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F3003: Locked in: Teaching a Mark Forward Cue for Agility and Obedience

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F3003: Locked in: Teaching a Mark Forward Cue for Agility and Obedience

Course Details

3 WEEK CLASS - Marking is the skill that teaches your dog to lock in, commit, and know exactly what’s coming next. All before you give the send cue.  Instead of guessing, hesitating, or checking back in with you, your dog understands exactly where they’re about to go and confidently commits to that path. 

This foundation skill can be used on any dog sport that uses a send forward from heel position, or any position where the dog starts in a stay. Agility handlers, that includes the “fancy” start line skills of lateral leadouts and even starting behind them! Get obstacle commitment to the line you set without the guessing! 

No more problems of dogs who start to send and then turn to bark at the handler! 

Create clarity before the release and have confident, straight sends. 

This class is appropriate for handlers who want to compete in any sport involving a send, but the lecture examples will be focused on the obedience go out and directed retrieves, and on agility startlines.  We will look at the beginning steps of teaching these mark skills and start to generalize to the send in your chosen sport(s)! 

 

Teaching Approach:

Lectures are released at the start of each week.  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 from dogs still learning the behaviors.  The videos are usually between 30sec to 2min long and are taken from training sessions of a variety of dogs.  I rarely use voiceover in videos, but if it is added I have added/edited subtittles.  At the end of each lecture is a homework summary with the steps quickly summarized in order. 

Laura WaudbyInstructor: 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

Week 1: 

Teaching a focus forward cue to a placed reward 

When to look forward (handler focus vs forward focus) 

Adding Lateral distance (agility) 

 

Week 2: 

Increasing duration of the focus forward cue 

Continuing to change our position (agility) 

Looking at a non-food/toy target 

 

Week 3: 

Generalizing the mark cue to other targets/obstacles 

Discussion of different signals/cues for different types of sends 

 

Prerequisites and Equipment

This class is appropriate for dogs 6 months and up who have an understanding of a stay behavior, with or without a platform to help them.

The dog should be able to stay while you place a bowl of food or a toy on the ground in front of them.  

 

We will discuss different marker cues for a reward from your hand vs releasing to a reward at a distance

 

Equipment:

A platform or foot target that can help the dog stay in place

A target the dog can send to such as a lid

Optional: Dream obstacle the dog will generalize their mark to, such as a jump, retrieve item, or go out stanchion

 

Registration

GOLD LEVEL $149 - Students may ask instructors questions and post up to six minutes of video per week for instructor feedback.  Access to all class materials and can post to class forums. 

SILVER LEVEL $99 - Students may ask general questions in the discussion forum and post ONE 90 second video per week (3 total) for instructor feedback. Access to view all class materials and class forums. 

BRONZE LEVEL $49 - Students have access to all class materials and may view all class forums.  

For additional details on enrollment levels please view our Getting Started section on our Help Page.

Three week class will start March 1st and end March 21st, 2026. 

Registration opens February 22nd at 10:00am Pacific Time.

 

 

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