Starting agility - any tips please?

I think I may consider doing agility with my brittany. Have any tips? We made a jump for her. She is exellent at it. I think she could do it even higher. She has too. We made her a tire jump out of a hulla-hoop! LOL. Anyways, any help?

Hi

Agility is great fun.

You need very good obedience training before you start. Your dog needs to be under complete verbal & signal control and to be able to focus solely on you whilst surrounded by distractions. You also need to be able to handle on the right as well as on the left.

How old is your dog? If she is under 18 months make sure that you keep the jumps fairly low - certainly below her shoulder level, as jumping heights can damage developing bones and joints. A-frames are also out for the same reason.

You will need to join an agility club for the specialized training: turns, signals, contacts, etc.

You can set up weave poles at home quite easily. Also a very low ramp so that she gains confidence in walking a narrow passage. Clean oil drums can be used for tunnels, attach a fabric chute for a closed tunnel.

SB

Thanks! Yes. She still needs work, of course. My dog is a 2 years old or so. Its is not a large jump at all. She goes over easily, with still alot of hieght from her to the jump as she jumps over.

Keep up obedience with her, try and find a good agility club go take a look at a few see how they do it. I went to 2 the 1st one was a very well named club that also compete at crufts but they were crap they just looked down on new people with there dogs. I since found a smaller non recognised club thats brilliant and my dogs have come on so much since going there. Definately set stuff up at home to get her used to it and teach the directional commands. Hope this helps!

As everyone's already said obedience, obedience, obedience Don't make the mistake I did and work always on the left (oooooooh, big no-no!), and fast downs are extremely useful for teaching contacts.

I'd also suggest laying some poles on the ground (and progressing to having them balanced on dented tin cans) and first walking then as she gets orientated trotting her over them, rather like cavelleti as this teaches her where all her paws are. It also doesn't hurt laying a long wide plank over a pencil or a piece of dowel to get her used to the earth moving under her paws , nothing big though!!

And of course, teach her that you are the center of her universe Have fun!

spaniels are good at agility if you get the right motivation, with mine its food. I use a plastic bottle with biscuits in, which I clicker trained them to retrieve so that I could open it and reward them, it stopped them from staying too close and meant I could throw it over jumps to get them going.
Good luck and I bet you will have lots of fun, their is a gundog league specially for gundog breeds. I wonder what height your britt is as my working cocker and springer are both standard which means they are up against the collies when they start competing, I am not competing until next year when the jump heights go down, most of all, have fun, thats what its for