Fostering Excellence in Agility

035 Megan unpacks her thoughts about bar-knocking in this requested episode.

Megan's favorite jumping experts: 
Linda Mecklenburg https://awesomepawsagilityacademy.com/current-classes/ 
Dr. Leslie Eide https://www.thetotalcanine.com/online-learning.html 

Join the coaching program https://fxagility.mykajabi.com/fx-agility-waitlist 

Sarah Stremming's Webinar, Bravery School https://sarahstremming.com/products/webinar/bravery-school/ 

Teeter training program  https://fxagility.mykajabi.com/offers/sUU48VFG/checkout 

034 Should you make something easier in training or try to pivot in another way? Find out what Megan thinks in this episode! 

033 Megan shares her experience debuting Sprint, her two-year-old Border Collie, in agility competitions. Find out insights into what Megan saw change in Sprint's behavior over time and how well the debut strategy worked. 

Resources: 
Episode 32: Are You Ready to Compete?

Youtube: Sprint's First Trial Highlights

Youtube: Sprint's Second Trial, Novice Jumping

Youtube: Second Trial, Novice Agility

Episode 28: How Outside the Ring Behaviors Impact Inside the Ring Behaviors

Episode 31: Using FEO and Fix & Go Effectively 

032 When should you start competing and what does that look like for each team? How to plan to maximize success all comes down to the splits in behavior that we need our dogs to understand. 

031 For Exhibition Only and Fix and Go On are two tools we have in the competition ring that can help us narrow the gap between how our dogs perform in training versus how they perform in trials. In this episode, Megan breaks down the pros and cons of each and talks about how she would use either of these options. 

Mentioned in this episode: 
Using FEO/NFC with a toy in the ring: https://youtu.be/C6z7UqyPzDo
Proactively helping a dog before they make a mistake: https://youtu.be/xq4oobNp2wo 

The Pitfalls of Cue Escalation --> https://fxagility.com/blog/the-pitfalls-of-cue-escalation/

Different Types of Training --> https://fxagility.com/blog/reducing-delaying-reinforcement/

Beginning of Run Routines --> https://fxagility.com/blog/beginning-of-run-routines-evaluating-your-dogs-readiness/

End of Run Routines --> https://fxagility.com/blog/end-of-run-routines-do-you-have-it-do-you-need-it/

Episode 29, Startlines with Sarah Espinoza-Sokal --> https://fxagility.mykajabi.com/podcasts/fostering-excellence-in-agility/episodes/2147886802

030 Megan talks about learning the course from the dog's perspective, the importance of sticking to the plan, the five phases of course analysis, and course memorization tips. 

Join Megan on June 1st at 6pm PT for her FDSA Webinar, Agility Course Analysis

029 Megan interviews Sarah Espinoza-Sokal about her experience repairing her Kelpie, Zi's startline performance. Megan and Sarah unpack the unique pieces of the training puzzle and discuss why each piece was important and how Sarah was able to implement it in training and in competition. 

You can follow Sarah on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/agilityodyssey 

Sarah invested most of her first 30 years into a passion for horses. In 2016, she decided to rehome her last horse and devote herself to agility instead. She quickly fell in love with international-style agility, and set her sights on one day competing in Europe.

Sarah’s first agility dog suffered a career-ending injury in 2017, retiring before he earned Novice titles. She started over with agility dog 1.5 — a Working Kelpie puppy named Zi — in September 2017.

Sarah and Zi competed in their first national competition at Cynosport in 2021. In 2022, they were fortunate enough to run at World Team Tryouts, the West Coast Open, the US Open, and European Open Team Tryouts, vastly expanding their skills as a team.

A lifelong writer and obsessive nerd, Sarah shares her story of pursuing excellence in agility on her Agility Odyssey Facebook page, where she loves to discuss both the smallest of training details and the largest of life lessons.

028 Optimal level of arousal is necessary for optimal performance. Does your dog's arousal increase in the parking lot of the agility trial or is it later in the run, like at obstacle 15? Let's take a look at how your beginning of the run AND end of the run routines are impacting your dog's performance. In this episode, Megan mentions several other resources, including: 

Episode 27 How Trialing Informs Your Training

Cog Dog Radio, Reinforcement Misunderstandings

Training on Their Timeline with Sarah Stremming

Check back next week for an interview with Sarah Espinoza-Sokal to talk about the training that we did together in order to address Zi's startline in competition. Spoiler: the outside-the-ring behaviors were impacting the inside-the-ring behaviors! 

That's all for this week! Follow on FB, IG, TikTok, and Youtube: @fxagility 

027 Data from our training sessions inform future training sessions, right? What about trial data? Are you practicing during the week the issues that come up on the weekend? Is your current way of analyzing that data producing results for you? If not, it may be how you're analyzing the data is missing a few key questions that I'm always asking myself when watching my trial videos. Let's dive in to what "competition-only issues" may really mean and how to set up training to start improving those sticking points. 

Mentioned in this episode: Different Types of Training and Training vs Working

Follow on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, & Youtube: @fxagility 

Sarah Stremming, Cog Dog Coach, joins Megan to discuss how their two youngest dogs, Rayya (Sarah's Icelandic Sheepdog) and Sprint (Megan's Border Collie) have completely different training plans and are on really different paths, but how those paths ultimately lead to the same place. These two coaches dive in to why these differences are so important and the reality of the extra time and care it takes to adjust each detail depending on the day. 

To learn more about Sarah and her online offerings, visit her website: thecognitivecanine.com, and follow her on social media: 
Facebook: The Cognitive Canine, LLC

Instagram: Cognitive_Canine

Tiktok: @sarahstremming 

Listen to her podcast: Cog-Dog Radio and subscribe to her Patreon Platform

Megan has a new website domain: www.fxagility.com and her social media channels all use the same handle: @fxagility to easily find her on Facebook, Instagram, Tiktok, and Youtube. 

Thanks for listening!