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 🙂 ) |
Hi Silvia,
We had so much work on plank and she was running so good I decided it was time for DW. But speed problem came back. First 2 tries look very ugly then she adds speed but I know she can do better. Don’t know is a matter of time so she gets used to it. I don’t want to go back to plank. I can see her body looks good, focused and head low so she doesn’t miss the contact but she add more strides. I will try to film her this weekend so you can see.
But I have good news …..Yes! A frame comes for free!!!! 🙂 we never tried it before and she have 100% on almost full height for 3 sessions that is so cool… I didn’t want to try it until we fix DW but she insisted on trying that new obstacle she was not allowed 🙂
Well, it could be she just needs some time to get used to it… You can also try with a tunnel after dog-walk or with a toy thrown ahead in advance.
I want to apologize in advance for the possibly stupid or already mentioned question, but what do you guys do with the teeter/seesaw? I see wonderful things with the RC on the dogwalk and A-frame, but I really wonder about the teeter…
I won’t be retraining my dog from 2o2o to RC, because I don’t have any possibility of training it at home or training on my own at agility-classes 🙁 But I’ll definitely read myself into cik/cap training! 🙂
See-saw is of course trained completely separately. I usually do 4on with smaller dogs and 2on2off with BC size. Some people are afraid the dog will be confused as the behaviour is different there, but I never saw any kind of confusion. I think dogs are just much smarter as some people think.
I certainly agree with you on the intelligence of dogs. 😉
Thx a lot for your reply!
So with the 4on, does the does wait for the release or is the teeter hitting the ground the actual release for them to go? I have one small dog [17 inches] and one big dog [22 inches] and I’m trying to decide what to do with the teeter. I think I want to do a 4on for the small dog but I’m stuck with my other one because she isn’t really big but she isn’t very small either.
22 inches is actually pretty big in agility world:). For me, anything over 18″ is big and I don’t know many agility dogs over 22″ at all:). Of course, you can still go for 4on if you prefer it. The same with the release: you can go with a verbal release, or self-release when it hits the ground, whatever you prefer.
Wow, really? How tall is Bu? It might just be her build, but she seems so tall in pictures. I know BCs in my area average about 20-22 inches but my Terv [22 inch dog I was talking about] is absolutely dwarfed by the other Belgian dogs we know so I’ve just become used to viewing her as a small dog. haha
That’s true, 22″ is small for a Terv! But perfect for agility!:) Bu is one the tallest BC around here and she is 21″. Bi is 20″. By “big” I usually mean everything in our “large” class.
I have a few questions.
I encountered a small problem in cases when I need to turn the dog after the dogwalk.
At what point do you say dog right or left, if you need to turn after the dogwalk? Is it when the dog is on dogwalk or when she just went down? How to correctly start learning curves? How do you teach your puppy the right and left (which is still quite small) to begin training?Thanks!
Well, if you want a good turn after a dog-walk, then of course you need to say it when the dog is still on a dog-walk!!! With La, I will say it at the beginning of down ramp, with Bu (she does four to five strides on a dog-walk) in the middle of a horizontal plank and with Bi (who does three to four strides on a dog-walk) in the beginning of a horizontal plank. For how to start with it, please see my FAQ on running contacts on LoLaBuLand site.
Left&right, I teach as a spin to left or right, with puppies already. See
puppy tricks by Bi, 3 months
rel=”nofollow”>Bi’s puppy tricks video
.Thanks
Hi Silvia,
me and my dog developed a problem… 🙁
Just a few days after I posted my video my dog started to jump of the DW and I don’t understand why. First it was on a competition but now it’s also in training. His contacts were great for about an year and he was always in the the marked part (I mean the part at the end of the contact which has a different colour) of the contact with his hind legs. But know he is jumping off a bit over the marked part.
I’ve got the feeling that he became a bit faster in the last weeks although I always focused a maximum of speed while training him.
The next thing is that I sometimes work with him at another location and there his contacts are great with almost always 4 paws in.
Now I don’t really know what to do. I’ve got the feeling that the contacts get worse the more excitement is around.
Last week while training I was focusing on doing the DW and trying to shape front feet in the very low part of the DW but he had a very bad rate and he was jumping in 4 out of 5…
I’m very sad about that situation because I normaly love doing RC but at the moment it’s just frustrating.
I hope you have an idea what I may do.
