AG265 Near and Far: Forward Focus vs. Come To Hand

Week One

• Forward focus and come to hand – WHY?
• Arm positions - clarity
• Picking verbals
• Building value for coming to your hand
• Building value for going ahead

Week Two

• Flatwork exercises come to hand
• Flatwork exercises forward focus
• Forward focus at the start line – foundation

Week Three

• Adding obstacles – forward focus
• Adding obstacles – come to hand
• Forward focus at the start line – diversifying

Week Four

• Discrimination – forward focus
• Discrimination – come to hand
• Forward focus at the start line – lateral

Week Five

• Either/or forward focus/come to hand with jump
• Either/or forward focus/come to hand with tunnel
• Forward focus at the start line – forwards

Week Six

• Delayed reinforcement – come to hand
• Delayed reinforcement – forward focus
• Where do you go from here?

When it comes to successfully and comfortably completing an agility course, clarity is the most important thing. Our dogs need to know when they should be taking the obstacle ahead of them and when they should be turning or coming into us. The most common errors that I see on agility courses is when dogs lack this clarity. So how do we achieve it?

1. Clear understanding of handlers’ arm positions is a big one!

When you raise your arm up in the air, dogs will naturally tend to extend/jump bigger. When you bring your arm low towards your body, dogs will naturally pay more attention. However, as we get further into our agility journey, we often muddy this. As a result, this can often cause our canine teammates to guess at what we mean instead of know with full clarity. And that can lead to errors on course or us over-handling. This is something we’re going to mitigate as we move through class! That means from here on out, we’re going to have to be mindful of exactly what arm positions we’re using as we move through the exercises in this class. That leads us to…

2. Clear and predictable verbals for coming into us/bypassing something and carrying on ahead/taking what they’re looking at.

Dogs all have their preferences. Some prefer to extend and carry ahead without us, while some prefer to stick with us. This can occur due to what they find most rewarding, but it can also be a combination of not being sure when they should be doing either of these things. This can then cause a lack of confidence for one or the other (and sometimes even both!). That’s where verbals can really help! So to assist our dogs (and ourselves!), we’re going to be teaching our dogs a come to hand verbal and a go ahead verbal. And I strongly believe in training these two verbals together. Afterall, if they’re lacking a clear understanding of one of these concepts, their understanding for the other isn’t going to be as strong. To truly master these skills, they need to feel confident about both! To be confident in going ahead, they need to also be confident in coming into you. That way we eliminate any need for guessing what our handling is trying to convey.

3. Now, at the same time, we’re also going to be focusing on startlines—the place a lot of dogs can struggle to focus ahead, particularly if we’re behind them or lateral.

There are so many things going on at the startline! People and dogs milling around behind us, other teams finishing their own runs, big excited feelings. This can cause dogs to be unsure of where to focus. This can cause them to focus too much on the obstacles ahead or too much on us. This is why we’re going to train a focus cue. We’re going to teach our dogs that when we point to something and ask them to focus, they should stare at that thing. And if we don’t ask them to focus on something and instead have our hand low, they should come into us. (Hello

Snooker skills!) And just a side note: this skill can also be a huge help for teams that commonly knock that first bar or run by it.

Okay, now that we’ve discussed all that we’re going to cover and why…let’s get to some arm position homework and discuss what those are going to look like!