# Preparing a puppy and myself for agility



## solinvictus (Oct 23, 2008)

Here is a blog post from Susan Garrett. It has a list of things you can teach without really working on the equipment. Puppy One Hundred (and thirty five) | Susan Garrett's Dog Training Blog





 foundation skills


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## ceegee (Mar 26, 2015)

You can get a small wooden box - 15" square, 10" high or thereabouts - and teach your dog to stand with her back feet on the box and her front feet on the floor. It will provide muscle memory for when you start contact obstacles (frame, dogwalk). You can also do this using the bottom step of a staircase if you prefer. "Target" is another useful command - touching a target (I use the lid from a takeaway coffee cup) with her nose. It will also help with contact obstacles.

You can teach her the movement for front and rear crosses - passing her from your left hand to your right hand, in front of you and behind you.

A very useful command is "out" - teaching the dog to move away from you. Also directional commands - left and right.

And you can teach "around" - use a chair, a box, a cone, whatever - and teach her to go around it.

You can also use jump wings with a pole on the ground and teach her to run through the wings and over the pole, instead of around them.

These are all commands you'll use on an agility course. Training the actual obstacles is much easier if you've worked on these things first.

Good luck, you'll have a blast. Agility is addictive.


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## Eclipse (Apr 21, 2014)

Something I wish I had done more of was exposing my dog to exciting environments - I mean, I did try to, but I didn't know how to work through a dog's over excitement at the time, so over arousal was something I had to deal with in agility class. I pulled my dog from her first agility place since the advice given to me for dealing with over arousal was crap.

Exposing your dog to lots of soccer games and baseball games can help make the agility environment less overwhelming or overly exciting.


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## puddles everywhere (May 13, 2016)

Oh my goodness... I have a new respect for Agility! Just watching the video wore me out, my hats off to all of you who do this sport. Major handling skills, very impressed. Thanks for sharing, I truly didn't realize all that went into this.


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## Redmeadow (Mar 30, 2017)

:grin2: thanks everyone for your advice. Ive definately got alot to keep us busy for a while. That vids brilliant!


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