm not gonna get too rigid because it's definitely dog directed, right?
So I want to make sure that I'm not over facing the dog, but that I'm not staying at the same level for too long. And that's how I optimize the reps, is that I always do have a plan for making the training as dynamic as possible. I have mentioned this before. Um, Where I'm not sure if it was a previous podcast episode, a blog or a live or something, but [00:37:00] I want to focus on making my reps different, but not necessarily harder, right?
So I want to expose my dog to a lot of different situations in training so that when something novel occurs, it's not. Super surprising to them because novel or different happens all the time in their training. So as long as I am doing something different, pretty frequently, my training is likely progressing the way that I need it to.
So hopefully that answers your question, but if not, Kristen, please do reach back out and let me know, cuz I am happy to elaborate some more on that. Okay, that is all for this week,
thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this episode, there are several ways you can leave me positive reinforcement. One, leave me a five [00:38:00] 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.