Greetings, Toni
The thing with front feet, did you try before or after the problem showed up? That way or another: not a good idea! Sounds to me like some kind of front feet targeting, NOT a good idea!
Whenever something goes wrong, remember to go back one step. Either put back a stationary toy, or just do the down ramp: whatever makes him succeed. Also, is he jumping or leaving too early? (Very important!) Also, if it’s excitement that makes things worse, make sure to gradually add excitement (preparing dinner before it, throw toys in advance so that they fly over his head when he is on a dog-walk etc.).
Let me know how it goes!
I have a similar problem. Tani started to take off early (not jumping, but hitting the downramp so high she would sometimes miss the contact, with last feet still separated) when she got extra excited. I went back to the plank and didn’t train the dogwalk for about two weeks. I started working on the plank every day. First I clicked the 80% of the lowest hits for a couple of days and then I started to add excitement to the plank. I’m still doing this daily if possible, or at least every other day when there’s too much rain. I restrain her on the top of the plank and only release her when she’s really excited. I also make sure I vary my body position, as she is more excited the more I am in front of her. We tried the normal dogwalk again on Friday and it looked really good, I think even better than before. Now I’m planning to keep on training the plank with excitement daily and will slowly transfer it to agility, but I really want to do it very gradually this time because I think including the dogwalk into sequences too early in the process might have been a part of the problem for us.
The reasons for starting to leave earlier as before are usually one (or in Toni’s case both, I think) of the two:
1. the dog is running either faster or slower now, so striding is different and he didn’t yet figure out how to fix it to hit low enough
2. it’s a small, short-strided dog, so he never had to learn that it’s important to adjust striding when needed. It was just never needed before, because his successful rate was high enough because of short-strides, not real understanding how to make adjustments
I do not agree that putting it in sequences created a problem. I mean, if you train full speed right from the start, sequencing early is perfectly o.k. If you don’t train with full speed, this problem will arise whenever the dog starts running full speed. Training without full speed for years won’t make your contacts any better when you add speed. That’s why I always say you need to get it before heaving the plank for the first inch.
Hi,
what you wrote feels very logical to me.
I always trained full speed from the beginning pushing him with toys and so on, but he although became faster in the last three or four weeks. Also in the rest of the course. We had a problem with the bars last year which is now gone and he gets faster and faster because it’s just fun since I don’t stop him after throwing bars down.
But what I do now is helping him a bit (putting a toy after the DW, doing just the down-ramp) and get better quotes.
I really hope it’ll work that way what would be rather logical after I read what you wrote.
Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge with me.
And I’ll report how it goes on… (if you’re interested)
Greets, Toni
Yes, I think that’s the reason. I had the same thing with Bi, she was always fast, but got even faster recently, so her strides are even longer and she needs to sort it all out now. She sometimes does 3-strides only on the whole dog-walk and always only touches the down ramp once, so it requires quite some planning how to place that one touch exactly on the contact:).
And sure, let us know how it goes!
Hi,
great to hear, that my dog is not the only one with such funny ideas… 😉
I’m back from training today and it worked extremly well.
I chose one thing I did before at the a-frame (he wasn’t really going down at the beginning). We’ve got some kind of plastic-arches from the weaves (some people train entries with it) and it is also possible to put it at the end of the DW. It makes a real high arch over the end. It was my last idea because I tried putting a toy after DW and just doing the down-rampe and nothing changes.
With the arch his contacts are 100% perfect even if I push him a lot and he is amazingly fast.
I thought this method would be ok, too because you wrote “do something that makes him success” and I definitly don’t have the chance to train it every day.
Next time I wanted to put the arch on the DW at the beginning and then try what happens when it’s off again, because I don’t want to use it for a longer time.
The most important thing for Happy (my dog) and me today was that we had again such a whole lot of fun doing the DW and I didn’t had to nag with him (I really hate that)
Hm, I very very much DISLIKE hoops… Heard terrible stories of dogs having great RC and then people were playing with the hoops (don’t understand why, they had perfect contacts before…) and ruined everything… So be EXTRA careful, no matter how good it looks now… I would prefer going back to the plank… My last personal hoop experience date 13 years ago, I started o that way and it ended very bad, never did it again. You have to make him succeed without him being forced to do it by a hoop.
