# Afraid of the Dog Walk in Agility



## KKaren (Oct 29, 2014)

Hi Everyone, I wondered if I could get some suggestions on training for my young Glimmer. We have been in beginning agility classes, first with Pre-Agility where obstacles were on the floor and now we are in our 3rd class, Agility 1, with regular size obstacles in short sequences.

Glimmer has always gone over everything, A-frame, teeter and dog walk ... sometimes running over them when not asked . Last night we were at the end of the class and taking the dog walk after a couple of tunnels and she just stopped and looked confused, hesitant. We re-set and tried again, and then my instructor came over and we tried with some treats, he said to just step back and not force it, so we went to the other end just to finish the contact at the exit. 

He said that sometimes that just happens that the dog sees the obstacle from a different view.

Has this happened to your dog in training? Where there some specific things you did to handle it? I don't currently have any equipment at home, but she is a little monkey, has never shown any fear of anything.

Mainly, I want her to have fun and enjoy the training.

Thanks. Karen


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## nolefan (Nov 6, 2009)

My dad's dog Sailor trains agility and she has always been fearless, until one day she decided she was afraid of the teeter. It's taken a year of just what your trainer has advised, SUPER SLOW baby steps of treat and praise and not pushing, but she has worked through it. Talk to your trainer about working on stuff at home. 

Agility equipment is SO easy to build that you should start building things to have for home practice. You could probably start with just a homemade wobble board - go to the hardware store and purchase a wooden pre-cut tabletop about 3 or 4 feet across and a wooden ball/finial that you'd use to finish off a wooden banister post. Drill a hole and screw the ball into the center and voila - awesome wobble board. Use that to start practicing at home and also purchase a long plank - 8 feet long that you could start putting over a small block of wood so it is only giving you inches off the ground. 

Go on line and purchase a kid's play tunnel, buy the heaviest duty material you can afford, consider it an investment. Go online and google the steps for building jumps out of PVC - it's amazing what you can do. Any venue you train in you have to expect your dog to have days when things don't quite go right. Regroup and keep working. It's all about the journey together - your dog will be just fine. Agility is fun, keep making it fun games for her.


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## ceegee (Mar 26, 2015)

How old is Glimmer? It may be that she's not ready for full-sized contact obstacles yet.

Can your dogwalk be lowered at all? Our club's dogwalk can be set to an intermediate height of about 2' and Duster trained at this height until he was a year old. We only raised the obstacle to its full height a couple of months ago. If your club's dogwalk offers this option, I'd recommend it. I have a couple of friends whose 18-month-old dogs are still training at the lower height, one for safety reasons (crazy border collie), one because the dog just doesn't like the obstacle. See the example in the video below (Duster's early training). Once the dog is comfortable at this height, we can raise the obstacle one side at a time: e.g. have the up-ramp at the lower level and the down-ramp at full height. 






Otherwise, it might be a good idea to go back a step and have her do the obstacle on the ground for a while.

Good luck, hope you find a solution.


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## KKaren (Oct 29, 2014)

nolefan said:


> My dad's dog Sailor trains agility and she has always been fearless, until one day she decided she was afraid of the teeter. It's taken a year of just what your trainer has advised, SUPER SLOW baby steps of treat and praise and not pushing, but she has worked through it. Talk to your trainer about working on stuff at home.
> 
> Agility equipment is SO easy to build that you should start building things to have for home practice. You could probably start with just a homemade wobble board - go to the hardware store and purchase a wooden pre-cut tabletop about 3 or 4 feet across and a wooden ball/finial that you'd use to finish off a wooden banister post. Drill a hole and screw the ball into the center and voila - awesome wobble board. Use that to start practicing at home and also purchase a long plank - 8 feet long that you could start putting over a small block of wood so it is only giving you inches off the ground.
> 
> Go on line and purchase a kid's play tunnel, buy the heaviest duty material you can afford, consider it an investment. Go online and google the steps for building jumps out of PVC - it's amazing what you can do. Any venue you train in you have to expect your dog to have days when things don't quite go right. Regroup and keep working. It's all about the journey together - your dog will be just fine. Agility is fun, keep making it fun games for her.


