Giving Your Puppy a Great Start.

I am writing this as part of Blog Action Day on "Starting Your Puppy". My last post was about Envy turning 1 year old, so I have just gone through a year of getting her started.

There are so many things to address with a new puppy, it's impossible to come up with a definitive list. Add to that the extra training you want to do for puppies that are destined for agility and it seems like an overwhelming task.

Don't compare your progress to someone else's progress as no two dogs are the same, and no two trainers are going to have the same plan.

Here are a few of the training tasks I undertook with Envy in no particular order:

Crate Training - agility dogs will need to spend time in a crate, and do it without complaining. Also, unless you are planning to watch your puppy 100% of the time, having a crate will give you piece of mind when you have to leave the house, or go to bed, or just need a break from crazy puppy time. You can watch 'Crate Games' or just logically make a crate a happy place - feed them in the crate, make it a safe place, and never a punishment place.

Toys / Tug - get your puppy interested in toys and especially tugging with you early on. It will help bring a bond, and teach puppy that life is more fun when interacting with you. Make it a game of keep-away, but let them get it plenty of times too. Use their prey drive and drag it along the ground and get them to attack it. Play with plenty of different toys too - you don't want them to only want to play with just one toy.

Leave Them Wanting More - puppies' attention spans are short, so don't let them be the one to end any game you play with them. You want to be the one to end it and leave them wanting to play more. This will help build a good work ethic and focus on you.

Tricks - teaching tricks is great for both the puppy and the owner. It teaches the puppy to be more inquisitive with their environment and more adventurous. It also teaches you patience. There are 100's of tricks you can train, and endless resources out there, including youtube. As they say, it teaches your puppy how to learn.

Chase Game - its a good idea early on to get your puppy to chase you. This can be a fun game and brings out their natural drive. You want your dog to run after you when they see you run. You can introduce a 'ready.... ready... GO' with this game too.

Bond - to have a successful agility dog, you need a good bond with them. They should want to be doing whatever you are doing - be the most interesting thing in their lives. This is a lot of work! You really dont want your other dogs to be occupying the majority of your puppies' time. Some of the other tips I am giving help to build a good strong bond with your dog. I live on 40 acres and think nothing of letting my dogs out with me off-leash. None of them want to leave and go exploring - they are always within about 100 feet of me waiting to see what we might be doing next.

Hand Feeding - early on, take advantage of your dog's desire to eat and hand feed them. Its a perfect time to do a little training, and shows them that good things come from you.

Explore Places and Surfaces - take your puppy to many different places and explore! You want them to walk on sand, grass, rocks, leaves, concrete, hardwood floors, metal grates, etc. etc. Get them use to seeing new places. Climb a hill, go down into a pit, go in a forest. Whatever you can think of - expose them to it!

Noises - you want your puppy confident no matter what noises are present in their environment. It can help if your breeder exposed your puppy to a variety of noises before you got them, but definitely let them hear all the loud and weird sounds of the world. You can take treats with you when you go places, and when you hear a weird sound, give puppy a treat. For example, go to Lowes and you might hear a loud saw, a beeping forklift, moving doors, trucks, etc.

Things that move - agility dogs will need to be comfortable on the teeter. To start that, you want your puppy to be OK with things that move under their feet. Wobble boards are great for this, as are the exercise balls and 'peanuts' or a skateboard. Put them on many things that can move and let them get comfortable with it.

Other dogs - my puppy doesnt have to be friends with all the other dogs out there, but I want them confident enough that they are not afraid of other dogs. Find out from friends if they have dogs that 'love puppies' and spend some time with them. Not all dogs like puppies, and you dont want to have a bad experience at a young age, so do this with care in a controlled environment. Usually puppies of the same age and size will get along well.

Other People - my breed of choice, the Border Collie, is not a real 'people dog' and as such, I make sure to introduce my puppy to as many different people as I can. Here it's important to carry treats with you so that you can give some to strangers to feed to your puppy. You want puppy to think that all people are great. Try to get a variety of people too - men, women, big people with big hats, little screamy kids, black and white, etc. My dog Rip did not get enough socializing with people before I got him and as such he is not at all confident around strangers.

Eating Near Other Dogs - we have too many dogs to have any of them be food aggressive. Early on, puppy needs to learn that they can eat right next to another dog and that the other dog will not steal their food. There is to be no growling or guarding allowed. I can be hand feeding Envy a piece of raw chicken, and any other dog can be licking up the juices that might fall to the floor while she is eating and she does not care. This is VERY important to avoid fights within the pack!

Leash walking - unless you like to be dragged around, teach your puppy how to walk nicely on a leash while they are still tiny!

Take Tons of Pictures - they grow so fast, you need to take pictures all the time. Posed and candid. You dont want to have them reach a year old and wish you took more puppy pictures!

