AG190: The Glue for Future Agility Stars

Speed in Agility

Agility trainers struggle with the concept of pushing energy and speed into their dogs before the dog understands the task at hand. Ask any successful athlete, and they will agree that it is more important to learn to execute the skill or routine first - slowly and accurately - before adding more energy, intensity, or speed.

When your dog is learning something new, it will take time to become proficient at the skill. Allowing the dog to perform the skill slowly with proper placement of reinforcement will build confidence in the dog. Confidence builds enthusiasm and speed. A dog that is frantic and hectic while performing is not focused on the execution. Building speed into an exercise before the dog understands how to use the body properly will cause many incorrect responses during the learning process. When that happens, it becomes difficult for the dog to figure out – especially when the human wants speed on top of it all.

Some of my fastest dogs picked up speed after becoming more confident with their jumping skills or other obstacle performance. If the dog cannot perform the task slowly, there is no way the dog will be able to do it fast while also focusing on handling along with trial distractions. When speed is required before knowledge or precision, the dog will make many mistakes during the process. And depending on how you or your dog responds to those mistakes, anything can happen. You might have a dog that learns to ignore handling (creating off courses at high speed) or possibly a dog with frantic behaviors that cause more errors. You can even create the opposite of what you want - a dog that learns to move slowly.

How would you feel if you were learning a new app or software package, and the instructor was encouraging you to execute faster than you could process? That causes frustration, confusion, mistakes, stress, and lots of emotions. Maybe you are a savvy learner, so you tell the teacher to slow down and ask more questions. Let’s do that for our dogs, too! Let’s allow them to ask some questions!