I was quite sure of hearing something like that from you… 🙂
And I’m really careful and leave it again very quick. Promised! 🙂
Of course I tried to have full speed from the start, but I guess it’s possible that she got even faster since. However I think that the problem was not the sequence itself, but I put my target (bowl of food) too far away from the dogwalk too quickly. I should have done it more gradually, as we already discussed 🙂 Anyway, I’m very happy with how it looks now. Her last stride is now lower than it used to be and I think it looks really good. We’re also removing the target from the picture, but gradually so that I don’t make her make any mistakes. I think training it daily helps her a lot, her striding is much more consistent this way.
Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think it could be a combination of both? I guess she probably slowed down when the target was suddenly too remote and then we moved the target back and she was faster than before (she also got faster on the rest of the course in the last month), so her striding was all wrong. Is that a possible explanation? Eather way daily plank work with full speed should help, right?
Hi,
first thanks for your answer!
It happend first that he missed the contacts and after that I had the idea with the front feet.
It’s quiet hard to say if he really jumps because his legs are so short, but if I had to make a decision I’d say that he rather leaves too early.
Maybe I’ll try to take a camera tomorrow.
Hi,
what do you think about teach the dog to run up-contacts. I will train 2o2o for my BC, but I don’t if I should do something for up-contacts? Most of people don’t train them at all -- many judges don’t look after so closely. Is the need for training them afterall?
Most dogs will do the up-contact (in 99%), only some very long striding dogs will be missing it and need additional training for it. I doubt you will have problems with it with a BC.
Toggle has once missed an up contact, but about 15-20% of the time her up contact hit is high on the contact. I never thought about it when I was starting her training, she seems too small to miss the up, but now I’m wondering whether I should address it at all. Here’s a video in which she barely touched the up contact, on the video it looks like she didn’t hit it at all, but I definitely saw one foot at the top of the yellow.
What do you think?
High is o.k. for the up contact, I wouldn’t worry about it. An occasional miss here and there happens to any dog, but in such low % that I wouldn’t worry about it. We only had to address this problem with Malinois, GSDs, Setters, maybe 5% of BCs and nothing smaller than that. Meaning that up contacts are somewhat unfair (as so many of us don’t need to train them at all) and I wish they would stop judging them, I don’t see why we need them in a first place. Safety? Is it really safer to hit A-frame low vs. high?
Turns out that as of September it will no longer be an issue for people competing in AKC agility, there is a rule change and the up contact will no longer be judged.
Cool, looks like somebody is thinking in AKC! Unfortunately, we don’t have that luck with our FCI officials…
AKC just changed the rule on up contacts (for those of us that compete in the US). Now neither up contact is judged (neither AF or DW). I glad they changed it. I think it was definitely the right decision. 🙂
Whoops! Sorry I just finished reading the rest of the comments (obviously I should have done that first ;)). Looks like someone already mentioned the rule change.
I have some problems with Jays running contacts, too. In competition he missed the contact 3 times of 5 runs. I think I made the mistake in the last time that I only looked that he is in the contact and not how he runs the dogwalk. So I didn´t really look if there is a jump or not. So, I went back to the plank the last days. I only reward real running contacts (or I tried ;)) I think the first run of the video is a jump or? What do you think about the runs in my video? Would you reward all tries?
I would reward all other than the one at 0:40. The first one that you call jumping is not jumping for me, hind feet are well separated. Was he missing in training too, or just competition? If it’s just on competitions, that would mean that he understands the concept, but doesn’t feel confident enough on new equipment to be able to think of his striding. The solution to that problem is not plank work, but training on as many different dog-walks as you can get the access to. It gets better and better with more experience and confidence that comes with it. Good luck, his contacts look beautiful to me!
I have trained my now 18mo puppy with the “just run the plank” method.
Here she is her first time on a dogwalk besides the one she’s trained on at the training center:
Also, I have timed some from a couple weeks later:
Since I pretty much used your method (though I started with 12″ off the ground plank), I thought I would share with you the product of only 6months, twice a week, of work. We still have a lot of work to do, getting on at different angles and what-not, but I think she will be fun.
Despite all the work we’ve put in on the DW it’s still a disaster when it needs to be good and good when it doesn’t matter all that much.
But I have started work on a lowerd A frame, and he runs beautifuly over it. Do you think it’s possible he would transfer the behaviour on to the DW, or is that just wishfull thinking? Or maybe it’ll be the same as with the DW, and he’ll start jumping when we put it in sequences. Hope not!!!
Well, the problem is that you do NOT want him to run all the way down on the A-frame… If he does, he WILL start jumping, because it’s physically too hard to run all the way down on a full height A-frame. I’ll be in Ilirija this Friday at 4.30, I can take a look if you’re still there.
