Fenzi Dog Sports Academy - OB335: Gloves and Go-Outs!

Course Details

Do you dream of doing fancy obedience work someday?

No need to wait until you’ve slogged through novice! We can start splitting down the parts for even the most advanced exercises right from the start.

The go out is especially an exciting exercise to train as the dog gets to run and jump and there isn’t as much precision details to obsess over for the human. A huge win of starting this early on is that sending away from the handler is seen as fun, not stressful!

Both the go out and the glove exercise share the skill of “marking” or looking forward in the direction they are going to be sent. This foundation is what helps the dog find a straight line and avoid the other tempting choices like the other gloves on the directed retrieve or taking a jump on the go out send!

We can use different signals to help the dog know, before being sent, whether they are sending to a retrieve or to their go out spot. Too many dogs end up doing a go out to the corner where their glove was in the previous exercise!

There are no official prerequisites for this class! Dogs new to obedience are welcome to join as well as experienced competitors struggling to get their routines in a trial.

I have 6 core skills we will work on in this class for a choose-your-own-adventure training plan! The lecture "series" will be independent of the other series until the last stages so students can work on anywhere from 1 to 6(not recommended!) topics at a time.

1. Marking: teaching the dog to look ahead and find a "target" to send to. This will be a core foundation of both gloves and go outs as the dogs learn to find the straight line and ignore distractions.

2. Go out Touch: Teaching the dog a phsycal touch to the ring gates for the go out send. And the concepts of sending "between" /ignoring distractions on the send.

3. Go out Sit: Teaching a sit at a distance and applying that to interrupting a send behavior. (no "go out touch" needed to start this!)

4. Directed Jumping: Teaching the dog to send laterally to cones, then a jump. Find the correct jump even from a big angle.

5. Building Distance: The 1st lectures go over why dogs may struggle to send out and then we start looking at problem solving. Lecture 1 and 2 can be looked at with any stage of dog. Otherwise you will likely visit this series at some point in your "go out touch" journey.

6. Gloves: Working on a pivots, then a glove retrieve and hold. The dog should already have a formal dumbbell retrieve.

Teaching Approach:

Lectures may be all released at the start of this class for a "choose your own adventure" style class.

The lectures are broken down by each skill, often in multiple parts. I have written objectives and then written instructions for each step followed by multiple video examples for each step. The videos are usually between 30sec to 2min long and are taken from training sessions of a variety of dogs. I rarely use voiceover or subtitles in the video. At the end of each lecture is a homework summary with the steps quickly summarized in order.

Instructor: Laura Waudby

Laura Waudby (she/they) trains and competes in obedience, rally, and agility. She was halfway to her OTCH with her UDX corgi, Lance, before his uexpected early retirement. She also has championship titles in USDAA and UKI. By day...(Click here for full bio and to view Laura's upcoming courses)

Syllabus

View Full Syllabus

We will break down all the skills needed for both the directed retrieve (gloves!) and the directed jumping (go outs!) exercises.

Marking Skills

will be used in both exercises and have the same foundation! They will start to differentiate in the last steps.

Focus forward cues
Default focus on handler until cued
Duration of looking forward until released
Holding the look forward even when the handler removes the signal
Marking non-food targets
Generalizing to different types of targets/objects
Marking and ignoring distractions
Marking with other choices
Different mark signals for retrieves vs send aways

Go out Skills!

Sending to targets at a distance, building motivation
Touching a stanchion, gate, wall, or other barrier
Increasing distance- and leave the food to get the food thoughts!
Send straight- go between 2 cones, then 2 jumps
Learning WHEN to take the cones/jumps
Building even more distance
Teaching a tight turn
Teaching a fast sit
Sit as an interruptor of the go out
“Reverse send” back to the go out spot
Directed cone/jump skills
Finding the jump regardless of the angle

Glove Skills

Pivot left and right
A "dead" retrieve
Glove retrieve
(and all the marking skills from above!)

Prerequisites and Equipment

There are no official prerequisites for this class! Dogs new to obedience are welcome to join as well as experienced competitors struggling to get their routines in a trial.

To be able to start with the most topics from the beginning, I recommend having

Cone send (ideally 10ft+)
Verbal only sit cue
A short stay
A formal retrieve will assumed to have been started, but this is a very small part of the class!

None of those are required prereqs and students will be able to start many of the 6 core skills with zero prior training!

