Fenzi Dog Sports Academy - AG350: Agility In Da House! Small space skills!!

Course Details

Are you trapped inside with your pup during the extreme heat or cold?

Do you only have a very small space to work with your dog and want to perfect your agility skills?

Do you need to go back to basics with your trained dog, brush up on the foundation work and take it to the next level?

Are you looking for some fun games to play with your dog that will set them up to be an agility star?

Then AGILITY IN DA HOUSE is your class!

Loretta has to deal with tough Minnesota winters from October to April (sometimes through May!!) and she works all of her competition dogs inside her house on skills so that they stay trial ready! She also works her young dogs on skills so when the nice weather hits, those skills carry over to easy and fast training in a short period of time!

Making the homework for agility training in a small space can really take some critical thinking. This class is all about "using whatcha got" in the house, purchase from the department store, or any other crazy idea you can come up with. INVENTION is the key. We want to figure out ways to make YOUR house work for training!

There will be levels from Beginner to Advanced presented for EACH GAME so you will know the exact progression your dog needs to take with problem-solving with each level.

Since Loretta trains puppies all the way up to her older dogs (with ADCH-Platinum titled, podium winners at National events, Lifetime Achievement Award winners) you will get to see how you can take each game to the next level!

Teaching Approach

The teaching approach for this class will consist of video demonstrations as well as written lectures. Lectures will be released on every Monday. These videos and lectures will outline what the steps are for each exercise. We will also work on learning how to use items from the house, to train these concepts.

This class will have a Teaching Assistant (TA) available in the Facebook discussion group to help the Bronze and Silver students! Directions for joining can be found in the classroom after you register.

Instructor: Loretta Mueller

Loretta Mueller (she/her) has been involved in agility since 2003 with her first rescue dog, Ace. Since then she has been involved in a variety of dog training activities including USBCHA herding, competitive obedience, rally obedience, and service dog training. In 2007, Loretta...(Click here for full bio and to view Loretta's upcoming courses)

Syllabus

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Week 1:
Turn! Turn! Turn! (Teaching dogs to love turns!)
Should I Stay Or Should I Go (Start line stay games)
TOTB Challenge #1 (aka Think Outside The Box).

Week 2:
Pump Up The Jam! (Getting Ready to RUN!)
Footloose (Contact Behaviors)

Baby Got Back (Teaching a Backside Verbal!)

TOTB Challenge #2

Week 3:
Don't You Want Me (Handler Focus versus Obstacle Focus)
It's All About The Cones, 'Bout The Cones, No Upright (Handling)

Distracted (How to teach your dog to focus on YOU)

TOTB Challenge #3

Week 4:
Torn Between Two Lovers (Making Choices)
Under Pressure (Working Pressure you will see in agility--handling pressure, obstacle pressure, environmental pressure)
TOTB Challenge #4

Week 5:
Down On The Corner (Tables)
You Spin Me Right Round (Directionals)
TOTB Challenge #5

Week 6:
Runaway!! (Recalls, application in the house)
Willie And The Hand Jive (Hand Targeting/Connection)
TOTB Challenge #6

TOTB=Think Outside The Box :) Getting creative with our training!

Prerequisites & Supplies

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Puppies need to be 12 weeks or older and ready to have some fun!!

Equipment:

Two Traffic cones (can be purchased from Home Depot, Amazon Etc). Size? What size is relative to your dogs size. Ideally it needs to be tall enough so your dog sees it as an object to go around, but not so big it takes forever to get around (so example is a tiny yorkie with a 3 foot tall traffic cone...TOO BIG :)

Rewards (treats or toys or both)

Container that your dog can SEE rewards, but not break into :)

1/3 of a Yoga Mat

Hit it board or a soda flat (cardboard box that you get cases of soda in) or another low sided box

Leash

And a great imagination!!!!

Sample Lecture

For MANY dogs, turns are a bit of an evil necessity. Dogs BY nature like to run straight. So I think building VALUE in turning is a great idea for ANY dog.

