Agility and dogs that are afraid of loud noises

[pafla]

I do agility with Rea for a year.She is not the greatest dog for this.She does not accept toys as reward only food.She is not very motivated-she runs a lot faster in park after a ball then in agility.Still she likes it,and is happy when we do agility.We were at are first competition a couple of months ago and it was a disaster.She was afraid of all the noise.since she is not crazy about toys,I try to get her to relax with doing tricks on food.It help a bit.I have this problem with her since she was a puppy and she is 6.5 years old now and she is a lot better.I would really like some advice how to deal with this.She is a lot better when competition is on open.

Her is a link to video of my training group on competition.She is a black and withe mix breed dog that goes after Aireadal Terrier on video clip-I had so much trouble motivating her to do the curse that the little we learned about handling was lost.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1KckJIl4WzE

 

[BostonBanker]

You are definitely not the only one with a "not the greatest dog for agility" dog! My dog was never specifically noise-phobic, but was so worried about being wrong all the time that if I ever corrected anything (such as the beginning of your run where she started to go around the jump and you re-set her), she was done. She would slink off to a corner and hide under the table. She also has no real interest in toys.

Some of the stuff that helped her:

I would usually ignore errors on course. It seems like a bad idea, but any time I let her know she was wrong, she would get slower and more worried. If she ran past a jump, she ran past the jump - we'd just keep going, and keep in mind that I had to work on that later. I would reward correctly performed obstacles, but would also reward ANY time I saw speed. A great way to reward with Meg was to get one of the tug toys that has a pocket, and stuff that with food. She's not running to the toy because she wants to tug, but because she wants the treats in it. But it's still a nice way to get her running by throwing the toy out in front of her.

We also did a ton of speed circles. Just a circle of jumps and tunnels. I'd get her running around it, and would toss the toy out in front of her then reward her with treats from it any time she started to show me more speed.

Her confidence has increased enough that I can now correct things on course most of the time, although there are still times (in trials especially) that I don't, because I don't want to let her confidence drop.

I also wish I'd waited longer to compete her. Because everything for her is about keeping her confidence high, I wish I hadn't tried to compete when she wasn't 110% ready.

 

[Dekka]

I watched your run.. Cute dog!!

She starts out fast.. then looses confidence, you slow down and hesitate at obstacles with her and so she hesitates at them too.

I think speed circles are a great idea. Just RUN! Reward like mad when she gives you speed over an obstacle.

Can you send to obstacles? If not teach her to send to things.. reward heavily. Teach her she can do tunnels and jumps independently of you.

You want her more prepared for a trial than ever. You want the agility part to be so fun and easy for her that she isn't worried about the agility AND the noise.

 

[adojrts]

Great advice so far.

I am going to suggest backchaining your sequences in training as well, lol the regulars here know that is one of my common responses!!
But by backchaining the dog already knows where it is going and there is a very high rate of success, which is what you want for a non confident dog.

Just take her to as many trials as you can, without competing with her, lots of rewards for not reacting to loud noises and being relaxed. Use the warm up jump etc.
Let her watch other dogs running agility and get her excited (as long as she doesn't get loud beside the ring).

I agree that trialing a non confident dog to early can have some long term bad effects.
Also make sure you can run a course without faultering, which means lots of courses in training.
Courses that your instructor sets up, lets you walk them and then run them with or without imput.

An absolute must to know the theroy behind the different crosses, so you know the when and where's of running a course.

I hope you are training at least one level higher than you are competing at.

Good luck

 

[BostonBanker]

An absolute must to know the theroy behind the different crosses, so you know the when and where's of running a course.

Another good point I meant to mention in my post. Your dog looks like she is very in love with you and likes to keep checking in with you. Although you do have to work on getting her to going ahead of you and focus on obstacles, you can also use it to your advantage by using more front crosses. If she likes to come to you (which it appears she does), get out ahead of her and let her drive to you. I've really only gotten to the point where I use rear crosses regularly with Meg lately, because she wanted so badly to come into me. It was a great tool to get her driving a bit! She's finally comfortable enough and obstacle focused enough that I can work in rear crosses when appropriate.

 

[pafla]

Thank you all for great advices.I will try this with her and see if it will help.

Regarding to her wanting to be close to me-I trained for two years obedience with her,and still do.She is a lot better then before.I think we had the worst circles you ever saw.It went like this-Rea takes a jump,Rea comes to heel,I send her to jump,she does the jump and comes right back to heel...I was so happy when she in one moment realized that she should run full circle and can only then come back to me.

Backchaining works I did it a lot in beggining,but must say I forgot about in lost couple of months.And yes she does not do well if often corrected-the reason I totaly avoided weaves and kept running with her.

We are working on send away from start and it still she does not understand this.My trainer really gave me 50 different advices-but non worked.The last is actually starting to work-leaving a bowl with food for her after a couple of straight jumps.I think we will be able to work with this.

Tunnels and tyre are her least favorite obstacles-I think that problem with tunnels is that she loses me when she goes in tunnel.I train them separetly and reward a lot any time she actually goes in tunnel without me right by her side.With tyre I think the problem is if she does not come straight on her she does not know how to take the obstacle and if unsure she will refuse to do it.

A lot of things that should be trained apart.We are encouraged to go to as many competitions as we can regardles of dogs not being 100% ready so the dogs get used to different type of obstacles,places,a lot of people,noise...

I compete in starting level,but in training we often do sequences for level above this.

Throwing something with food in it does not work with her,she will go after it once and second time ignore the object.

 

[adojrts]

If she is too handler focused, I would try this. Train her with a food tube, so that she knows the rewards are in the tube. Then I would, toss the tube a couple of feet in front of her, when she looks at it instead of you, click/reward/say Yes. Then release her to it, and reward from it also. When she can focus on the tube and send to it, I would add a jump/tunnel etc. Sending her to the obstacle of choice, with the goal of fading the food tube, clicking/rewarding/Yes, when she focuses on the obstacle instead of you, then of course adding more obstacles, espeically speed circles, but only rewarding when she focuses on the obstacles. Once she has mastered that, you can work on handler focus. Teaching her to switch between obstacle focus and handler focus.
Hope that makes sense.

Good Luck

 

[pafla]

Thank you all for great advices,but Rea is not going to do agility anymore.She was limping for last couple of weeks-she had a run in with the tree in park.The vet claimed that she needs rest.We cut down all exercise.It helped she stopped limping.But she still showed signs of pain when her back were touched at vets.The first time I talked to my agility trainer he said that I should take her to x-rays.They discovered that she has starting phase of spondylosis.I was pretty shaken up(had a car accident when I was leaving the vet office),but after inital shock I reasoned that a lot of dogs live with this and never have any problems.In case she is not in that group there are still different therapies that can help her.And while she cannot jump anymore she can do everything else.Wish as luck that she falls in a group of dogs that will never have serious problems with this.

 

[adojrts]

I am sorry to hear this, hope she is fine and only has a mild case of it.

Good Luck.