I think you could reserve one private lesson for Tanja and me as soon as possible, we have very similar problems, LOL. Everything was perfect for 3 weeks (and we worked pretty much every day, so about 20 perfect sessions), and then yesterday -- total chaos. I have no idea what was so different, maybe just a bad day? She was extra nervous, she also popped out of the weaves a couple of times and flew over the teeter, everything was really chaotic. I cannot wait to start lessons with you, I really hope things will get better then. I guess I must be doing something wrong, but cannot figure out what it is.
and? Did you have a private lesson? What was the problem, and how was/is the solution? I’m very intersted
We did progress very much in rc. I do it every day with Feline and Alice, and both do it very well. First Feline jumped each time. It became better and better, and now she is running fast from top to bottom. The first three trainings I didn’t any contacts, because I feared my trainer would stop me, if it would not be perfect, because, you know, rcs don’t exist…;). Last training I did it, without talking abaout. I let Feline run over the dogwalk and she did wonderful rcs, and, I was very surprised, my trainer said nothing against it.
Yes, we met. Tani’s problem seems to be kind of unique. When her striding allows her to do the contact with her hind feet, everything is OK. But when she is supposed to do it with one extended leg (La style), she changes her mind in the last moment and puts the leg back up. She had and injury on that leg last month and it’s possible that she remembers the pain or that it might even still hurt a little. I’m giving her a little bit of rest and if it doesn’t get better, we’ll consult a physiotherapist.
Another possibility is that her problem might be related to a huge mistake I made on the plank. Since I only have the down ramp, I always restrained her on the top and therefore couldn’t be in front of her at the end of the plank. I was always eather behind (also to have a better view of the contact) or next to her, but never more than one step ahead. Now I’m trying to be ahead more often and it’s possible that the situation looks too different to her and that she is experimenting a little. I’m hoping she’ll figure out on her own that her task is still the same and that all she needs is more experience.
However, she had her first trial on Saturday. She was a little uncomfortable on the new dogwalk at first, but she started pulling ahead once she was on it and changed her stride just above the contact in order to make it perfectly 🙂 I’ll keep posting here about our progress.
I hope you don’t mind that I bother you with my question. I just don’t really know who else I could ask.
I have a two year old smoothfaced Pyr Shep girl “Lotta”. of 46 cm. We just started an Agility class and are enjoying it very much. Its the first Agility class for me and for her.
She seems to have some of the traits of your La as she is always extremely motivated, fast and barky. That doesn’t make it particularly easy for me, as I’m still leraning how to lead the right way and she is just way to fast for me. In fact right now, she only seems to know one speed and that is as fast as she can go. Everybody else in our class is working on getting their dogs to run. I’m working on making her wait for me to pick up and figure out where to go next.
We just started with dog walk and A-frame. As always, she wants to rush up and over as fast as possible. No fear whatsoever. Our trainers work with 2on2off or target. I’m not to sure that will work properly for her. She just doesn’t like to stop. Still people keep telling me with a dog as fast as Lotta I need time to catch up and her stopping on contacts will help.
I started to ask around in Agility forums and people always seemed kind of biased. If they do running contacts its the best for Lotta and me, too. If they do 2on2off, we should be doing that.
I would be willing to invest as much time as necessary in either method as long as I can manage training in our flat or outside in the fields and if I’m able to build the neccessary equipment. I just can’t decide what method would be suitable for us. For Lotta probably running contacts. But will my skills as a handler be good enough sometime? Can I be fast enough? Or is this the wrong way to look at it?
It would be really grateful if you could give us some advise.
Thanks!
P.S.. I love your new website!
Don’t make her wait for you! When you get too far or lost, just reward her and start from there! Also, sounds like you need to teach cik&cap! It sounds like you most certainly need independence on obstacles and good sends! Too fast doesn’t exist in agility, everything is possible if a dog is trained well! Same for running contacts: you will be able to handle them if she is independent on obstacles and understands sends. So what to choose is mostly up to what you would prefer to train… Running contacts will probably take you longer, but you probably won’t have problems later. 2on2off is o.k. as long as you can be 100% consistent and wait for the position each and every time! If not, they’re gone, especially with barky, fast and motivated PyrSheps!:)
So… It’s on you to decide. You can start with both, running on a plank and teaching 2on2off as a trick on a drawer and then eventually decide what you like more. Have fun!