Looking for ideas: turning a flyball dog into an agility dog.

[alligande]

Looks like Rievaulx is not the only American border collie to have landed in Mallorca, one from Soth Florida arrived a few weeks before us and we have ended up at the same agility club.

The club is made up of some very keen people but they have learned agility by trial and error and have huge knowledge gaps, the main thing is they are committed to positive training and the lady who runs the club has offered me free training time in return for what I can share with them.

Which brings me to converting an experienced flyball dog to agility, there is no flyball here, so her owner want to have a go at agility as their new hoody.

What we have is a dog who has amazing forward drive, in a straight line, only knows how to jump low, when the jumps were raised from 35 to 45cm I could tell she was really struggling to figure out what to do with her feet. She is handler focused.

Today I had them doing some circle work, just three low jumps so she learned to run with her handler, dog learns fast and I started to see quick improvement.

I am thinking grid work will be important, teaching the dog to jump into heel, I don't have any of my books or DVDs with me so I am working from memory... Which is not always the best.

Any and all ideas and advice welcome.

[Root Beer]

I would probably have the dog do some of the Mecklenburg one jump work as if she were a beginning jumper. In a sense she is because she needs to learn a whole new set of jumping skills.

 

I would also do a lot of ground work with crosses, since that will be totally new.

 

From there, I would go to things like pinwheels and serpentines and then simple sequencing.

[SoFreshSoClean]

I too would do the one-jump work and ground work. She probably doesn't really know how to jump as much as run over the flyball jumps.

 

Basically, start over like she's a baby dog but understand she may progress quickly with certain skills.

 

It may help to also separate the two sports with a different reward and different verbals if any of that is currently the same.

[alligande]

So start with jumping skills and ground work, then move onto pinwheels etc. That makes sense, the dog will probably not go back to her flyball career as they are going to be here for awhile.

[rufftie]

I like box work, 4 jumps in a square. There are endless variations. Check out agilitynerd.com

[Root Beer]

Another nice exercises might be the set points from Susan Salo's jump program.

 

I think the key really is to approach the Agility jumping as a new skill for the dog.