Thank you for the building suggestions. I was thinking on the way home that I will need to make/ purchase some equipment to practice on. I guess I was just a little surprised with her behavior since she has always been so curious and not afraid to walk on anything. I am a beginner so I'm sure that my handling needs a lot of work also.


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## KKaren (Oct 29, 2014)

ceegee said:


> How old is Glimmer? It may be that she's not ready for full-sized contact obstacles yet.
> 
> Can your dogwalk be lowered at all? Our club's dogwalk can be set to an intermediate height of about 2' and Duster trained at this height until he was a year old. We only raised the obstacle to its full height a couple of months ago. If your club's dogwalk offers this option, I'd recommend it. I have a couple of friends whose 18-month-old dogs are still training at the lower height, one for safety reasons (crazy border collie), one because the dog just doesn't like the obstacle. See the example in the video below (Duster's early training). Once the dog is comfortable at this height, we can raise the obstacle one side at a time: e.g. have the up-ramp at the lower level and the down-ramp at full height.
> 
> ...


Ceegee, Thanks for the video... I have been watching Duster's posts-- really great since he was a little one.

Glimmer is 20 months old. 
We are both definitely beginners, really more me than her, because on occasion when one of the instructors works with her, she gets it right away a good part of it is my body language and my calls. 

We did work on it at a lower height for a few runs a few weeks ago, but then they raised it and have not really ever had a problem with any of the platform type objects, regardles of height before. I guess she's really only been on it maybe 20 times in total.

It was an unusal situation last night, there are two classes that are held at the same time, Agility 1 and 2. Typically they take one class and work on weaves and the other for obstacles. A couple of us in Agility 1 had finished with our weaves and they wanted to work with one of the dogs alone so they sent us to join the Agility 2 group so we wouldn't have to sit around.

The instructor in Agility 2 cut the sequence they were doing down for the two of us in Agility 1, but maybe it was also too many things in a row. Usually we are only doing sequences with 2 obstacles to work on the transition between 2 things.

Perhaps most importantly, I will need to find some way/place to practice inbetween classes.

Thanks again for the pointers


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## NicoleGold (Dec 8, 2015)

I think it just takes green dogs some time to be 100% confident about contact equipment. We don't own our own, so our dogs only see the equipment in class or trials. At the beginning, this can be tough because there isn't regular exposure. My boys are pretty fearless, but we're working on getting my younger girl started and she is more of a thinker. We spend a lot of time playing different games on the contact equipment - for the dog walk, we are sure to teach them (when its at a lower height) how to jump on and off anywhere on the walk, play recall games over it, work on end behavior seperately, etc. Maybe see if you could stay after class or arrive early to spend a little time playing with the dog walk, rather than your dog just seeing it in a sequence?


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## Eclipse (Apr 21, 2014)

I agree with lowering the height and making your own equipment. Penny was hesitant on the teeter, so I made one at home. I just used the board on the flat, and it had a tiny wobble/bang since the middle had a wood block under it. It only took us two weeks to go from uncertain to running at the teeter at full height.

Something my agility instructor did with me was back chaining to teach contact obstacles. I would ask Penny to get on the yellow contact zone of the dog walk, and get her to turn around with a treat and come back down. And then we had her jump on from a point close to the contact zone and walk down, slowly adding distance so she wasn't expected to do the whole dog walk until she was used to it.


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## ceegee (Mar 26, 2015)

KKaren said:


> (...)
> The instructor in Agility 2 cut the sequence they were doing down for the two of us in Agility 1, but maybe it was also too many things in a row. Usually we are only doing sequences with 2 obstacles to work on the transition between 2 things.
> 
> Perhaps most importantly, I will need to find some way/place to practice inbetween classes.


