Daisy Peel

Yeah.

Agility is kind of interesting because I think it's naturally so much fun for the dogs and they do for sure start to get the, even though every agility course is different, they're all similar enough that the dogs start to get a feel for it.

And you can have a team run a course or lots of courses and it looks for all the world like the handler is directing the dog.

And they kind of are, but not really.

Because as soon as the flavor of the course changes or as soon as an actual skill is required, it all falls apart.

And even with my dogs, there are some tests that I constantly insert into my training to make sure that there's still a back and forth of IQ it, you do it, IQ it, you do it, IQ it, you do it.

Because I don't want to get into a situation where

I'm cueing a behavior and the dog's doing the behavior but they would have done it anyways because that was the most obvious behavior.

So I'm constantly kind of testing and poking at that and make sure that their behavior is always contingent on my cues.

And I think for a lot of people, you can see what looks like an amazing run and it probably is an amazing run but there's a pretty big element of luck to it because the dog's not really paying attention to the handler's cues.

It just kind of looks like it if that makes sense.

I mean, that's kind of a tough one because at the end of the day, it's always my fault in the sense that it's, you could have done it a little better, right?

I could have done a little bit better, or there was something in the training that led the dog to believe that this is how it should be done.

But in the moment in a run,

Mm, not that often anymore.

I mean, I, I don't, I don't have clean runs all the time.

And it, uh, it's interesting because if you were to see me at a local competition with my dogs, you would probably wonder how do I ever make it onto a world team?

Because at the local shows.

I'm not as interested in winning as I am in kind of testing the boundaries.

How much can I push this behavior?