Monday 6 August 2012

Agility Course De-construction

G3-5 KC Olympia Qualifier - A Judge's De-construction


I was recently asked to judge a Kennel Club G3-5 Olympia Qualifier. Judging an agility course is always an interesting exercise, on many levels.

Planning

I'm lucky enough to train with a club that takes it's agility quite seriously (apart from the egg & spoon races of course). The down side of this is I tend to set quite hard courses because I try them, or elements of them, in club and they work because they are being run by talented people and dogs.

I'd spent a lot of time planning this course, and checking it with wiser and more experience heads than mine. I was happy with it and felt it would give people a challenge without being too soul destroying.

The course I'd come up with is below. It was supposed to start with a fairly obvious trap, then move into a trap free, relatively free flowing middle section, followed by a number of traps at the end. It wasn't supposed to be too easy as it was a Qualifier. Unfortunately it caused more problems than I'd anticipated so I thought it might be worthwhile going through it here so people can avoid them in the future. Despite what you might think most judges aren't out to break people, we're just trying to test them. At the end of the day, agility is supposed to be fun :-)



Running the course


When it was actually run on the day I had to make some changes due to the weather. It rained quite heavily as we were laying it out and the cloth on the collapsable tunnel got very wet. So I decided to change it for another piece of equipment. The ideal would have been another rigid tunnel, but I already had two in the course and there was a bit of a shortage at the show, so I decided to use a long jump instead.

2-6 Sequence

2-6 was an obvious trap, but it still caught people unawares.

2-6 Trap


The key to a set piece like this is preparation. The people who got caught out were only trying to turn their dogs away from the tunnel after they'd landed from jump 2. By that time most dogs, especially the faster ones, will already be locked on to the tunnel, so you have a very high chance of losing your dog down it. People sometimes worry about trying to set their dogs for a turn after a jump prior to the dog taking off in case they get a refusal or 5 faults. Key things to think about here - know your dog's commit point. After they've reached that  point they should take the obstacle in front of them even if you give another command. However a better way to tackle this is to have a signal that tells your dog that "something" is going to happen after the obstacle in front of them. For me, this is what we refer to as an air-brake. We all know that we control our dogs with the hand closest to them. However my dogs are trained that if I also raise the other hand as well, above the main hand, it means they should be prepared and not take this obstacle flat out. It makes it very easy to handle a set piece like this as I would stand by 2, release my dog and after they completed 1, raise an air-brake. That will cause my dog to lock it's focus on to me and not the next obvious obstacle.

6-7-8 Sequence

6-7-8 is actually a variation on a sequence I use in club to teach people to rear cross. The training sequence is below.

Rear cross exercise


You normally get people to rear cross 6-7 and then 8-9 as the tunnel helps to pull the dog in. This sequence rarely causes problems. However as I need obstacles elsewhere on the course I decided to abbreviate the sequence by removing jump 8 and moving jump 10 further out. That gave the sequence as it appeared in the course.

6-9 an unexpected trap
This had an unexpected consequence - the sequence, that was supposed to simply be a handling exercise, became a trap. People trying to run the sequence at speed were pushing their dogs into the wrong end of the tunnel. As they sent the dog over 7 they were running forward and trying to "bowl" the dog across in front of them into 8. Unfortunately this left the handler's shoulders pointing straight down the course and not pointing at the tunnel entrance :-( That combined with a tendency to step too far forward, effectively blocking the entrance at 8, sent the dogs into the wrong entrance. If you were going to do that you needed to make sure you didn't step too far forward and make sure that your shoulders were pointed at 8. The other alternative was to front cross after 7 which gave a very safe entry into the tunnel as ably demonstrate by a number of handlers. Sadly some of the dogs who went into the wrong entrance were chastised by their handlers. As a judge your not allowed to comment on a course while it is being run, but my mental notes were that the dogs went exactly where the handler's body language had told them to. We have an adage that we use in our club - if your dog went wrong, remember who trained it. 

