For more on running contacts, it's best to join running contacts class or get a Running Contacts DVD. This page is meant for those who just have a quick question or want to show their finished product - you are very welcome to do so, it still brings a smile to my face when I see a beautiful running contact, it's something addictive about it. It is on times frustrating as well... - but it all makes the end result even sweeter. So... Happy training, everybody!
 Silvia 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 🙂 ) |
I have been at full hight for not so long. At first needed my BC to learn to move on the DW without falling off. After doing that we had some great sessions over all of it. As you said, the faster the better. NOW (especially after througing the ball as reward for one session), he has gone mental and wants over so fast so he often starts to wobble and the wobbeling, I believe, makes him jump. I supose he wants to make the body stay alive on the DW more than doing the rc… The film is done before this trouble started. On the film is an instable DW, but My own is really stable. I have paused now and dont really know have to progress. Supose I need to get back to the leaning plank again to repair… and start over with all??…
I see the beginning of the problems on this video already… His hind legs are very often very closely together. I also don’t like him turning back to you for a toy. I only like first and last two tries. You don’t need to go back to the plank, but maybe just one down plank for some time, with a stationary toy after the jump. You can only start throwing a toy as a reward when he is completely focused forward. You can sometimes use a toy as a lure, throwing it BEFORE he is on a contact to check if he can do it when highly excited, but you can only throw it after when you have enough forward focus. Let me know how it goes!
Thankx for the answer. He is normally focused ahedad, and there is 2 stationary toys ahead on the film, but he decided that he wanted my toy. Last session I did outdoor last week after throughing the ball ahead for some times, he focused into the forrest, not so good either when he couldn’t handle the speed over the DW. So.. I will go back to stationary only. It is great to know what to look for (hind feet more seperated) I have looked at older films from autumn (we’ve just started up again) now and he had much better seperated hind legs before this mess over the hole DW. Hopefully I can get it all back and better.
I will also read your F.A.Q. again. Thanks alot for the time. I think the hindleg thought will help alot :):).
The stuff I wrote above the film did not turn up after posting :(:( I appreciate the hind leg though alot. Will look more for that and I did look at older films and think that this hind leg closing more together- problem, turned up when starting the hole DW. The focusing ahead is normally no problem, maybe last week when he focused into the forrest ahead and had a struggle staying on the DW. I will get back to stationary rewards ahead only for awhile aswell. thanx again
Great, looks really nice on this video! Could be he started to jump on a real dog-walk because he had so many troubles staying on… That will get better with more experience. Really good dog-walk surface (rubber!) would help too. And body awareness tricks!
Will keep that in mind. It’s so nice knowing what to look for and how to progress now. thanks alot.
Hello!
I’ve come up with a very easy and inexpencive way to build my DW. But since space is an issue, I’ll have to make it bit smaller. Do you think this could be a problem, since our problem was not having enough speed on the plank, and he started jumping the full DW. I guess the end resault should be the same? I just don’t want to do it and than realize it was a bad idea.
Thanx
Shorter dog-walk is o.k. If you’re only making it a little shorter, my suggestion would be to keep normal length of down plank and make middle plank shorter.
Toggle is progressing nicely. I started putting a jump at either end of the DW so that she is jumping before getting to her target. Here is the first session of that, it went fine --
I have also started adding sequences of obstacles before the DW and that’s going well.
I am working with a friend and three of her young dogs on running contacts. Two are Labs. One is doing great, we have raised the DW to 30 inches and she consistently crosses it in six strides, although we did have a high hit. Here is Maggie on the DW --
The other lab became very inconsistent with her striding. The lesson before this one she was also running across in six strides like Maggie, but then she started only taking one stride on the way down, or jumping, or sometimes even trotting. She had some really good ones, but no consistency. Here’s Daisy on the DW --
I am figuring that she just needs more experience to find out what gets the big reward and what doesn’t, but if anyone has other ideas or insights, I’d like to hear!
Looks good! And yes, I agree, looks to me like Daisy needs some more time, she got the running part, but needs some more jackpotting for lower hits, so that she sees the importance of getting all the way down. Training for turns often helps them understand that part, so maybe she could at the same time do some training for turns on a low plank.
