Understanding Your Agility Dog’s Feedback: What Their Behavior Tells You

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Understanding your agility dog’s feedback by knowing what their behavior tells you is going to put the fun you have together on the fast track. The subtle feedback dogs give during agility training and in the competition is often overlooked. Whether it’s sniffing, zoomies, or running off, these actions are your dog’s way of communicating. By learning to interpret your dog’s signals, you can avoid common mistakes, enhance your training approach, and build confidence for both you and your dog.

If you've been following this podcast or potentially you've googled who Susan Garrett is, you may know that I got my reputation as a professional dog trainer primarily from excelling in the sport of dog agility where I won multiple world championships, many, many US national and Canadian national championships, and have been loving teaching and competing in the sport of dog agility for more than 30 years.

When you think of dog agility, what do you think of? Possibly you think of a dog darting in a weave pole or jumping up and over an A-frame or speeding over a jump or through a tunnel or turning tight; it's exciting. It's amazing.

But yet, what happens when you sign up for a local agility class? A lot of times, they tell you, “Okay, put your dog on leash, put a meatball in front of their head, and let's get them up and over all this equipment.” Or worse yet, they'll put them on two leashes and kind of drag them across and say, “Hey, they'll learn to like it.” Oh, nay nay. Mistake number one.

We need to get things understood between us in a way that creates a smoothness to the movement, to the relationship, to the dog, understanding what you want and what you are seeing in your dog. You get that by focusing first on the foundation.

Mistake number two. People focus on the sexy. And the sexy of agility are the items I mentioned right off the top. The obstacles, the weave poles, the dog walk, the A-frame, the tunnels, the jumps. “Ooh la la, I can't wait to get my dogs doing those things.” We got to get the fundamentals, guys. The sexy things don't matter.

The number three mistake that people make, and this is true in every walk of life no matter what people are doing to train their dog. They do not receive the feedback the dog is giving them. You should be learning from your dog. Your dog is going to communicate so clearly how well you're doing with your training.

Fifteen ways your dog is going to give you feedback. Number one, a dog that sniffs in between obstacles is giving you feedback. They may be saying, ‘I'm stressed. They may be saying, ‘I'm confused.’ They may be saying, ‘I'm overwhelmed. Or they may be saying, ‘you have skipped a couple of those 25 steps on the way to teaching this, and I'm just not having fun. Feedback number two, the dog just leaves work. “Checking out, tapping out. Uh, yeah, I'm done. You can do the rest of this yourself. I'm leaving.”

Number three, the dog's jumping on the person. As they're trying to go from obstacle to obstacle, the dog is jumping on you, going, “Oh, hey, hey! Don't have a fricking clue what we're doing here, pal. You might want to take a few steps back. So, if the dog is jumping at you when you're trying to train them in the sport of agility, it's feedback. Take the feedback. It's the best thing you can do for your dog. Take their feedback.

Number four thing, nipping. If a dog jumps up at you and nips as you try to point them to go somewhere feedback. You know, there's only so many things our dogs can do. They can't write us a letter. They can't get on their computer and send us a text, but they can give us feedback with their body and their voice, and their actions. And this is what they're doing. This is their communication tool. We need to absorb it, take it in, and take action on their coaching us about how good a job we did coaching them.

Number five, a lot of dogs they'll get up near obstacles, and they’ll start spinning. The spinning, same thing, “I don't know what's going on here. I'm too over-excited. I don't really know what my job is. I don't know what you're trying to say to me. I'm crazy. This is crazy.” Number six, dogs that just start grabbing off course of obstacles.

“Your communication is not very clear, so I'm just going to go off and do this tunnel. I'm going to go off and do the A-frame. I hope this makes you happy. Cause I know, I'm trying to make you happy. How about this? How about that? How about this?”

Listen to the feedback your dog is giving you and believe the dog. Don't try to correct them when they leave. Don't say, “I know you're wrong.” Say, “Poof, that's not what I expected. So how can I be better? What can I do differently?”