Does your dog break the start line? Do you have a young dog in training that you want to ensure has a good start line?

One of my favorite things to teach is start lines behaviors for agility dog and handler teams. It’s a passion of mine! I am fascinated with the different personality combinations between the dogs and the handlers in that area. I love developing a creative process to help these teams achieve success. Most of the students I work with have dogs with unwanted behaviors because the dog’s optimal state of arousal has increased too much. My goal is to find the source of the issue and help them clean up the entire routine.

What is the most common mistake when dog’s have start line issues? It’s actually an increased level in handler arousal!! It’s not the dog that has issues, it’s the handler that hurries the process and causes anticipation issues. I see this happening as I watch the communication between the dog and the handler before leading out. Increased handler arousal levels and disconnected handlers is a much bigger issue for the dog’s success than any dog training.

Training your dog is a big thing for successful start lines, but most trainers don’t understand how much handling, clean verbal cues, and predictors will affect your dog’s start line performance.

Starting on December 1st , I will delve into this subject in a new Fenzi Dog Sports Academy (FDSA) class. My hope is to help agility trainers understand how these unwanted behaviors happen and how to prevent them from occurring. Registration is currently open and all Gold (working) spots have been taken. There are still some working Sliver spots (unlimited questions, and 2 short video submissions) available and unlimited Bronze (observer) available.

This class will break the start line behaviors into small workable training and handling pieces to help you and your dog learn your parts in the process. This is perfect for young dogs (6 months and over) starting performance training or starting their agility career. And if you have a dog that is trialing with start line issues, we will go back to the beginning and rebuild it. This is a different class from my previous Impulse Control for the Agility Dog.

To register for AG140 click here: