Course Details
Calling all agility trainers! Whether your dog is absolutely in love with their food reinforcers already or if your dog needs a little more love for food, this presentation is for you! Food rewards can be used to assess mental state, increase fluency, and increase motivation in our agility dogs! By spending time developing a good use of food rewards, trainers can unlock different skills and elevate new ones.
In this webinar, Megan will share how to use food in various ways to increase their effectiveness in your training. She will dig into how to increase the value of food and how to use that value to motivate dogs on the agility course better. No training plan would be complete without discussing how to make the use of food rewards sustainable for competition, so delayed reinforcement and using FEO/NFC (for exhibition only and not for competition) runs when your dog only works for food will also be discussed.
About the Instructor:
Megan Foster (she/her)
I have been training in agility nearly my entire life. With twenty-five years of experience, I have had the opportunity to work with hundreds of dogs within a large variety of breeds. My goal as an agility coach is to create happy dogs and happy handlers using positive teaching methods and a high rate of reinforcement on both ends of the leash. I specialize in preparing teams for competition by focusing on building a robust understanding of reinforcement, routines, and fluency under high levels of arousal.
I began my agility journey with an American Eskimo and a Westie, both loaner dogs from people in our local training club. In 1999, I began competing with my first Shetland Sheepdog, Buddy. Buddy’s lesson to me was about connection and bond. While running him, I knew that agility was what I was meant to do. Buddy’s agility career was cut short due to an injury, but we spent 15 amazing years together as a team off the agility course!
In 2003, Ty became a part of my life and my agility career took off like a rocket. He was 3 years old and not completely sure of himself, but together, we blossomed into an incredible team, on and off the course!
In 2005, I attended my first National event and took fifth place in the $10,000 Dog Agility Steeplechase Finals with Ty. That same year, I became a USDAA Judge, as a 13-year-old Junior Handler, the youngest ever.
Since then, I have competed at the Cynosport World Games twelve times, with eight different dogs. I have also attended the AKC Nationals three times with my border collie, Smack.
In 2013, I moved to WA state and opened my training school, Synergy Dog Sports which offered in-person group classes, private lessons, seminars, online classes, and video analysis. Over the years of my agility career, I have learned from many of the “greats.” I believe in agility handling and training from the dog’s perspective, and finding ways for agility handlers of all ages to handle intuitively and efficiently. In 2015, I added mindset training to my agility program, working with Dr. Kathrine McAleese regularly. Three months after beginning my training with Dr. K, Smack and I won a spot on the US European Open team that competed in Germany that summer. In 2018, I completed my certification as a OneMind Dogs Coach. In 2019, I joined the staff as an instructor for the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy. In 2020, Synergy Dog Sports moved 100% online, where I could start to build my coaching program, and became Fostering Excellence in Agility in 2023. I now dedicate myself fulltime to my online coaching program, presenting seminars in person, and competing alongside my youngster, Sprint.
Currently, I have two Border Collies and a Parson Russell Terrier. Shock, 12 years old, is retired from agility, but enjoys apple collecting and running in the fields. Shrek, 8 years old, is actively training in Obedience. Sprint, 3 years old, is my current Agility teammate.