AG265: Near and Far: Forward Focus vs. Come To Hand

When it comes to successfully and comfortably completing an agility course, clarity is the most  important thing. Our dogs need to know when they should be taking the obstacle ahead of  them and when they should be turning or coming into us. The most common errors that I see  on agility courses is when dogs lack this clarity. So how do we achieve it? 

1. Clear understanding of handlers’ arm positions is a big one! 

When you raise your arm up in the air, dogs will naturally tend to extend/jump bigger. When  you bring your arm low towards your body, dogs will naturally pay more attention. However, as  we get further into our agility journey, we often muddy this. As a result, this can often cause  our canine teammates to guess at what we mean instead of know with full clarity. And that can  lead to errors on course or us over-handling. This is something we’re going to mitigate as we  move through class! That means from here on out, we’re going to have to be mindful of exactly  what arm positions we’re using as we move through the exercises in this class. That leads us  to… 

2. Clear and predictable verbals for coming into us/bypassing something and carrying on  ahead/taking what they’re looking at. 

Dogs all have their preferences. Some prefer to extend and carry ahead without us, while some  prefer to stick with us. This can occur due to what they find most rewarding, but it can also be a  combination of not being sure when they should be doing either of these things. This can then  cause a lack of confidence for one or the other (and sometimes even both!). That’s where  verbals can really help! So to assist our dogs (and ourselves!), we’re going to be teaching our  dogs a come to hand verbal and a go ahead verbal. And I strongly believe in training these two  verbals together. Afterall, if they’re lacking a clear understanding of one of these concepts,  their understanding for the other isn’t going to be as strong. To truly master these skills, they  need to feel confident about both! To be confident in going ahead, they need to also be  confident in coming into you. That way we eliminate any need for guessing what our handling is  trying to convey. 

3. Now, at the same time, we’re also going to be focusing on startlines—the place a lot of dogs  can struggle to focus ahead, particularly if we’re behind them or lateral.  

There are so many things going on at the startline! People and dogs milling around behind us,  other teams finishing their own runs, big excited feelings. This can cause dogs to be unsure of  where to focus. This can cause them to focus too much on the obstacles ahead or too much on  us. This is why we’re going to train a focus cue. We’re going to teach our dogs that when we  point to something and ask them to focus, they should stare at that thing. And if we don’t ask  them to focus on something and instead have our hand low, they should come into us. (Hello 

Snooker skills!) And just a side note: this skill can also be a huge help for teams that commonly  knock that first bar or run by it.  

Okay, now that we’ve discussed all that we’re going to cover and why…let’s get to some arm  position homework and discuss what those are going to look like!