Practice at home?

C

cisobe55

Forums Regular
Our Bailey is about 7 months old now, and he's currently in a basic obedience class and can easily do all the basic heeling, turns, about faces, sit stay, down stay, stand stay, recalls, both on and off leash... Being that he's picked all of this up relatively quickly and the fact that our training club also has a group that does agility...

I've watched their sessions several times and it looks like a great time for both dog and handler... I'd like to get Bailey into agility, however I've never done it before, and we also don't have much space at home (we live in a town house and don't have a yard). Not having a yard hasn't been a problem for obedience training as we've been working on all his commands during our walks... But for agility, it looks like I'd need a bunch of obstacles to practice with...

LoL, Bailey makes his own little obstacle course at home when he's playing chase with his bigger Golden Retriever brother... He zigs and zags through the dining room table chairs, crawls through the tunnel under the coffee table, and leaps over baby gates *face palm*. He has great balance, quickness and is pretty much fearless, so I have a feeling he'd really enjoy doing agility.

But like I said, I don't think we have the space to setup multiple obstacles for him to practice in our living room or common areas. I'm sure agility like obedience training takes a lot of repetition to have him learn, and once a week is not going to cut it... I'm interested to hear other's thoughts on this...
 
There are actually a lot of things you can do at home with only a small amount of space. You may want to start with Agility Right From The Start and Flatwork, which will give you a lot of things you can start teaching at home. You can also teach nose touches, a 2 on 2 off or a running contact with a board, you can teach the six foundation jump positions with 1 jump, as well as front and rear crosses, and distance work. You can teach the tunnel and chute with one of the cheap tunnels and chutes from ebay or amazon. So, there's lots of stuff you can do at home, even with only a small amount of space. Really, agility is mostly what goes on between the obstacles.
 
Agreed, I would start some foundation training, practice running with him on both sides of you do some figure 8's, if you can find a safe open space some where near by that you can go off leash that would be great. but you can still do it on leash, if you have a open space like a school yard or park near by and you won't be breaking any leash laws.

Sounds like he would be a great candidate for agility and both of you would probably really like it.
 
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