It could just be that there were too many obstacles: dogs don't generalize well. Or sometimes it can just be a small thing that sets them off: a difficult entry angle, a dogwalk that wobbles a bit because it's not placed correctly, something that upsets them while they're on the obstacle. Duster, for example, was fine with the teeter outdoors, but when the obstacles were moved indoors for the winter he developed a real fear of it, so much so that he was reluctant to enter the training room if the teeter was in there. We think it was due to the fact that it makes a different noise indoors when hitting the ground (he's a bit noise-sensitive), despite the fact that he was already very familiar with the indoor training room and the teeter noise, from having attended my daughter's agility lessons as a spectator during the previous winter, when he was a puppy. We worked through the problem with the help of large quantities of cheese (he's a glutton), and he now performs the obstacle nicely, with only a bit of hesitation over the tipping point. 

Practice is key. I try and practice at least twice during the week, between classes - short sessions, five or ten minutes. When he's older we'll do more, but for now, I don't want him jumping any more than that. We're lucky enough to live only five minutes' drive from our training facility, and I'm self-employed, so when practice time is available I can often take advantage of it.

Good luck. Don't hesitate to take a step back and return to the lower-level dogwalk for a while. Agility training is often a question of two steps forward, one step back.


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## KKaren (Oct 29, 2014)

NicoleGold said:


> I think it just takes green dogs some time to be 100% confident about contact equipment. We don't own our own, so our dogs only see the equipment in class or trials. At the beginning, this can be tough because there isn't regular exposure. My boys are pretty fearless, but we're working on getting my younger girl started and she is more of a thinker. We spend a lot of time playing different games on the contact equipment - for the dog walk, we are sure to teach them (when its at a lower height) how to jump on and off anywhere on the walk, play recall games over it, work on end behavior seperately, etc. Maybe see if you could stay after class or arrive early to spend a little time playing with the dog walk, rather than your dog just seeing it in a sequence?


Thanks NicoleGold, Had to smile when you said your girl was a "thinker"... that is exactly what my breeder said about Glimmer when she was describing her. I'll try to get some time maybe before/after class to work, that's a good suggestion. We will probably stay in Agility 1 for another session in any case. What I also need to do is develop a warm up routine. Sometimes, I'm just getting out of work, picking up Glim, and then driving to the class and squeaking in just in time.


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## KKaren (Oct 29, 2014)

Eclipse said:


> I agree with lowering the height and making your own equipment. Penny was hesitant on the teeter, so I made one at home. I just used the board on the flat, and it had a tiny wobble/bang since the middle had a wood block under it. It only took us two weeks to go from uncertain to running at the teeter at full height.
> 
> Something my agility instructor did with me was back chaining to teach contact obstacles. I would ask Penny to get on the yellow contact zone of the dog walk, and get her to turn around with a treat and come back down. And then we had her jump on from a point close to the contact zone and walk down, slowly adding distance so she wasn't expected to do the whole dog walk until she was used to it.


Thanks, I definitely need to build some things for our home for in between classes. We have done the step on near the bottom and then walk to the yellow contact area and treat.... a good place to step back to.

Have very much appreciated your posts and videos with run throughs


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## KKaren (Oct 29, 2014)

Braved the Dog Walk! Woo-- Hoo 

Just wanted to provide an update on Glimmer. We traveled over the dog walk twice in class this last week. We haven't actually had it as an obstacle in class for the last month (I missed one week so they may have use it when I was out). 

In any case we were working on a series with 
Jump
Straight tunnel
Jump
Curved tunnel
Dog Walk 
Jump

The first time she came to the dog walk she started a bit from the side and then hesitated and turned around and off.... did a 180 spin and stationary zoomy dance (silly girl) tried again and then halted. I was able to lure her forward slowly with some treats and then a step before the flat top she trotted over the rest.

The second repeat of the sequence she took it without hesitation. We still have a lot to work on, but it was nice to see her adjust on the second run. I think getting her lined up with the obstacle is important to help her start off straight.

We are working on our crosses and positioning so I need to figure out how to get in front of her to guide. Mostly I find I'm doing a rear cross ... maybe that's not even correct, I'm mainly running to catch up with her, because she is so darn fast. 

Anyway, thanks for all the help and ideas.


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## mylissyk (Feb 25, 2007)

Bravo! Getting in the right position for handling is hard! My dog is so much better at agility than I am!


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## Eclipse (Apr 21, 2014)

Great job! =)


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