Stopping to smell the roses..

... or just the dirt.

I'm having a little problem with Pit's sniffing during agility. He's very, very, VERY food obsessed and is easily lost to anything that smells remotely edible. Generally it's not an issue, it's a great motivator for training, except in class it's not working out so well.

Often when I have him in his down stay at the start line and try to release him, he'll simply get up and start licking and sniffing the ground (certainly someone that went before us left a little treat residue) and it takes a lot of effort and time to get his focus back on me. We can be running a course seemingly well only to have me lose him again, very abruptly, to another smell on the ground somewhere in the course. I've even had him trot away, mid-run, to the sidelines only to start doing sits and downs for someone else who was occupying her dog with tricks, waiting for their turn.

I have treats on me, and I try to make them incredibly high value so that hopefully he'd rather eat my treats over the ones he smells on the ground. There's no question he likes the treats I have, but he still finds it necessary to stop and at least check out the smell on the ground to decide whether he wants to lick it or not.

Should I be training his "leave it" more? After getting him to "leave" the smells on the ground every time he stops, should I expect him to stop to smell things less frequently or is there something else I should be doing?

Thanks.

How frequently are you rewarding? I generally figure that if I have a high value reward, and I'm still losing Meg, that I'm not rewarding enough. Of course, all bets are off if the groundhog is hanging out near the fence. Then we have to do an obstacle and release her to the groundhog as a reward. Do another obstacle, release to the groundhog. Etc.

With the startline stay, I would work a bunch on having him drive out of the stay to you in other situations. You don't even need to have agility obstacles around. Start indoors. Get him a bit revved up, have amazing threats in your hand, and put him in the stay. Walk forward a few steps, hold the treat in the hand you want him to drive to (whichever side) and release, treating him as he comes to your side. Maybe even get someone to help you do restrained recalls to your side, so you can get him even more pumped without worrying about ruining your stay. Just lots of reinforcement that driving to you is fun and tasty.

Currently since we're both very much beginners, the biggest run we've done has consisted of 4 obstacles in a row, most often there are 2 or 3. We started about 8 weeks ago, and when we were introduced to obstacles, we only did one at a time so he got treated after each one. Honestly, I've just been treating him at the end of our runs now so as not to ruin the flow we've got going. It does make sense to stop in between to keep it rewarding by giving him treats and I can build duration between treats as we go when he improves.

Brilliant idea for the start line, thanks! I have a loooong stretch of hallway that I can practice in to start.

Cider was sniffy. There was no food on the ground. It was a stress behaviour. Took time and confidence to work through it. We also worked in a horse arena one winter that was loaded with cat poop. Lots of sniffing.

If either dog takes off on me to sniff, mark, doodle around, they get crated for a time out. If you don't want to play with me, I'll do something else. Been quite helpful to have two dogs, put one away take the other one out. Gets the one who won't play back on track pretty fast.

When I ran Zoey this past fall, she'd get distracted by people, or a sent on the ground, and on our second to last run of the day, I figured it out. Like BB said, I had to reward more. No treats (Of course those aren't allowed in the ring!), but a very happy "YES!" after the first few obstacles, and she clicked in with an "Oh yeah! we're doing agility not what ever I want to do! oops!" and we ran the whole thing, undertime, but no Q. (I set her up wrong at the start, and she didn't take the first jump.)

That's also something I've started doing. I take a tie out for Bella, and a crate for Zoey, and when one's losing focus, or just not interested, the other comes out...

Unfortunately we found out the hard way that this doesn't work for Meg. She's not driven by agility itself; every ounce of drive she has for it has been painstankingly installed. For her, she just goes, "Oh, well. Now I can go hang out in my crate." Or if, heaven forbid, I act even the tiniest bit less than thrilled with her (ie - taking her collar and leading her off course without saying anything), game over, Meg is done playing. I'm getting a hynea to run for my next agility dog - no more of this softy stuff!

A couple of things may or may not be happening. First although having a startline stay is important, make it very interesting, train him to do a cool fast line up in between your legs or a fun trick (do this away from agility). If he is disconnecting from you when you leave him, then I wouldn't recommend that you do. Those stays can be very demotivating and stressful to some dogs especially novice dogs. Just run with him, until you can further his training, focus with distractions for the startline/leadouts. By running with him, your motion should keep him better focused on you.
I also agree that rewarding him more should work, if he makes a mistake on any part of the sequence, start again or make it easier for him, then reward with a jackpot.

Backchaining sequences is my fav for novice dogs and handlers, it absolutely sets a dog and handler up for success. I often backchain every sequence we do, until we can run a sequence of 5-6 obstacles. By the time they can do that the backchaining is no longer needed because both dog and handler now have some skills, confidence and they are really starting to understand their respective jobs.

I agree its a confidence thing. How you tackle it depends on your dog. But dont' get discouraged, with time and training it will go away

Thanks everyone!

Adjorts, now that you mention it, he does appear to be very demotivated when I leave him at the start line. I'm liking the idea of getting him to learn a fun line up in some way, I think I will try that this week.

Just to clarify for myself since I'm not too sure, backchaining is getting the dog to learn the last obstacle first and working your way back? Sorry, I'm not caught up on the agility lingo quite yet.

Thanks again everyone. Great advice, I have plenty idea to put to test. I'll let you know how it goes.

Yes, backchaining is working backwards from the last obstacle. This way the dog always knows where they are going and therefore they have a high rate of success.
If you do one obstacle, lets say the tunnel, you then add a jump in front of the tunnel and do the jump to the tunnel, then you can add a second jump in front of the first jump, sequence, jump, jump, tunnel and so on.