Hi,
I have finally started to learn RC my youngest miniature pinscher -- 5months old Dina. And my question is: for now I`m doing running on the plank on the floor. I have one problem. I have tried to get her running full speed towards static objects and I can`t get her full speed (I have tried with food bowl and a toy, but it`s not working).Everything is different when I throw the ball. Then she gets full speed and everything is OK. Is this OK? Or is this a problem?
It’s o.k., you can throw a toy as a lure first and let her chase it, I did it with Bi. Eventually, I started to restrain her for longer and longer time before letting her chase a toy, so as a consequence she was eventually running to a stationary toy, with the same speed, no problems anymore.
So, after such a lot of people posted their great contacts I wanted to add mine. Happy ist my first dog and I started RC from the beginning. We both love it! I because of the craziness in his eyes when we train it and he loves it because he’s sure that agility has nothing so do with stopping or waiting.
But in the beginning we had some problems with the flat plank. For Happy it didn’t make any sense why not running in the gras which is much more comfortable. 😉 (Did I mention that he is a JRT!?)
So I tried to put one side of the plank about 3cm higher then the other and it worked! 😀
So I went on and on and on putting one side higher and there was a lot of improvement. But then I had almost no more time to train, at least just one time a week (don’t have a garden and the place where I train is about 65km away) and contacts got very worse. It depressed me a lot cause up to that it just worked great.
Then I took up training again more regulary (in my holidays, spend 5 times a week doing it) and we improved again and very very quickly.
And it was again sooooo much fun!
Unfortunately I can’t find the videos from that period.
What is always very hard to see at my dog is how close his back-legs are because they’re so short that they’re always very close together! 😉
But I think his contacts got very great either!
Here is a video of them:
I still train single dogwalk sometimes when I get the feeling that he gets much too crazy and contacts are not that perfekt anymore. And it always great fun and my sprinting-skills get real good!
I have a problem with rc. I’m not allowed to do it in training. I try it at home, and it works quite nice with the plank on earth and a little bit higher, but when I want to try it in training, my trainer stops me. Feline is a very fast dog (perhaps you remember her), and I find 2o2o makes her slower than necessary, but my trainer wants me to stop her at the contacts. The problem is too, that Feline jumps when she has the whole dogwalk. I wouls like to work at this point, but I’m no allowed to do. My trainer says, everybody (you too) trains with stop, and in competition, dog knows what to do with the command schschsch(top), and when they only hear schschsch and not complete stop, they will run, and will have running contacts. My trainer says, another problem with rc is, that dogs will become so fast with, that it would be impossible to turn them after dogwalk or aframe, to turn them in such a high speed, would only work with bordercollies. Is it possible to train rc at home, and in training with the trainer do 2o2o, or will this confuse the dog?
Well, you will need a normal dog-walk at one point of training a RC. AND it would be better (not completely necessary but much better) if you didn’t do any 2on2off on real dog-walk before introducing RC -- it’s better to add 2on2off later if wanted. So it’s hard to say… Probably either go with your trainer’s methods or change the trainer, preferably to somebody with somewhat better observation skills, it’s pretty weird to think my dogs would run their dog-walks the way they do if they were trained with a stop… At the top of the dog-walk, Bi is already in the air and will only touch it again on a contact, no time to tell her schschsch anymore:). Your trainer should watch some videos on this website or YouTube.
