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10 Golden Rules

My training is best known for fast, happy and healthy dogs, tight turns and of course,  running contacts and tricks.

1. develop a firm and trusting relationships with your dog

2. properly condition your dog: my dogs’ minimum is 2 hours of off leash running in the woods per day + one all-day-long hike in the mountains per month

3. teach your dog tricks – as many as you can think of: tricks teach you how to teach, they teach your dog how to learn and they also teach the dog that learning is fun, that you’re fun. Side effect is total awareness of his body, tricks teach a dog how to use his body. Rear end and overall body awareness, balance, strength, power, flexibility and agility that my dogs excel in so much are all the side-effects of all the tricks they’ve learned. "Too much tricks" doesn't exist. If you don’t have any ideas, you can get some from our tricks videos.

4. teach your dog obedience. It’s very easy to motivate a dog for those 30s on agility course. It’s much harder to motivate your dog for long minutes of just heeling. If you want to learn about motivation, obedience is a way to go. If you can make those long minutes of heeling fun to a dog, then making agility fun for your dog should be a piece of cake.

5. boost your dog’s confidence – only confident dog will dare to run at his maximal speed. Make sure your dog knows he is World Champion before you let him do his first jump.

6. don’t be afraid to do things your way. Books, videos and seminars are helpful, but no one knows your dog better as you do, especially after teaching him those 100 tricks and playing and walking with him every day, so… Trust your intuition and do what YOU think is best for your dog. Avoid those that think there is just one best way. Wary those who want to make you believe you need particular breed/method/handling tool/video in order to succeed. Were you told too that you MUST have a lead-out in order to win? Well, I won at least 90% of my runs with La for years. And she doesn’t stay.

7. if something goes wrong, always remember it’s your fault, caused either by your training or handling. That’s a good news since it gives you a power to fix it yourself too. Things would be much harder if it was dog’s fault. Luckily, they, unlike people, come without mistakes.

8. never forget that results don’t count. Because of the speed of my dogs, I can have a very ugly run and still win. And I might go off-course sometimes, but that doesn’t mean that the rest of the run wasn’t perfect. Who would care about that off course then anyway? I always say that every good dog goes off-course sometimes – that’s not the case only if handler is perfect too. But I don’t know any of those, so…

9. dogs work best when they work for themselves. Don’t ask them for a favour to work with you. Make them ask you for a favour to work with them.

10. you want agility training tips? If you follow the advise from above, agility gets so easy that you don’t need those. Just go out and have fun with your dog!

photo by Maja Rokavec


163 Comments

  1. Johanna April 20, 2010 at 12:17 Log in to Reply

    Hello!

    My name is Johanna and I’m 16 years old from Sweden. I
    have a 4 months old border collie, my first 😉 I was wondering
    how you teach your dogs to heel so beautifully? I really admire
    your realtionship with your dogs =)

    Have a nice day!
    //Johanna

    • LoLaBu April 20, 2010 at 12:36 Log in to Reply

      I’ll be making a training video on heeling very soon. For now, just in short: I first teach a position (as a trick of circling with front feet on an object, see the video of a Pumi that Mallin posted. When position is crystal clear to the dog, I start moving in all possible directions, eventually also forward for longer and longer distances. At this point, you can start shaping for higher legs too if you want those. You just need very good position and high head first and then the dog will go up with front feet when you slow down and you can shape them higher&higher from there.
      Have fun with your puppy!

      • Sandra April 20, 2010 at 23:28 Log in to Reply

        Hi!

        I’m trying your heeling method with two of my dogs (a miniature schnauzer and a shetland -- both of them trained with clicker) because besides agility we also like to compete in obedience and I will like to improve their heeling (your dogs heel just beautiful!)., but I’m finding some troubles.
        Both of them find quite hard to keep moving to complete the circle (the full 360 degrees), they just get to 180 degrees aprox., specially the shetland who stays a long time in front of me because of the treat!-he loves food!- So because of this I can’t bump in their way and click that position as it is shown on your video.
        I think they find some kind of difficult to move their back legs, is it because they are not puppies any more? Should I try something different before trying this exercise? I’m using an object larger than the one showed on the video, should I use a smaller one?

        Thanks a lot and congratulations for this new website!