9-10 Sequence

The next non-trap on the course was 9-10. This was supposed to be a simple weave entry, and in fact because of the weather had been straighten out slightly. Again this had an unexpected consequence.

Another unexpected trap

It made the speed that the dogs arrived at the weave entry faster, and as a consequence a lot of dogs were missing the entry :-( If you can teach your dog a strong, independent weave command this sort of entry shouldn't cause a problem. Typically I'd give a "weave" command before my dog does the jump at 9. That cues my dog to take the jump and then look for the weaves, because they are actively looking for the weaves I'd expect them to find the entry without difficultly.

Jump 12

The jump at 12, just in case your wondering, was put in there to give me, as the judge, time to get back into position to judge the contacts as the A-Frame. Judges do things like that at times, unfortunately we can't sprint quite as fast as the dogs, so we have to tweak the course at times to give us an edge :-)

13-14 Sequence

13-14 again was an obvious trap. The angle the dogs were coming in gave a straight line to the see-saw not the A-Frame.

Trap at 13-14

This did catch more people than I'd expected. Generally if you have the see-saw and A-Frame setup in competition, the A-Frame wins. It's a visual thing, the A-Frame is a much bigger target. I think most of the issues here were caused by people relaxing a bit and not concentrating to make sure their dog was locked on to the A-Frame.

Jump 15

The jump at 15 was put in there to stop people decapitating themselves on the see-saw.

16-17 Sequence

16-17 was another fairly obviously trap, but it shouldn't have been a strong a one. With the collapsible tunnel there, the dogs would be moving relatively slowly when they exited the tunnel, and wouldn't have had sight of the jump at 20. Dogs also have a tendency to turn towards the side their handler was on when they entered the tunnel, so they would have naturally turned to the right. All of this should have made this a relatively weak trap. Unfortunately because of the unforecast bout of rain, the collapsible tunnel was too wet to use, so I changed it for a long jump.

Trap at 16-17


That meant the dogs were moving a lot fast as they exited the obstacle and they had sight of the jump at 20 even before they took off. Which in turn meant we got a lot more eliminations here than I'd anticipated. In retrospect a wall would probably have been a better substitution as it would have blocked sight of the jump at 20 from the dogs. Having said that a lot of people did negotiate it successfully. Again the key, here was preparation. Making the dog aware that something was going to happen after the long jump went a long way to negating the problem. Failing that, handler anticipation that they were going to have to do something fairly spectacular to get the dog's attention as soon as they landed worked well. The people who were prepared to turn their dogs as soon as they landed generally succeeded. The people who let the dog get in a stride or two first, didn't.  If your in this situation on a course, using your dog's name is almost guaranteed to get the dog to turn it's head. We spend a lot of time teaching a dog it's name, use it to your advantage.

17-18 Sequence

17-18 was another trap.

Trap at 17-18


As the dogs looped round 17, they'd be pointing at the A-Frame as the next straight line obstacle, rather than the see-saw. As I mentioned earlier this was intended as a stronger trap than 13-14 as the A-Frame is larger and tends to suck dogs in as it's a larger visual object. This did take a certain number of people off course, but not as many as you might think. Because 16-17 had become harder, most people had their dog's focus firmly on them by that stage so were able to easily direct them to the see-saw rather than the A-Frame. So we did have a bit of balance there. 16-17 was harder, but that made 17-18 easier.

Finish

From there on it was all quite straight forward to get to the finish line.

Final Thoughts

For a number of reasons this course caused more eliminations than I would have liked and a few less clears. Partly that was changes caused by the weather and partly by things that were not intended to be traps causing problems. Would I do anything different? Probably not, excepting using a wall if I couldn't use the collapsible tunnel. This was a G3-5 qualifier, so all the people running dogs should be experienced handlers and should be able to analyse a course and spot the problem areas. True, you will get inexperienced dogs but I would expect the handlers to be shepherding those dogs quite closely as indeed a number of people were.