Contact zones are designed to ensure dogs safely transition on and off the A-frame. Missing them can lead to faults in competition—or worse, injury. That’s why consistent contact behavior is one of the most important skills in agility training.
Thomas Berger has created these two wonderful courses for small fields! You only need a space of 16x20 metres, and, of course, you can build parts of these courses in an even smaller space.
On these courses, you can test your in/out cues, think of different ways of handling (blind, rear, front crosses) and focus on the slalom entry (including discrimination with another jump) as well.
When we talk about running contact online courses, Katarina Podlipnik Capuder, the founder of FUNtastic Dog training, is one of those who are recommended the most. So, we wanted to pick her brain about RC. Here are the tips from the master! Also, some do’s and don’ts at the end of the article ;)
We are piloting a program that has been started to support the relationship between a puppy and its owner right from the start, to avoid rushing into training too early and to add quality to puppy training. We believe this has a positive effect on the enjoyability and longevity of the puppy’s hoped for agility career.
On this course, I would like to test different skills but mainly have an option to train the ‘in’ cue. On some spots on the course, I also want to test when an ‘in’ would be better and when a double blind cross will keep the speed. When I design courses, I always think about what I want to train, what's hard for me, which solutions I would choose for my large dog (Belgian shepherd) and if I would choose different ones for my small dog (Papillon).
We made a list of the courses that you can take, even now, in isolation. Some of them require 1-3 jumps, perhaps a tunnel or some other obstacle, but there are also courses that don’t require anything else besides a computer, and they can really add to your understanding of dog agility. So, instead of getting wet and suffering, let’s learn to dance in the rain!
We’ve had many requests for adding support for other agility organizations besides FCI. We just recently added the support for WAO, and now, there will be support for 9 more organizations: IFCS, USDAA, AKC, KC, UKI, UKA, AAC, KUSA and SADAA! Tadaa :) We’ve also done some nice usability improvements!
This training challenge includes two tricks that you can do indoors. All you need is treats, a clicker, a couch, a pillow and yes, some toilet paper. But if you haven’t any, no problem, you can use e.g. a cardboard box. Both tricks teach the dog to offer behaviors, but also to understand his hind feet better, which will be very beneficial e.g. in RC training and almost anywhere in agility.
