Reward “Easy” Agility Obstacles and Tricks to Maintain Performance

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Reward “Easy” Agility Obstacles and Tricks to Maintain Performance

Written by Lorrie Reynolds

Lorrie has been an agility enthusiast since 2002 and has taught tricks, family obedience, agility, and canine conditioning since 2005. When she's not writing articles, developing courses, or training dogs, you can find her curled up with a book in her hands and a dog warming her feet.

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Categories

Dog Agility | Dog Training | Dog Tricks

A friend came up to me at a trial and asked about a training issue she was having with her young dog. If there was a discrimination in the training sequence, he always, always chose the contact obstacle.

She’d tried moving the equipment so the tunnel was on the other side, moving the tunnel out, changing to a lighter-colored tunnel, and even putting a jump wing in front of the A-Frame (the dog went around it).

Her dog wasn’t afraid of tunnels. If they were in any other sequence that wasn’t a discrimination, he would go through them…

A person in my trick group messaged me with a similar problem. Her dog had “forgotten” how to sit on cue. When she asked him to sit, he sat pretty, waved, or did his “cover” trick with his paw over his eye.

Neither of them could figure out why their dogs wouldn’t do this simple behavior.

I asked them both the same question…

“When is the last time you rewarded just the sit/tunnel?”

Not surprisingly, I got the same answer from both of them.

“Well, he KNOWS the tunnel/sit, and it’s fun/easy.”

Neither of them could tell me when they had rewarded the fun or easy thing last.

Dogs do what works. If they’re ALWAYS rewarded for the contact or a complex trick and RARELY rewarded for the tunnel or sit, they are going to default to the behavior that gets the reward.

I asked them both to focus on rewarding the fun/easy thing for a week and get back to me with the results.

It worked! When my agility friend tried the discrimination again, her dog paid attention to her cues and took the correct obstacle. The trick person’s dog “remembered” how to sit when cued.

And that brings us to today’s tip:

Too often, we only reward the dog for the things that are challenging – the perfect contact performance, a confident teeter, a beautiful sit pretty, or fast and flowing weave poles. Remember that jumps and tunnels make up a significant portion of agility courses! Don’t forget to intermittently reward the fun/easy behaviors or the dog will default to a behavior that “pays” better. Maintain their value by remembering to reward them regularly.