Before you take an agility class, train your dog some on your own first! If you have never trained a dog before, try a class that uses positive reinforcement. But find a good teacher. Sometimes this is hard. But if you have always just kinda, sorta trained your dogs, you might want to learn this first. It helps. Because in agility, you are going to be needing to teach your dogs some PRECISE-ness. But to even start out, you need a solid STAY. COME. SIT. DOWN. And a dog that can stick by your side under even the most distracting of excitements.

Find a teacher you like! An irritating instructor that you believe to be wrong is not going to work. Maybe you are unteachable. I have heard myself called this before. I still take classes and I feel like I learn things. I teach a class and not everyone will like me. But in case you are unteachable, or you do not have close proximity to good agility classes, here are some ideas.

This is all assuming you are going to like this and you are thinking perhaps someday I would enjoy competing in an exciting dog show where no one wears weird pants suits! If you just want to run around with your dog and make it jump over things, then by all means just take em out in your horse arena and go for it. That's how I started. You can put a broom over a bucket in your barn aisle and voila. A jump. But if you have an inkling of something bigger, start here.

1. Put in a foundation. Have horses? Like, you don't put a green horse out on a course, do you? You do flatwork. You trot poles. You start with x's. And none of it works if you horse ain't broke on the flat. No horse? You have a house right? And there is a foundation that had to be poured BEFORE the framing could go up BEFORE the sheetrock BEFORE the siding and windows and all that BEFORE paint BEFORE your phage. It matters. You can do this!

2. Foundation includes:

Clicker basics. Yes the clicker. I swear it will help your agility! Dogs love it and you can't teach a dog to love agility without the excitement of the dog love. You need to learn fabulous timing of your click as the behavior is correctly executed, and the positioning of your reward. Practice excellence with this and you will find many things easier to train in agility. Helpful Hint: Karen Pryor very famous of this.

Flatwork-Circle Work. Teach your dog to follow you, on each side, at all speeds and with all kinds of turning and distractions. Teach it to barrell race around some buckets, just like you would in a rodeo. Helpful Hint: Greg Derrett!

Contacts-Brakes. On your wooden stuff out there, a-frame, dogwalk and teeter, they have to run up the yellow zone, get over the obstacle, and touch the yellow zone on the way back down. Harder than it sounds, especially when your dog gets confident and great and goes fast. Click to teach your dog a sturdy stop, whether it is a 2on/2off, 4 on the floor, or consistent running before it ever goes zooming over the whole thing. Helpful Hint: Cleanrun Contacts Books and DVDs

Weave Poles-Amazing! People are always amazed that dogs can do this. Just takes some practice. There are more ways to teach them than there are to skin a turkey. I personally love my channel weaves but I have also used the famous Susan Garrett 2x2 method as well. With channels, you keep them open wide so the dog just learns to speed through an opening before you start to shrink the space down between the poles so the dog actually has to weave. It is tricky and cunning! The dog thinks it's fun. They never know you are teaching a skill, not just having a running party with some pvc sticks. Helpful Hint: Ann Croft Dream Weaves

Jumping-Start Low! Start easy. Start with focus. You will have plenty of time to start running through sequences. Make sure your dog loves a toy and will chase it-this will make your life easier and your dog will think it is MTV Spring Break Dance Party every time you practice. Teach your dog to be fast! Run, run, run! I recently reviewed Susan Garrett's Success With One Jump. Loved it!

3. Teaching Sequencing

Once you have this foundation stuff going, you start to subscribe to Clean Run Magazine. Make little sequences. Go to some Fun Matches. Figure out, ok, it wouldn't be so bad to drive an hour to find a good agility class. And off you go, my little butterfly. You are set.