Traning An Obedience Dog To Do Agility

[Reddii]

Yep, this is our goal - titled in both disciplines. I don't think it is the dogs that stand in the way, just the time it takes to train both at a high level.

But, to OP's point I've seen your concerns in my two to some extent.

Xena is an agility nut - goes crazy in the back of the car (as crazy as she can while strapped in) and is coming along really well at that. She was 'classically' obedience trained at first and it took a while to get her working left and right, but now is fine with that. Interestingly her obedience (which has been neglected for about 18 months) has actually improved while it has been ignored.

CK on the other hand loves to run, but isn't totally switched on to agility yet (it's an understanding thing I think), we've also just gone back to obedience with him and he is almost ready to trial 'out of the box' - just have to get him alright with strangers touching his backside! (I have the same issue so I can't really blame him. )

Point is it just takes time. I believe the dogs can discriminate between activities, it's just that there are some similarities so it takes a while for them to work out the subtle differences.

[ness]

I do both with mine and haven't ever had the whole right side/left side issue. She was trained for obedience until she was 12 months and then we also picked up agility. She has her CDX (trialling UD at the moment) as well as a JDM and passes towards her ADM (just needs another 2). She is has much more potential as an obedience dog because she isn't super fast.

[JulesP]

Both my current borders are super clingy, stare up at me dogs. Good for obedience. Not so good for agility!!!!!

[Nicole...]

We did a fair bit of obedience with Lomani before switching to agility, but never got to trial level so I haven't got a lot of advice. The main thing I wanted to butt in with is that we had the same problem with Lomani to begin with, in that she was looking at us too much and would walk into obstacles! I don't know what the name of the method is, but we were taught to teach new things by rewarding when she offered the right behaviour. For example, with the weaves we set up the 2 poles and she'd sit there staring at me. When she looked at the poles, we treated, then when she walked towards them, we treated etc until we got her doing more and more poes to perfection. This worked really well and now she looks at me intently while we're training, but if I give a command she knows to look for the item I've said. Hope that helps!

Rosie - you definitely need some obedience groundwork to succeed at agility, especially things like stay/wait and the correct level of obedience/maturity for them not to run off on you helps too LOL. We made sure that when we were doing obedience we weren't totally rigid though. We did some work on the right side as well as the left, taught touches early on, and taught her to work from a distance which meant that we didn't have too many problems in the conversion over to agility. I guess it's all about a happy medium.

[Tiggy]

Good advice 'mntgood' .

[Ptolomy]

All my kids do both agility and obedience. Have to say I only train 1 night a week for agility as obedience really is our forte, and all bar Lexi (who is only 2 1/2) had their masters titles before they turn 3.

However - Beans and Blaize have never been taught to weave on my right and Beans has done very little distance handling work. I have only just started entering her in open and to begin with there were a lot of distance challenges that she just couldn't do - but in the last few weeks she has surprised me and actually managed to do the distance challenge, but has buggered up further down the track. :p We tend to treat agility with a lot of fun and I am sure she runs back to the car faster to get her jackpot than she actually runs around the course. ;)

I took Scoota to the Adelaide Royal a few months ago and entered masters agility for a bit of a laugh. I was amazed when he not only went clear but finished 4th against "agility" only dogs. Because of his lameness problems he only trains once every blue moon. I was more tickled pink with this than his obedience win

So you can definitely combine both :D

[JulesP]

Brock is funny - I can do distance stuff if I am moving parallel to him! So can weave from a couple of metres away and he did the distance challenge quite well at school. He hates me sending him away from me though!!