Readiness — Glorious Agility LLC

As a competitor, trainer, and instructor in agility, it is my belief that every dog deserves to start a training session or enter a trial environment in a mental state that is optimal for learning and success. Beyond that, I expect that if I begin a training session or enter a trial environment with a dog who has not been built up to that mental state, I can not expect optimal performance. What I can expect in that situation is a dog who struggles to complete behavior sequences outside of the ring and will likely struggle even more with their performance inside of the ring. I have found that even as agility evolves, there is still the push to compete with a dog before they are ready. From an instructor standpoint, I find this very frustrating, and what I urge every single person involved in dog sports and training to understand is this: An unprepared, stressed, over-aroused or overstimulated dog is not having fun. Beyond that, these experiences can be detrimental to the progression of training and trialing.

Bentli at European Open Team Tryouts (2021), Practice Ring

I find that most of my beliefs on this topic and the training methods I use to address it stem from my dedication to promoting a healthy mental state in my dogs. I have now trained and competed almost exclusively with dogs with an array behavioral issues at various levels of severity. I’ve dedicated myself to better understanding the way my dogs see the world and react to the stimuli in their daily lives. By doing this, and learning from many other like-minded trainers outside of agility, I am able to put systems in place to help my dogs reach their optimal mental state for learning and success. While I only teach agility, the vast majority of knowledge and information that I consume in one year is related to Behavior and Foundations, not agility.

“How do I know that my dog is ready to be competing?”

Here is what I ask myself before trialing:

While at training, can my dog…. ↓
Can my dog exit the car without conflict?
Can my dog take food? Can they engage appropriately with a toy, and switch back to food if toy play is involved?
Can my dog deliver the behaviors I ask for in the vicinity of my car? Examples could include hand targets, cued or lured warmup behaviors, sits, downs, etc.
Can my dog make it from my car to the building without conflict? If I have trained a specific leash walking routine, can they maintain that criteria during this time?
Once inside the building or near the ring, can my dog deliver an easy behavior, engage in a simple pattern game, and/or respond to reinforcement cues? If yes, can they build up to the deliverance of slightly more complex behaviors?
While inside the ring, can my dog stay engaged with me? It’s common for handlers to accidentally invite disconnection with their dog. That is often when we see dogs ‘turn off’ and become more sniffy, more reactive to their environment, etc. However, that’s not quite what I’m referencing here. I am specifically asking that if you are engaged with your dog, is your dog engaged with you? And beyond that, acknowledge that disconnection totally happens to everyone! Especially in young dogs and new teams. Ask yourself HOW your dog responds to it.

If I cannot answer ‘Yes” to those questions, I will not enter a trial. What I will do, however, is find the exact step in that list where I can no longer answer ‘Yes’ and address the problem from there. I suppose that this is maybe a more strict approach than what some might take, but I truly stand by this ideology. Through over seven years of competing with a very reactive dog, it has never failed me. I currently own two dogs who are reactive in very different ways, with Bentli’s reactivity being more serious and requiring much more management, while Million’s issues and reactivity to her environment are largely frustration and arousal based. Even with their differences, I still use my list above as a scale of ring readiness for them both.

I consider it a common misconception that dogs will simply ‘get over’ their issues in the ring with more experience. I see very little room for success when asking an unprepared, stressed, over-aroused or overstimulated dog to perform difficult obstacle and behavior sequences in a trial environment. While I do feel comfortable saying that there is a time and place to build resilience in our dogs by asking them to work through hard things, a trial environment is not that place, especially with a dog who cannot complete the steps I’ve listed above. By competing too soon with a dog that falls into that category, I am not only allowing problematic behaviors to be repeated in that environment (Arguably pushing me further away from being ready for competition), but I am also putting my dog in a situation where they are likely quite uncomfortable.

The Push to Compete

In the last decade that I have been involved in agility, I have watched the sport evolve in many wonderful ways. One thing that seems to stay the same, no matter how our sport grows, is the push to compete with a dog before they are ready. I will use the 15 month rule as an example here, because that is the legal competition age in AKC agility. Here is what I know to be true in the last three dogs I raised for agility: None of them were ready. Not only are my dogs not fully obstacle trained at 15 months, but they also have so much more to learn about the world around them before competing in agility is even on my radar. The first year (and then some) that I have a dog is spent diving into foundations for the world and for sport. I say this knowing that some dogs truly are brilliant, wise, quick to mature, extremely well acclimated to the world around them, and so on. I personally still do not want to compete in agility with a 15 month old dog.

The push to compete does not only apply to young dogs. Many of us want to be out there competing, getting results, and growing as teams. That is exactly why I think this conversation is so important. Be sure that your desire to get out there and see growth is not overshadowing your dog’s needs.