When you first start agility and you’ve trained all of the foundation skills, it’s very tempting to start running sequences and courses straight away. We get it, the adrenaline of running with your dog and seeing them look like a “real” agility dog is fun and exciting!
However, at OneMind Dogs, we believe it is very important to spend time learning the individual handling techniques with your dog right from the beginning as well. Sure, you won’t need 30+ handling techniques to get you through a novice course. But, it’s not about what you need right now, to be successful in a competition. There are SO many more (and more important!!) reasons to learn different handling techniques.
These benefits include:
- Understanding how your dog reads your body language
- Learning how the 7 elements influence your dog
- Giving your dog confidence and independence
- Getting a great balance of obstacle and handler focus
- Making the handling “automated” so you can focus on connection
- Learning about your individual dog and what they need
As an added benefit, you only need one jump to learn most handling techniques, so you can practice at home in your yard! Even better, video your training and send the videos to our coaches so we can help you nail each of the techniques right from the beginning. No need to get frustrated or confused.
Even if your dog is only young, each handling technique at the OneMind Dogs online learning platform is broken down into small, easy-to-follow details. And your dog gets heavily rewarded along the way, keeping training fun and easy for them to understand.
Our handling techniques are mostly completely natural for the dog, so there is no need for many repetitions either. Learn them by yourself first and then when you bring the dog in, you’ll only need a few sessions to nail the technique. No boring drilling required!!
As your awareness of using all of the handling elements to better interact with your dog increases, it becomes easier to execute and remember the individual handling techniques. Leading OneMind Dogs Coach Janita Leinonen suggests: “After doing the individual techniques the same way each time for a while, you don’t have to consciously think about the execution. Your performance starts to happen automatically, and you don't have to think about the handling elements anymore. When the techniques start to be automated, you will have more capacity available in your mind to focus on connection with your dog and seeing the commitment, so your timing will improve ten-fold."
OneMind Dogs Coaches believe that learning the OneMind Dogs handling techniques is a great way of growing your relationship with your dog, increasing your mutual understanding and learning how to interact with your best friend. Learning just one technique gets you started down this phenomenal road of growth and bonding.
It's good to remember that you have the best training expert and coach with you all the time. Your dog basically always gives you the right response to your handling; he will tell you how he interprets your body cues simply by his reactions. Janita reminds us that “you should not be afraid of making “mistakes”. If something doesn’t go according to plan, it is just information for you to change some aspect of your body cue and when you do so, see the response you get from the dog and learn from it. So embrace mistakes and see them as a way to learn. Training the techniques is a great way for the dog and handler to learn from each other.”
So what are you waiting for — start learning the techniques now.