If you do not build value in turns for dogs they can react a few ways:

High drive dogs will just NOT turn, they will launch over jumps and land long. Why? ITIS EASIER, turning takes a LOT of work. When these dogs lauch, it makes handling tough because the dogs land places that you cannot predict. That is BAD for agility :) We want predictable responses.
Low drive dogs will slow WAY down, either BEFORE the turn, or AFTER THE TURN. Normally MOST will do the latter. It can take them several strides after a turn to pick back up speed. IF they do even pick that speed back up!
So either way, rewarding turns is a GOOD THING! We have to build value in putting in the extra work it takes to turn.

I divide turns into 3 things:

Collection before take off: Shifting their weight from the front of their bodies (aka shoulders) to the back (aka rear end).
- High drive dogs don't always think this is necessary :) OR they do not know HOW to do it!
- Low drive dogs, this can be the start of the demotivation.
Rounded jumping: Back is rounded (think like a cat stretching with their backs going to the ceiling). Back is bending around the jump as they are turning.
- High drive dogs like to try to POWER themselves over the jump...not always using good jumping form!
- Low drive dogs normally have an easy time with this. Makes sense to them, they do not prefer to run in extension, so this is not a challenge.
Driving OUT of the turn (aka DIGGING IN). Very important so you keep that speed going!!!
- High drive dogs normally EXCEL at this, BUT sometimes they just RUN and do not really try to turn (I call this orbiting--bit sweeping turns)
- Low drive dogs, this is a struggle, really putting the effort and knowledge into digging in after the turn can be tough for them! WHAT IF THEY DO IT WRONG? That sure is a LOT of work. Whew!

Testimonials & Reviews

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A sampling of what prior students have said about this course ...

THANK YOU for all of the content included in this class and for all of your feedback!! Everything was so well organized and clearly explained and demonstrated.

Thank you not only has this helped my beginning agility dog. I have use it to start my young obedience dogs and my seasoned obedience dogs. It is also a wonderful use in keeping the dogs entertained during the winter months.

Loretta - you never disappoint! I love your classes (and your seminars) You seriously make me want to retire to MN so I can take in person lessons!

Nicely paced. Each week was a manageable chunk. Loretta breaks down the skills in easy to understand chunks so that no matter where you are with training, you can build or refine your skills.

This was a great class! I have been struggling with determining if I want to continue agility with my dog. Agility has felt a bit slow for both of us and I wouldn't say my dog has been loving it like he does some of his other sports. This class provided us with some things to try at home in between classes at home and helped smooth out some of my handling for agility. He seems to be enjoying these exercises so there is hope yet in agility for us! I will be taking some additional agility classes while my pup and I work through our agility career and determine if it's right for us (if not, maybe it'll be the next dog's cup of tea). :)

Super Fantastic! Loved all the really useful skills we worked on, who knew we had some holes in our training? Loved the way you put a lot of work into explaining every teeny tiny thing, so I could trouble shoot as we went along. Perfect for winter work we lived in our travel trailer for 3 months and this worked out great for the space I had to work with. Wish I could have done more while the class was going on, too much traveling. But looking forward to learning all the things now we are home. Great work!

This was a fantastic class! A very fun class to introduce agility or to retrain basics for a more advanced dog. A perfect class anytime and especially when weather is not ideal for outside work.

I have two dogs that are already competing in agility. I took this course for my up and coming new dog. I learned so much!!!!! I was able to work the exercises with all three of my dogs. Thank you so much!!!

Amazing course! So much agility training you can do in a very small training space!

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 9:30am Pacific Time.

AG350 Subscriptions

	Gold	Silver	Bronze
Tuition	$ 260.00	$ 130.00	$ 65.00
Enrollment Limits	12	25	Unlimited
Access all course lectures and materials	✔	✔	✔
Access to discussion and homework forums	✔	✔	✔
Read all posted questions and answers	✔	✔	✔
Watch all posted videos	✔	✔	✔
Post general questions to Discussion forum	✔	✔	✖
Submit written assignments	✔	✖	✖
Post dog specific questions	✔	With video only	✖
Post videos	✔	Up to 2	✖
Receive instructor feedback on	Questions All videos	Questions All videos	✖

Find more details, refund policies and answers to common questions in the Help center.

AG350: Agility In Da House! Small space skills!!

AG350: Agility In Da House! Small space skills!!

Course Details

Teaching Approach

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Silver

Bronze