        • LoLaBu April 22, 2010 at 16:29 Log in to Reply

          If you hadn’t done any rear-end awareness tricks, then it’s for sure time to do some! Backing up, backward figure 8, 4 feet in a small bowl, 2on2off position… -- to name just some of the tricks that will help them understand they have rear feet and you might be clicking for using them. Circling the target gets easier then. Also, by delivering the rewards from the right angle, you might be able to get some steps more.

      • Johanna April 22, 2010 at 23:04 Log in to Reply

        Thank you!

  2. Reija April 21, 2010 at 15:57 Log in to Reply

    Hi! I was just looking for some advice for heeling and found this conversation! 🙂 I have an australian kelpie called Rico, he’s now nine months old. He uses all of his legs really well and can almost do a handstand already. So about the heeling.. We have this problem: if I start moving slowly, he doesn’t lift his front feet up at all, he just tries to sit next to me all the time. It looks very nice too, but when I move faster (I mean walk normally..) it’s hard for him to keep up since it’s impossible to sit down all the time. I really don’t know what to do, I want a very excited-looking heeling but it just seems impossible.. 🙁

    • LoLaBu May 28, 2010 at 15:47 Log in to Reply

      Try teaching heaving front legs in sit and then inb stand position separately, as a trick. Also, cavaletti work usually helps them get the idea what you want once you start moving. And of course, make sure his head is as high up as possible if you want high legs!!!

  3. Bori May 10, 2010 at 19:35 Log in to Reply

    Hello! I have a 3-year-old mudi male. He is not a typical mudi: he is stubborn and not motivated. I work on these problems and we are better and better every day. Does your method work on an adult dog, who wasn’t trained your way when he was puppy? Have you tips for raising his motivation? Unfortunately, almost nobody has methods to work with a no-drive dog so it is not easy to find informations about it. 🙁 I decided to teach again the heeling with your method using another cue. Is it a good idea? Unfortunately, when he was puppy, I used the traditional training methods (dragging his leash etc…) so he hates heeling. 🙁 I started clicker training few weeks ago, but he don’t want to think. I could teach some tricks, but it was very slow. I had tought tricks without clicker, and he had learnt much faster. Why? Is this because the clicker is new for him? Unfortunately he knows the easier tricks, so I can teach him only more difficult ones. He is very intelligent, like all mudis, he just does not think during clickertraining.
    When do you come to Hungary? I wish I would live in Slovenia and go to your classes. 🙂

    Thank you for your help!

    Bori

    • LoLaBu May 11, 2010 at 14:43 Log in to Reply

      I think you’re not being fair to him. It’s not fair to say he doesn’t want to think, if he was originally trained with corrections and punished for thinking and only rewarded for not thinking and waiting for directions. YOU trained him not to think. Also, what if he is not stubborn and not motivated, but just doesn’t like to be jerked around with the leash? I think you first need to change your attitude towards him and accept your part of responsibility for him, being as he is. It will give you more patience and you will for sure need it! Forget about training that or another trick, click ANY action he does. You are not starting from 0, you are starting from -10 because of the original training he had. It can be done, but it takes time and patience and being modest:).

      Good luck! If that helps, I’ll be making a video on speed&motivation too, there are of course many things you can do to improve it. Teaching tricks through shaping and letting him initiate action is a great start. But no, I’m not planning any seminars in Hungary in a near future, sorry. But then, Slovenia is not all that far for you:).

  4. Bori May 11, 2010 at 21:23 Log in to Reply

    Thank you! I’ll try it. I’m looking forward this motivation video. 🙂

  5. Natalie May 24, 2010 at 05:44 Log in to Reply

    Hi, I was looking for some advice on weave pole training.

    Lark is trained with channel weaves. We started training when she was 10 months old with the channel 6 inches apart. We progressed slowly and when she turned one (13 months), these are the results.

    She is cris-crossing her feet instead of single stepping or bouncing which is what I am looking for. I’ve been clicking if/when she does single step (which is very rare).

    I’m kind of stuck at this point. I don’t know if I should re-train totally, or click for single stepping… Any ideas?
    Thanks so much!

    Natalie

    • LoLaBu May 24, 2010 at 11:20 Log in to Reply

      Huh, the major problem I see here is that she is not at all in a hurry… I would go back, open the channel completely (I start with 35 inches or more!) and work on SPEED. Once she understands it’s about speed, she will find the best footing for her on her own.

