Knocking Bars

The NPR Car Talk guys said once that if you drive a manual transmission car and never, ever stall your car, you’re probably riding the clutch. They said the most efficient drivers do stall out occasionally, since they’re not babysitting the clutch.

I mention this because I would argue that none of us really wants a dog who NEVER knocks bars. Rather, we want dogs who are super-efficient jumpers who knock bars very, very rarely. If you look at photos of her jumping, Wings’ forearm hair is usually sliding along the bar: she is that efficient. She is not one centimeter higher in the air than she needs to be. But once in a great while these efficient jumpers will slightly misjudge, or cut too tightly around a standard and bump the standard, and a bar comes down. Then we ask for a little more care. The goal is a balance between being accurate and being confident/efficient/fast.

Here is my list of Dogs Who Never Knock Bars:

1. Those who worry about bars, hate to knock them, possibly can’t see them so clearly. Dogs for whom jumping is not fun, but on the contrary scary and possibly even painful. This group is comprised of the stride-measurers and early jumpers and way-above-the-bar-dogs. Bars usually don’t come down, but the dogs are painful to watch on course.

2. Other dogs aren’t trying to be efficient (the ones who are just having a jolly good time, running vertically and jumping way above the bar). These dogs don’t knock bars very often either, but they aren’t particularly fast.

Here is my list of Dogs Who Regularly Knock Bars:

1. Dogs not suited for jumping (poor structure or high weight : height ratio: the newfies, bouviers, etc.)

2. Dogs who have not learned obstacle focus: they look at the handler rather than where they’re going. Dogs who start agility “late” after a long obedience foundation may fall into this category: looking at the handler is the default behavior.

3. Dogs whose handlers interfere with the dogs’ job: these dogs knock bars because the handler has called the dog over the bar or given too late a command (telling the dog to turn when the dog is already in the air, so dog drops feet in hopeless attempt to respond).

4. Dogs who have no awareness of their feet

5. Dogs who think bars coming down doesn’t matter (they’re aware of the bar but don’t find hitting it particularly aversive, especially since the Fun Stuff Continues as mom or dad keeps running).

Here is my list of What We Want in an Agility Dog:

1. A dog who is biddable, temperamentally confident, structurally sound (well angled front and rear), physically fit, and visually acute (no vision problems). Drive AND the ability to “think in drive” are also obviously very desirable.

2. A dog who understands obstacle focus and can switch back and forth between looking where she’s going and looking towards handler as necessary.

3. A handler who consistently indicates to the dog what comes next while the dog is still performing the previous obstacle, so that the dog doesn’t have to look at the handler for information (and therefore stop watching where she’s going).

4. A dog who is experienced in the physical requirements for various jumping situations (collection, extension, turning tightly against the standard, working serps, threadles, backsides, pinwheels, whatever).

This takes time, and gridwork is a great place to start. Some people find Susan Salo’s dvds helpful in this regard. Others like Linda Mecklenburg’s material (Developing Jumping Skills). A lot of it is just practice: for example, a dog will take a serpentine more efficiently and confidently when she understands what’s expected and is confident that the owner will always be ahead of her, out of her way.

***5. A dog who understands that she has four legs (not just the two she can see) and what she can do with them. It’s Lesson #1 for any team who comes to me for beginning agility. In particular, rear end awareness–ideally, the ability to lift each rear leg independently — is vital not just for efficient jumping but for speed and confidence on the teeter, dogwalk, etc. The puppies who have been coming here mostly DO have this, and their jumping and beginning teeter/contact skills are a joy to see. Whenever I hear of a jumping problem, CONSCIOUS REAR-END AWARENESS is the first thing I advise working on, after ruling out physical limitations.

6. A dog who simply enjoys jumping, because she’s done a lot of it and been consistently rewarded for good jumping habits (wrapping tightly, keeping her feet up, showing good energy and drive). We tend to reward the contacts a lot more than the actual jumps, which we take for granted…and dogs pay most attention to what WE pay most attention to. One way to build value for jumping is to work a dog on one jump, click-and-treating for what you like, and incrementally  making the approaches or exits or your own position or the jumping context more difficult (see #4 above).

Once you are certain you have all of these — particularly #5 and #6 (a dog who is aware of and in perfect control of her own body, especially all appendages, and who enjoys using them — then you ask for

7. A dog who is RESPONSIBLE: who understands that it is her job to keep the bars up no matter what screwball other things (handler calling dog over bar, handler peeling away, even handler signalling late, even another dog chasing her on the course) might be going on. This means that you “correct” the dog for failing to do a job you are sure she is physically capable of performing (she has learned the body mechanics) and mentally prepared for (she understands what she is being corrected  for and the “correction” will have the result you want: making her try harder to keep bars up rather than becoming worried about them or you or the course). In simple words, when the bar comes down because of factors “in the dog’s control,” you (at the very least) down the dog and stop the fun. Maybe you restart right away, giving the dog a chance to be right. Maybe you put the dog on a time out for a few minutes. Maybe the session ends. Depends on the relative softness/hardness of the dog.

In Wings’ case, she didn’t care about knocking bars and, for almost her whole first year of competition, knocked a bar in roughly one run out of four. She didn’t make it to the World Team tryouts that year (the year she was 1.5-2.5 yrs old) because of the bar-knocking problem. She had #1-#6, but she didn’t have #7. But the bar knocking ceased completely, instantly the moment #7 went into effect in trials (bar down –> “Wings down, stay, thank you judge” –> the run was over, Wings went into the pen without ceremony, with no toy). Until then, when bars came down, the fun had continued, so she saw no reason to make that extra effort with her feet. Now, if you watch Wings videos, you can see her give a little kick to her feet, over every single jump. I love watching that, because I know she’s thinking. And the bars come down exceedingly rarely. One run out of 30, maybe.

So that’s my advice. Make sure you have #1-6, and then, unless the dog is super-soft, implement #7.