So what you should do with your agility puppy is play with your puppy.
So much yes.
I've said it before but I was all worried that I wouldn't bond with Mira
rofl1
because she was the first dog I really got with Hopes and Dreams and Expectations attached. I got Kim and Webster because they were (and are) cute and I wanted a dog. That's really all there was to it, for better or for worse, and all their accomplishments and their ability to function in polite society is really gravy lol.
So I made a completely arbitrary rule that I wasn't going to train for any competition behaviors til Mira was a year old so there would be no pressure or frustration if she wasn't learning something the way I thought she should. So we...played. For a year. Hikes in the woods, restrained recalls, getting to know and respect on another, bobble boards, interacting with every weird thing I could find from agility tunnels and PVC bars to unstable logs to skating around the house on a sleeping bag (very fun by the way) to throwing a sheet on her and cheering as she waggingly found her way to the edge to just sitting at the park and watching kids play soccer while I read a book. Yeah we did some pivot games and rear feet targeting and once we ran down a big line of chairs (with her leaping from chair to chair) because it seemed like an entertaining thing to do lol.
And then she hit a year and during all that play time in which I was getting crap from people about "when are you going to start actually training her?" I had figured out how she worked and she had figured me out and trusted me. Three months later she had her CD with solid scores. At 18 months I introduced her to jumping and actual weaving and at 23 months (she went into heat at 22months for the first time...right when I had entered her in her first agility trial lol) she went to her first trial on 5 months of training on random hodgepodge equipment in my neighbor's sideyard and did great and Qd despite never being in a trial environment before, simply because she trusted me.
And more importantly, I have a dog I cannot live without. She is perfect for me.
And even so, despite having two prior dogs and all these resources to draw on, there are things I would change about how I trained her foundations. Mostly small things, but there is always something. Even if I had trained her perfectly, behaviors inevitably erode over time and I would be doing periodic maintenance/retraining work. And NextDog, no matter who you are and who that dog is, will always be at least a little different, and things that worked this time around won't work next time, and that's okay too.
Give me a dog with whom I have a good, solid relationship and we will have more success on course than I would have with a more athletic, better trained dog whose relationship is less sound. Webster is a perfect example -- structurally he is a bit suspect -- training-wise he is...well Webster isn't really trained lol -- but he's earned the moniker "The Double-Q'in Machine", routinely collects a respectable number of points in a day, and has a fan club because he's so **** cute and happy about the whole thing lol.
I guess the reader's digest version is just what I quoted lol...play with your dog and relax. It'll be okay. As long as you have a good solid relationship with your dog, any training "mistake" is surmountable because you trust each other, and you understand each other enough to adjust what you need to do in order to succeed.
ETA: Omelet and a coffee if you made it through all that. Apparently I shouldn't post before I get my own breakfast lol.