  6. Natalie May 24, 2010 at 19:54 Log in to Reply

    Thanks! I’ll try that.

  7. Mariah May 25, 2010 at 17:23 Log in to Reply

    Ok so I started teeter training with my PyreShep and he was doing very well. I would leave him in a sit stay, hold the end of the teeter, call him up it, lower it down slowly reward the 4 on position, then release him. I had not been lowering any faster when he randomly started jumping off. He does a fly by with the teeter, jumping on it, then continuing off the side, and then he runs circles everywhere. When we work running contacts, he does one rep, lays down, then waits for me to coax him back to the start line, then one rep again, lay down. Some times he randomly will stop when we are in the middle of a short sequence, freeze, then take off barking at thin air. I’m not sure what the deal is. I don’t really get frustrated with him, I just kind of stand there confused. When I call him, he comes back as if nothing happened. Also, he loves to launch himself off the table without stopping. He never had a problem with it before. It’s interesting because he either has no motivation, therefore lays down and ignores me, way too excited, in which he runs circles and jumps off of the table and doesn’t wrap jumps, or is too distracted, in which he runs off completely to the corner of the ring and either barks or sniffs around.

    • LoLaBu May 27, 2010 at 10:24 Log in to Reply

      I think most of this is actually sign of stress, zooming and sniffing are very typical for stressed dogs. I would go back to just playing with him and once he is really into it, I would include some running on a plank and cik&cap in between. Avoid sit stays for now, it’s not a good idea for dogs that stress easily. You can always start the plank or teeter work by sending him to cik/cap instead.

  8. Bori May 30, 2010 at 19:24 Log in to Reply

    Hello, I started teaching the heeling with your method. I started it with circling on a chair with front legs. After it, I changed it to a smaller, flat stone. When he did it well, I wanted to use a peace of paper instead of the stone. But he doesn’t understand that he must circle on the paper. I tried it without object too, but he doesn’t understand that he must do the same movements like on the chair and the stone. How and when should I remove the object? Should I use paper before I remove it or not?

    Bori

    • LoLaBu June 4, 2010 at 22:50 Log in to Reply

      Try to use many different objects, preferably lower&lower, so that he generalizes a behaviour better. The per is o.k. as a last step before fading it completely.

      • Bori June 5, 2010 at 20:06 Log in to Reply

        Thank you! 🙂

  9. daisy May 31, 2010 at 05:53 Log in to Reply

    I am so excited to find your new website here.
    The comment and your reply here are so useful!
    You are so nice and so generous to share the knowledge of training.
    Thank you!

  10. Ann_Russia June 8, 2010 at 07:46 Log in to Reply

    Hello! My name is Ann and I’m 16 years old from Russia. I live in little city Tyumen. Yes, and here is agility! :DWe have a small playground for lessons, but we have only five barriers, boom, slide, swing, wheel, jump …
    Well slalom course.It is very difficult -- to engage in similar circumstances, but we try.
    I have 2 dogs. Mongrel and Corgi.Bonia and Seva.Bonia 4 years and 9 months Seva. Sorry for my English. I have not used it to communicate.You understand:)
    My dog Bonia very bad part of the slalom. She is crazy and I can not send her energy in the right direction. It is difficult to explain that either -- I found her on the street when she was about 8 months. She knows simple commands, and knows all the shells agility. But we do not have enough time, that would be like that or work out. Classes are 2 hours, and shells are not enough … Silvia, could you give me at least than the help .. I just do not know where to write … but to help I need is yours. Until recently I had an idol, but now I can say that you -- my idol:)


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articles beyond foundations bi bu busting the myths camps EO foundations hiking la le my philosophy my videos photos puppies! puppy class running contacts students' videos ta To trials tricks world championships xtreme xtreme foundations
sialaSilvia Trkman is known for bringing every dog, from her first dog on, to the very top of the sport. Her dogs are known for great speed, tight turns, running contacts and long and injury-free careers. Silvia is in agility since 1992 and is
– 3x World Champion (with two different dogs)
– 5x European Open winner, with 4 different dogs (Lo, La, Bu, Le)!!!
– National Championships podium and World Team member with every dog she’s ever had
– National Champion for 22-times (with 5 different dogs of 3 different breeds)

– World Team member for 19-times (mostly with at least two dogs at the time – sometimes four 🙂 )

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