1 cup kibble, 3 dogs, 12 minutes
SO MUCH FUN!
With the yard a mess of icy snow and it a chilly 20’F outside, the dogs and I decided to play inside this morning instead of out. Bloody foot prints from the icy snow wasn’t something I was keen on dealing with first off today. Basically when it’s so cold the ducks don’t even want to come out of their pen, yea, time to play inside!
So we played a fun drop on recall game.
The game is really fairly simple:
- Toss treats in the room one at a time so the dogs get running around
- Randomly throw in a ‘down’ cue
- Reward dog for responding to the ‘down’ cue
- Toss more treats in the room one at a time so the dogs get running around
- Smile, praise, laugh and be happy
- End with panting, tired, smiley dogs
Heyyyy so you’re an agility person right? How old does my puppy have to be if I want to take agility lessons with her?
Depends on the structure and nature of the class. If it’s a foundation for agility class, can be as young as 8-10wks as long as the things taught are low physical impact (so a class with loads of off-leash prep skills, targeting, hoops or no jumps, full performance of contact equipment is infrequent and when done is brief and/or lower heights, where most of the skills taught are on-the-flat using cones, hoops, maybe tunnels and the focus is on early handling skills, crosses, foundation behaviors and focus). If it’s a class where they structure it as an equipment intro with weekly jumping, contacts, weave poles, etc (meaning their class design teaches handling skills, crosses, and off lead work in later classes), then generally at least 8-12months or older due to the high physical impact nature. So really depends on the design of the class, and the philosophy and experience level of the instructor. For me personally with my own dogs, before the age of 18m (or growth plate closure), I teach essentially everything except weave poles, jumps and full contact performance. After growth plate closure, I teach jumping, weaves and full contacts. So before the age of growth plates closed, they learn the skills to extend, collect, turn, follow directional cues, a fair amount of distance skills, how to stop in motion, start line stays, body awareness, planks on the ground with contact behavior, how to control movement with low tippy type boards, how to balance on various low planks, early discrimination cues and performance, and loads of other skills. So that’s the long answer to your question 😉 Hope it helps
The class I was looking at seems more for adult dogs or older puppies, but I’m not entirely sure, it’s hard to tell from the description on the website. Thanks for the info, I will ask the instructor with that information in mind.
Good luck! Hope you find a class that’s a good fit and have fun :-). Agility is such a blast!