I will try to train rc at home in the garden, and I hope it will work anytime in training too. Yesterday I tried to let Feline run the whole dogwalk with full speed, and she jumped over the contact. I put her on the dogwalk only to run down, and tried to click the contacts. It worked, when I was there, but when I was behind her, she jumped. The trainer stopped me, and said, the contacts would become very bad like this. My doughter, whos dog Feline is, trains like the trainer wants, with 2o2o, but I noticed, that this makes her slow at the end of the dogwalk, and she does not really know until now where she has to stop. To change the trainer is not easy, because either this trainer or no trainer….;), and I’m not good enough to train on my own. And she is a good trainer, but unfortunatly not very open-minded in training methods, that are not of her own
If you wanted RC on a dog-walk, you would need much more systematic approach, otherwise you’re just confusing her. After they were perfect on a plank, you would need to do down ramp only first, again with a target ahead, then moving her more and more back, still keeping a toy somewhere ahead etc. AND you would need to stop training 2on2off for a couple of months etc. So in a situation described (not having approach to normal dog-walk, a trainer that doesn’t allow RC etc.), getting good RC is very hard to impossible, so maybe improving 2on2off is a better idea…
Now I thought about, and I gota traing progress. I train in the garden with a plank, and I had first the same problem like in the training; Feline ran down the plank, and jumped before the end. I tried to throw a toy, she jumped, if I was not at the same point as she was. This evening, I kept her toy ahead, and send her forward, down the plank. She did running the whole plank, perfect running contacts, I clicked, and she got her toy. I will stop doing dogwalk in training, when I’m training with Feline. I can tell the trainer, that I’m not as good as my doughter in stopping her at the right point, without confusing her. Perhaps I can use a dog-walk once a week, I’ll try…
Hello again:
Please see the video:
We have been working on just running fast but also at home clicking multiple feet in the zone (and not clicking LATE this time), and no matter what happens Jimmy can do it and so we’ll never go back! It was a slippery field--rained all night, you can’t see the mud but it’s there--so I am very pleased, thank you for the suggestions Silvia and we will keep working. I know he can do it, and if he doesn’t get 100% I don’t care--he has no other problems (besides me as his handler) and I am grateful for him every day…
Thank you again!
Adrienne and Judy and Jimmy the Wonder Dogs
Today, Sunday, at the same trial as the video I posted yesterday, Jimmy’s dogwalk was even better, whole run was faster--with table, 40 seconds for the course. I think I understand what he needs, and if all goes well we’ll keep running and running and running…
Thanks so much again!!
Adrienne and Judy and Jimmy
I started with running contacts when my dog was 8 months. I hurried to much and it all went wrong. So I stopped.
After 8 months we have started again and this is a result. She is much faster than back then and she remembers what the plank means! 🙂
Thank you for RC 😉 It’s so much fun!!!
I started mine with their first ever running contact training this evening at agility class. Our instructor let me work alone with this method whilst she taught the others there other methods. I didn’t have a thin plank so just had to work with DW plank and see saw plank. I’m going to get a thin plank for home practise.
Anyway, I read not to worry about placement of feet whilst the plank is flat. At this stage, is it ok if they happen to miss the contact completely due to their stride not coinciding correctly….so long as they don’t leap? If I did see any leaping behaviour, they didn’t get their reinforcing marker although they still got their toy, I didn’t play tug with them when they brought it to me and just tried again but played tug when they did it correctly and got their marker sound.
Also, how do you know when the dog is ready for you to start raising the plank? At the moment, they were sometimes hitting the contact with their feet and sometimes not depending where they were in their striding.
Wren was particularly confident and being a leggy boundy dog anyway, it’s easy for her to miss a contact without having to leap.
This is the first time I taught this and want to get it right for the dogs. It’s a big learning curve.
Thanks in advance.
Right. Striding over is o.k. at this point. You can however jackpot already now when they’re low on a plank. When you have over 90% of just running (vs. leaping) for three or four sessions, you can heave it A LITTLE.
Ok, thanks…when I get my thin plank, I shall video what they are doing and let you peeps have a look…I still need to get to grips with recognizing what I’m seeing when they are moving so fast.
Hi,
My names is Tereza and I´m 13 years old from Czech republic.
I have 9 years old dog (hybrid).
I wanted to ask: I begin whit running contacts with my 9 years old dog???
I´m now do a stop contacts.
She is learn it??
Sorry for my mistakes in the text.
I´m from the czech republic.
Well, of course it’s possible… But if her stopped contacts are good, it’s probably not worth it to take a 9-year old dog out of a competition to retrain to RC… But well, it’s up to you. You can try running her over the plank and see if you like what you see, won’t hurt your contacts at all.