A little scared of a-frame?

Juno is doing great in her agility class but she's having issues with the a-frame. Sometimes she does it, and if she does it with enough speed she's fine; but if her pace is slow at all, she slips a little bit at the top and that freaks her out enough that she won't do it the rest of class.

Today we tried getting her amped up, I restrained her while the trainer teased her with food and called her, and once she was really excited we took off but she still wouldn't go up it. So next run we got out a toy, squeaked it and played tug, got her super excited about the toy... tried luring her up the a-frame with it and she did slightly better, but still couldn't get to the top.

Any suggestions for what else we can do? I'm going to bring her favorite toy next class to see if we make more progress with that, but wondering if there are other options.

lower your aframe and take steps back to retrain..

I'd lower it and bait a target. Put something tasty on something high visibility like a margarine lid, show my pooch, go to the other side to release them.. If they try to cheat to gt the food without doing the obstacle, have the trainer ready to snatch the food first. Built a lot of speed and confidence for Cider.

This is exactly what we do with our agility 1 students. Actually, I don't think they see the full height A-frame until agility 3. It's taken up to full height very slowly.

Lower the frame and teach her to safely turn around and come off it (good time to practice your contact criteria as well). Don't lure it, first you never want to have a food or a toy in your hand when doing contact equipment in case the dog focuses on your lure and what they are doing, accident waiting to happen.

Why would you do the restrained recall and have your dog go to the trainer? Should be the other way around, teaching the dog to drive to the owner/handler instead of someone else. Great way to teach your dog that other people have goodies for them and teach them that they get rewarded for leaving you...............

I don't normally lure for the contact equipment, it was just a "maybe she will do it if there is something she likes at the top" thought. It almost worked. She at least got all 4 feet on the obstacle, instead of just running alongside it or only putting 2 feet on it. At that point she was rewarded by being able to run around the room with the toy, and then we just moved on to the rest of the course.

Not concerned about her going to the trainer, we've been working with this trainer for 5 months so Juno has already been massively reinforced by her, and adores her. This class is just for fun, we'll never compete and so I'm not worried about those finer details.

I will see if lowering it brings back some confidence. She is always fine the first time we do it, but if she slips a little bit at the top, then it ruins it for her for the rest of the class. Maybe that is the bigger issue, getting her to do it so that she DOESN'T slip, then she wouldn't spook herself. We only have 2 more classes left though, and then she'll probably never see another a-frame again in her life.

Well, perhaps it doesn't matter if she's never doing one again. The two things I'd look at outside the training issues are the equipment and Lucy herself.

The dogs I've seen have trouble with the a-frame are usually not super fit dogs. I'd start doing some conditioning work if this was going to be an on going activity, slowly including in hill work.

I'd also want to take a close look at the a-frame itself. Is it rubber or sanded? Is the grit (of either type) still adequate, or has it started to wear away?

If I were pretty much done running a-frames for the rest of my dog's life, I'd probably just skip it the next couple of weeks. No need to risk stressing the dog or possibly injuring her for something that doesn't really matter to either of you.

Along with the other suggestions, how long are Juno's nails? When they're too long they can make it hard for a dog to get proper purchase on the wood and they can skid around. I like to keep all nails nice and short for agility.