Introduce Contact Obstacles in Dog Agility Training

Video Transcript

" Hi! This is Elise Paffrath for Breeze Thru Agility. I am talking about dog agility training on behalf of Expert Village.com. Next I am going to talk about contact obstacles. The contact obstacles consist of the A frame, the dog walk and the seesaw. They are the planks and they are the obstacles that are one of the most exciting to watch. The dog does need to touch the yellow bit, which is called the contact zone. There are many ways to teach the dog to get in the contact zone, but one of the most popular is teaching the dog to have two feet on the ground and two feet on the plank. One good way to do this is by introducing a target. Okay touch! So you see Sprite has her back feet on the planks and her front feet on the floor and I am rewarding her for that position. She needs to stay there until I release her with an okay. When the obstacle is finished, they will be able to do it at speed. Okay, walk. Climb target. Okay, here plank Ready. Okay. Climb target. Good girl. So she does the obstacle with good speed but she pauses at the end. Okay. The contact obstacle requirement is mostly for safety of the dog. The dog walk gets higher than this and the A frame is much steeper in competition and for safety reasons; the dog does need to start at the bottom."