Course Details
Many dogs start out their agility career with good stopped contacts. But over time, the behavior or the criteria changes and morphs into something undesirable. What causes that to happen?
This class focuses on the training or retraining of a stopped end position contact performance. It can help retrain dogs that are currently trialing. And, it will help young dogs build these skills from the ground up. It won't work of any of the full contact equipment. Contact execution issues are almost always related to confusion in the performance or criteria of the stopped position. Once the handling has been addressed and the stopped position has been taught and polished, your dog's confidence will improve. With confidence, the contact execution will also improve prior to that stopped position. I have found that transitioning to the full contacts is very easy to do for the Aframe and the dog walk. Transitioning to the teeter takes a little extra time because of the nature of that obstacle (it moves and makes a sound).
Please do not take this class if you plan on trialing in agility trial classes with contacts during these six weeks. It will take a few months of retraining both you and your dog before trial behavior is similar to training.
If you have worked through my AG140 - Building and Maintaining a Start Line course, then you will have a slight advantage during this class. There will be similar concepts and handling which will benefit you. If you have not taken AG140, you will learn the same handlng and training strategies in this course and apply those to contacts.
This class will have a Teacher's Assistant (TA) available in the Facebook study group to help the bronze and silver students! Directions for joining that Facebook group will be in the classroom after you register.
Here is your TA, Heather Sather, showing her Dutch Shepherd, Mazi in Novice standard. She has worked through my program and has LOVELY stopped contacts.

Nancy Gagliardi Little (she/her) has been training dogs since the early 1980s, when she put an OTCH on her Novice A dog, a Labrador retriever. Since then she has put many advanced obedience titles on her dogs, including 4 AKC OTCH titles, 6 UD titles, 3 UDX titles, and multiple...(Click here for full bio and to view Nancy's upcoming courses)