Supplies:

3 to 5 flat lids to use as targets for beginning marking
Another foot target/platform your dog can send to (or will learn to send to!)
A stanchion or stick in the ground pole, or something to mimic what the end of the ring barriers look like in your area
2 cones or objects the dog will send around
2 jumps - obedience or agility. OPTIONAL
3 retrieve items - can be dumbbells. OPTIONAL
3 gloves OPTIONAL

This is a link to a free standing stanchion that you can use when training to outs. It is not required, but can be helpful if you don't want to make a stanchion or buy a whole ring set. (No stanchion or gates are required, we can use any type of target for the send aways. It is just extra helpful to have something that looks like the trials in your area).

Sample Lecture

Goal

This lecture begins the concept of teaching your dog to always find the straight line on the send and ignore "distractions." This skill is usually started after a few weeks of teaching your dog how to send to their vertical target. You will want at least a 10ft send.

But wait!!! Don't click away if this is not yet your dog's skill level! Do you happen to have another target your dog knows how to send to at least 10ft like a platform, rear or front foot target? Any target your dog can send to and wait for you to deliver a treat will work to begin this concept!

Some of you may already have a nice "mark"/look forward cue your dog will do to their target, some of you will not have that yet. That's ok!!! The lectures may show examples of me marking the dogs, but I rarely wait until I have a mark to begin this concept of sending between things.

In this lecture will will use 2 cones as our distractions. These cones are stand ins for the jumps used in the final exercise! It is a small space friendly way to get started, and I like to introduce concepts without using the full formal picture so that mistakes are not made on the final version.

Introduction to Sending Between Cones

For this exercise, you will start at least 6ft away from the stanchion/target. You will have 2 cones directly off to your side, even with your start position. I want to have my cones at least 4ft from me (8t apart from each other). The further back you are from your target, the further apart the cones should be from each other.

Do not stand at the furthest distance your dog can send! You want the distance to feel relatively easy for dog as you add in this new difficulty of the cones.

Here is an example of starting this session with Ginny. The cones could be placed a little further away from me still!

standing between 2 cones, roughly 4ft away, and 6ft away from the stanchion

My goal is that the dog completely ignore the cones. I will NOT be sending to them at any point!

Send the dog to the target, walk up and feed like normal. Then cookie toss or lure the dog back to the start!

As the dog successfully moves between the 2 cones to send, you can move the cones further up so the dog has to move past them, or move yourself so you are starting at a further distance as long as the distance is still easy. I technically prefer to move the cones closer to thetargets than the dog further away, however I don't always take my own advice in these videos!

Here Ginny is working on this for the 1st time. Her send is not far, but I've added in the cones already! She makes it looked easy and I even move the cones in extra close to my line.

This is not Loot's 1st session, but I struggle to add distance without him taking the cones. I attempt to add speed into it and still remain close by starting from a cookie toss behind me. He takes the cone more than once even though I am standing close!

This is a pretty old video now and shows Zumi's early go out training! You will hear the "go touch" cue (which I did eventually change with her) and I am attempting to start further back. She makes some errors here but I reward even if she doesn't quite make it to the center. She also loves restrained sends!

Adding Distance / Cones Halfway

The next step of this is expanding what we just did. Can you start further away from the stanchion and send between cones off to your side? Can you get the cones gradually moving further up until they are at the halfway point of your send?

I work on "threading the needle" of teaching my dogs to run 2 cones that are pretty close even when I am pretty far back! I don't want it too tiny of a send to go between, but I do work up to doing a full distance send with my cones just 10ft apart from each other (5ft to the left and right of the center line). This is half the official distance of running between things- in a trial the 2 jumps will be 20ft apart/10ft off the center line.

This video with Ginny works on a halt distance send with her cones out. I am holding her collar as she marks and wait until she locks in. She knows this game from restrained send work! (Note you don't *need* a mark at this stage yet, but it can help if you are feeling stuck!)

Overview

Once you have a 10ft+ send to your go out spot (or any target!!), you can work on adding cones to the picture. Start even with the cones, and send to your target.

The dog does not take the cones at any time!

Reward at your go out spot! Then lure (or cookie toss away) the dog back to the start to do it again! As the dog looks confident in ignoring the cones, start to move the cones up, closer to the go out spot. Keep moving them forward until they are halfway between your start spot and the go out target.

The further away you are sending, the further apart the cones should be. I recommend having 5-10ft for the cones on each side of you (10 to 20ft apart) .

Registration

There are no scheduled sessions for this class at this time. We update our schedule frequently, so please subscribe to our mailing list for notifications.

Registration opens at 11:30am Pacific Time.

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OB335: Gloves and Go-Outs!