Join Our Community of Dog Lovers!

Subscribe now so that you get email alerts about all new content and/or updates from Champion of My Heart!  +

FREE e-book "8 Things to Know About Veterinary Care"

November 2, 2009

While we’re revisiting our behavior modification and training plan for Lilly, it seems like a good time to revisit some of what got us here in terms of our long absence from formal agility training — group, private, or otherwise. I made many mistakes because I didn’t fully understand how fearful Lilly was and how many things contributed to her negative reaction to an agility course (and the monsters she thinks live there).

In response to Friday’s Training Update, Sam from over at MargeBlog asked:

BTW, I know Lilly is too scared still to even do private agilitylessons. Why is that? If there are no other dogs around, is she anxiousthat they might appear? Or is she stressed by having someone watch her?Does she exhibit any of the same signs at home if you were to have herplay around on the equipment if someone was watching? I have beenthinking about this and meant to ask you.

The simplest answer is that so much went so wrong in Lilly’s agility training that she immediately shuts down, and I mean full-on shuts down, any time she sees agility equipment anywhere other than at home. Our dog trainer, Gigi Moss, went with me to the agility field where we were took private and group lessons as well as did our own individual, drop-in training toward the end of our formal agility work. As soon as she saw the depth of Lilly’s fear reaction, she advised me to pull Lilly and keep her far from this setting for a while. That was about two years ago.

If you missed it way back, here is what Lilly “told” an animal communicator about agility and rally training.

For a while after we gave up classes of any kind, Lilly did OK for drop-in work, as long as we waited for all the dogs to leave. Once we were alone, she raced around like crazy. But, even that changed sometime in May 2007, when it got so bad that the place needed to be empty from the time we arrived to the time we left, otherwise it was a wash. And, it got really old driving an hour each way, only to have Lilly flip out and refuse to budge. I could afford drop-in fees, but not what it would cost to reserve the whole course just for us at a specific time each week.

And, if I’m being honest, it was a place where EVERYONE competes at a high level and few had much patience or sympathy for a newbie with a fearful dog (Elayne at Days of Speed excluded, of course). Many of those dogs had issues of their own, which I’m sure Lilly knew too.

Via the clarity of hindsight, I will say that it was more than worry about other dogs. It was more than the agility equipment itself, especially the much-feared teeter. It was such a complicated and mixed-up mess of experiences and associations, sites and sounds, that unraveling it felt impossible.

So, we quit going. Period.

Since home is the only place where Lilly has ever truly run agility without worry (most of the time) we experimented with various “audiences.” Lilly typically will run her home course, if people watch. Sometimes, she is a little slow, but she will run. Lilly can also do agility with mules, horses, goats, and cattle watching … at close range. Her home course backs up to a big ranch, and she indeed has done agility with very large animals mere feet away. So, I once mused that her animal fears were species specific.

As we began having Lilly’s few dog friends over to the house to help with our training, we learned that even here she will not do agility with other dogs (even ones she likes and trusts) watching or anywhere nearby. This includes our big boy Ginko, Lulu’s big brother Pitsch, and even Katie, Lilly’s former best, best friend the borzoi.

Now, we do have video of Lilly doing an agility-like task with Katie right there, so there is some hope. But, keep in mind that Lilly and Katie had a VERY special bond.

And, there was once last spring when I got Lilly, Katie, and even GINKO to do a series of jumps together out back, but we were mostly screwing around and not really training.

For a while, after we quit training in agility, I would still take Lilly to outdoor trials just to sit off to the side and watch, far from the equipment and dogs so that she could get cued into the trail environment, but we pretty much gave that up too because I realized that I was trying to do too much and needed to take about a million steps back.

If and when we return to private agility training , it will be at a new location, with a new trainer (a friend of Gigi’s), in an environment where competition isn’t as important or touted. I’m guessing that will be sometime in spring 2010, unless the weather is amazing this winter and we make faster progress on other work that our behaviorist wants me to complete before we re-introduce an agility training center.

Really, I just want to be able to run full courses with Lilly so that she can gain experience and confidence and so that I can learn to be a better handler so that I’m not a complete wreck when/if I have another agility dog in the future.

I don’t think that’s too much to ask, but we’ll see what Lilly decides.

About the Author Roxanne Hawn

Trained as a traditional journalist and based in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, USA, I'm a full-time freelance writer for magazines, websites, and private clients. My areas of specialty include everything in the lifestyles arena, including health and home, personal finance and other consumer interests, relationships and trends, people and business profiles ... and, of course, all things pet related.

I don't just love dogs. I need them in my life. Seriously.

  1. I’d never heard the synopsis of the evolution of Lilly’s agility fears. Wow, it is astounding how generalized it became in a relatively short time. You and she have come a long way!

  2. Thanks for the answer. I hope that you’re able to reach your goal and even go beyond that. You have made so much progress with the behavior mod that I definitely think you can do SOMETHING. Of course, I don’t know Lilly personally, but she has conquered so many of her other fears that I don’t see why this one will be any different if you keep working at it the way that you are.

    Here’s a really silly thought – is there any way you can take an upright with you to some random location where there’s not a lot going on, like in the back of a park that she feels comfortable in? Then, maybe after just getting her comfortable with its presence (R. Protocol?), lots of clicks and treats, begin to shape her going through it? I don’t know if that’s against the rules of the plan you set up with the behaviorist, but I always try to think of silly ways to get Marge comfortable with something.

    Seems you and I might have the opposite problem. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve said to people at my club, handlers in my classes, and even yesterday at the trial, “You know, I can barely even walk her around the block…” If we combined Marge’s relative comfort while running agility with all of Lilly’s improvement in the face of scary environmental day-to-day stuff, we might have a superdog.

Comments are closed.

{"email":"Email address invalid","url":"Website address invalid","required":"Required field missing"}

Free!

Stay Tuned for Something New!

big things in the works ... promise

Success message!
Warning message!
Error message!