And if he is demotivated by the startline, just run with him in these beginning levels. I would be willing to bet a lot of your problems will fade, at the very least it is worth a try

Good luck

OK! I went to class last night to test out some new ideas I was given in this thread.

I taught Pit to poke through my legs and lie down to do a lineup outside of agility. He loves it because it's easy and he knows exactly how to do it. I didn't use it in class as I wanted to try running with him this time. It worked very well! Since he wasn't given a chance to lose interest by waiting for me to release him, he was very VERY happy to run a short course (lots and lots of praise, I treated him after each obstacle). It was a vast improvement over the past few weeks, however there's still the issue of having him run off mid-course to a bystander to beg for treats. Perhaps this is something that will fade if I keep up with what I'm doing?

I know why he runs to other people during a course, and it's definitely 100% my fault and I'm not sure how to fix it since he's such a food hound. He doesn't accept strangers easily, so if he's showing interest in a person and they ask if they can give him a treat, I say yes because it really helps with his fear. He's gotten treats from everyone in the class at some point because I let them and now he knows they have food. It doesn't matter what they have, he always wants THEIR food more than mine, even if it's the same thing. I don't allow anyone to feed him anymore in hopes of it getting better. Is there anything else I could be doing?

Thanks again for the tips, things are going very very well!

Zoey is the same way. When I started agility, everyone loved her. So, when it came time for our first run at our first trial, I couldn't keep her with me at all. She'd visit the judge, or the crew. At our second trial, on our last run, she didn't visit at all. She had realized that agility was work, not time to visit. I really think that eventually, Pit will realize that "Hey, it's more fun to do agility than beg for treats!" But until then, what I'd do is, when he goes to someone else, have them turn their back on him, and you call him, if he looks at you, "yes! Good dog!" then either offer the treat for him (so that he comes over to get it) or take it over to him if you have to the first time.

Glad you figured out how to get him to enjoy it more, and stop smelling the roses, or floor!

Glad that the startline advice is working, that is good news.
I agree, I would stop letting anyone give treats while in the agility ring. That is the place where you and only you give rewards.

I would also, train a hand touch for those moments when he leaves you. Often we use the same ol voice cue to call them back or when they start to disconnect from us. And that cue is often ignored by the dog. Teaching a new hand touch target, an 'off' or 'leave it' to huge rewards. And then remembering to use that new method , when our dog leaves lol. I would also shorten the sequences, until I knew beyond a doubt that my dog will stay with me.
It is much better to have complete full runs of short sequences that are interesting and fun than longer sequences that allows the dog to disconnect and leave us.

And as a side note: Although you haven't said anything, don't sweat it if he is the only one doing this in class at this time.
I always stress to my students that dogs and their handlers progress at different rates and they can't compare themselves to others in the class. It isn't uncommon for a team to be struggling with one thing or at one level etc while the rest of the class progresses...........but the next thing they know their dog is being the star of the class and the others are now having issues or problems etc.

Good luck

Thanks, I'm letting everyone know not to give him treats anymore. I'll train him to touch my hand for next week and see how that helps. Nose bumping is Pit's default behaviour when shaping tricks, and I think it's safe for me to guess that if I held out my fist, it would be the first behaviour I'd get so it shouldn't take too long at all.

You're right about me being the only one with this problem right now. As it is, I'm probably one of the farthest behind in this stage in the class. My instructor has said many times not to worry as everyone progresses at different rates, but it's hard not to get discouraged sometimes. It's always good to be reminded it's nothing to worry about. The main reason for me joining the class was to boost Pit's confidence anyway, and I should mention that there was NO WAY he would doddle off to a stranger to mooch for treats before this, he was so phobic of people. So I guess it's not all bad

Please don't get discouraged.

Little story........one of my students was having a devil of a time with her dog, both of them were new to agility. The rest of the class was progressing and they were really starting to lag behind. The next thing we know, not only had they caught up to the rest of the class, they blew them out of the water!! She was the first one to start competing as well of that group and she has had success.
I know another woman that learning agility in the beginning was very easy for her and her dog.................when they started competing all was roses and they were earning qualifying scores and Titles one after another. Then all hell broke loose, after two years of competing and 4 yrs of training (not including his obedience training and Titles AND Conformation Titles), this dog fell apart.........and they were struggling with the high requirements of the Masters level..................she quit, noboby has seen her since. My point is that some have it very easy in training their dog (although that doens't happen too often lol) and when it happens they can't deal with it and quit.

You'll be fine, don't get frustrated, look for ways to keep him and yourself happy, keep realistic goals, longterm and short term and have fun.

Good luck.

Class went moderately well last night. We've been practicing waits outside of class and I thought I would try to get him to wait at the start line a couple times. He didn't lose focus and took off straight to the obstacles when I released him. I will continue to practice outside of class so as not to push it.

Unfortunately Pit was full of the sillies last night so I had a heck of a time trying to get him to cooperate. We only ran about two obstacles at a time to try and keep things successful, but occasionally he still managed to take off to beg for treats or to just do zoomies (sometimes so soon as the moment I unclipped his lead ). There was a new toller in class for some reason who Pit was obsessing over. He'd constantly stop to smell the spots she had been standing on. Of course, I completely forgot to try out our new "bump" command where he bumps my fist with his nose, but in all honesty, I don't think it would have worked last night anyway.

I think I will start getting him out for a run before class to reduce his urge to rocket around like a maniac. The next class isn't for 3 weeks, so I have plenty of time to work on the little things that have nothing to do with equipment. My goal is to get him to keep focus on me when Nbc0 is standing nearby crinkling a bag of treats and feeding them to Zero.

I'm trying to think of a location I can practice on eventually that has as many good smells on the ground to practice not sniffing. He keeps focus flawlessly in fields around my house. Perhaps an empty dog park would work.