Introduce Water / Baths - at some point, puppy is going to need a bath. Also, as an agility dog, its nice to have them enjoy water because it can get them nice and cool during a hot outdoor trial. My Rip dog hates water - thinks its a punishment. I made sure to introduce Envy to water as something fun.

Brushing - some dogs like to be brushed and some dont. Make sure puppy gets brushed enough times so they know its OK and not something to worry about.

Nail Trimming - same thing goes for nail trimming - since this will need to happen periodically, introduce them to it early.

Picking Her Up - teach puppy that it's fun to get picked up. Again, treats will be your friend here. You want your dog comfortable with you picking them up and carrying them a bit.


I could probably go on with 20 more things very easily, but that is a good list to get a puppy started. I have the advantage of working from home, so can spend a lot more time throughout the day with them than someone who has to be away for work all day.

Envy has her first birthday!

On February 27th, Envy turned 1 year old!

She has fit in perfectly as part of the Chaos Crew and is learning to be an agility superstar. You could say she is the perfect puppy! She is a ton of fun to work with - she has a great work ethic and loves to play tug with most any toy you offer.

Now that she's a year, I am going to begin her 2x2 weaves. This time I plan on using the Mary Ellen Barry variant of the Susan Garrett method.

Here are a few pictures from the past year of Envy growing up. I miss the little puppy Envy but so look forward to working with the more grown up Envy!

MACH Rip!!

MACH Victory Lap

I attended two days of the big 4 day AKC "Rocky Mountain Cluster" show which includes confirmation, rally, and obedience as well as agility. It's held in a big arena with three rings running concurrently. I skipped this show last year because of a number of reasons, but decided to do Saturday and Sunday this year.

As it turned out, going into this show Rip still needed two Double Qs to complete his first MACH. Over our past 2 AKC shows, we have not had the best luck and didn't manage a single Double Q, so I really didnt have high expectations that we would have a perfect weekend here. 

Well obviously based on the title of this post, we DID have a perfect weekend (at least as far as JWW and Standard are concerned!). Rip ran well on Saturday, though not as fast as usual, but still clean at least and he kept all the bars up - something that had been plaguing us over the last couple trials.
I have also been working on Rip's running AFrame, the failure of which contributed to us not getting any Standard Qs over the last couple trials. Though I was not happy that his striding on the frame wasn't correct as we have been practicing, he was at least hitting all of the contacts, including in the FAST class as well.

So after Saturday, we were sitting at 19 Double Qs. Skye has managed to earn 2 MACHs, but in both cases, we were not successful in getting that last Double Q on the first try. Sunday would be Rip's first try at it!

Rip tends to Q Jumpers courses more frequently than Standard courses, so when I saw that we were running Standard first again, I thought that if we could Q that, we would have a pretty good chance. He did have a nice run in Standard, though probably about 4 seconds slower than usual, based on our average number of MACH points that we get on a Standard run. He wasnt really driving through the course and I was wondering if he might be stressed because of the 'hugeness' of this show - it can be overwhelming and I have a friend who doesnt do this show anymore because her dogs stress too much here.

A short while after our run, after videoing a friend, Rip actually tried to potty in the arena - something he has never done before, so we ran outside and he went right away. He obviously wasnt feeling 100%, but what a good boy to keep running for me.

We had a long wait before our Jumpers run, and Rip did seem to be feeling better. The course seemed pretty straightforward for us - just make sure to support the jumps and cue the turns in time. Rip ran great and as he headed for the last obstacle - a tunnel - I knew we had it!

My friend Kenette ran out and handed me the MACH bar and ribbon and we went for our victory lap. Unfortunately Kenette's husband who was filming us didnt keep the video running after our run to catch the lap, but another friend did snap a bunch of pictures.

Here is a video I put together of our final Double Q.

Here is the Standard course - after the AFrame, I ran up to do a front cross between jump 3 and 4 and almost lost Rip to the wrong end of the tunnel. A number of people choose to keep the dog on their right after the tunnel for the 6-7-8 sequence and had their dogs actually run around the #8 tire. It was easy enough for me to go in for a front between 7 and 8 and shape the line which worked much better.
Everything else was pretty straightforward, though the finish from the weaves was a long run and if I get behind, sometimes Rip will look at me over his shoulder and drop a bar so I had to hustle up to avoid that.

The JWW course didnt have any specific challenge area to worry about. The jumps were a little offset from 6 to 7, and again from 8 to 9. I did chicken-out of my planned blind cross between 9 and 10 and instead held up to do a rear cross. I should have done it, but I was apparently doing MACH handling and being more conservative than usual. When I ran Skye on this course, I did do the blind and Skye actually ended up running almost a second faster than Rip did.

Anyway, the only real choice I had to make was which way to wrap the #16 jump. I decided to let Rip take the slightly longer way that presented a better line to the finish. Asking Rip for a full 360 degree wrap is usually much slower than the longer distance wrapping the other way.