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Your Outside-the-Ring Behaviors are Impacting Your Inside-the-Ring Behaviors Everything about reinforcement does eventually get packed into the behaviors that you're teaching and your routines, both beginning and end of run routines, work similarly to that. How our...
I recently re-posted a story about my puppy, Sprint, and her inability to be within 100 feet of a basketball court because the movement and sound of the game caused an over-reaction of staring, getting stuck, and vocalizing. This state, where she can't hear or respond...
In my coaching program, Fostering Excellence in Agility, content is broken down into bite sized pieces so that planning your training becomes less overwhelming, and those bite sized pieces are categorized in a way that is easy to navigate. Essential Skills and...
The secret to staying ahead is good timing 🙂 I think of timing as a loop. Good timing is all about predicting behavior, and I do think this gets lost in agility. We are so often waiting to see something specific, but if we wait until we see it, we will be too late in...
Let's talk about all the different skills that make weave pole training MUCH easier: Reinforcer Skills Having clear cues for how and where the reward will be delivered helps the dog mentally let go of where the reward is before they start, making it easier for them to...
This post was originally published on January 27, 2022. It has been updated by the author, Megan Foster, on January 28, 2023. A common theme that comes up when discussing obstacle skills and problem-solving is ring sustainability. For example, this question below was...
FOUNDER, FOSTERING EXCELLENCE IN AGILITY
I have been training in agility nearly my entire life. With seventeen years of experience, I have had the opportunities to work with hundreds of dogs within a large variety of breeds.
I began my agility journey with an American Eskimo and a Westie. In 1999, I began competing with my first Shetland Sheepdog, Buddy. Buddy’s lesson to me was about connection and bond. While running him, I knew that agility was what I was meant to do.
