04/15/11

Puppy Agility Training

Aug 26, 2007

   I didn’t start training Fantasia in agility until she was a year old. I got Ekko and Jordan at 12-14 weeks. Ekko’s litter is the first time I have had puppies from birth that I intend to train in agility. The puppies are now 3 months old and have started some very basic training. At six weeks I got them a 6 ft tunnel that I would set up in their exercise pen in the kitchen.  They loved to play in it. I started teaching group sits with lots of treats every morning and evening. I also played a lot of tug in the pen since it was too wet to do much outside. Since it has finally quit raining and the yard has dried out each morning and evening they get to play where the agility equipment is. I have 4 tunnels – 6 ft, 10 ft, 15 ft and 20 ft. The puppies have a great time running freely from tunnel to tunnel.

Here is a video showing free play and group training. The first scene is walking on a see-saw plank on the ground that we use to walk over muddy areas. Next the puppies are having a great time chasing each other through the tunnels. I have a mini-dog walk ( 1/3 size, 4 ft planks and 16 inch high) that I use to teach the puppies that being up on things is OK and falling off is no big deal. I have been working with them as a group using hot dogs. Recently I started giving a treat to any puppy that would go through a tunnel. In the last scene in this video we are doing group sit exercise- the puppy that sits get a treat.

    Group video link

The mini-dog walk can also be used to teach older dogs dog walk contacts. Here is thirteen month old Jordan demonstrating this.

   Jordan Video link

 The older dog in the videos is 13 year old Fantasia -  MACH2 Cassy's Fantasia De La Fusee CDX, MXP,AJP

 I  took each puppy out separately and filmed each of them doing 5 things – mini-dog walk, tunnels, tippy-board, tugging using tug toys that I got from Denise Fenzi (the Robit and puppy rag) and sit.

                     White male ( Wizard)   - white link                         

                     Orange male ( Mitch)   - orange link

                     Green male   (Gabe)     - green link

                    Red female (Garnette- Netty) – red link

                    Pink female  ( Geena)   - pink link

        The puppies were  4 months old on September 14 . On September 16 I repeated the same basic exercises. Here are the videos:

                  Wizard   -  Wizard link                          Garnette   - Garnette link

                  Mitch     -  Mitch link                              Geena    -    Geena  link

                  Gabe    -   Gabe link