Dylan's Blog: Agility Contacts

I’ve been really pleased with Dylan’s 2on/2off dogwalk for the past few of weeks, he seems to have really clicked with what I want him to do and was working nicely into position. I had even been running on past him/slowing behind him/running wide whilst he ran into position, and he had been holding it perfectly until released. I would have said he had been 100% for the past two weeks, never breaking.

We definitely jumped six steps backwards this week! On Friday I decided to put a jump (pole on the lowest height) at one end of the dogwalk and introduce the idea of continuing on to other obstacles once he was released, since he’d been so consistent. The first thing I asked him to do was go jump to dogwalk and into position. Dylan did jump, dogwalk, beautiful running contact and off! As you can imagine I was not a happy handler. I sent him back over the dogwalk towards the jump and he promptly went into perfect 2o2o.

I went back to basics on Sunday and again he was 100%. Today I went back to jump to dogwalk, and again he did a smooth running contact and didn’t stop. I can’t work this out! He does a lovely 2o2o when approaching the jump, but when he’s working after it he just carries on running. I now think it was maybe because I was doing a different lead out from the wait (?) and he’s focussing on me rather than on what he’s actually doing (or possibly he’s concentrating more on the obstacles and not enough on me, in which case his contacts aren’t as independent as I want them to be!). I think for now I’m going to go back to basics and take out the other obstacles.