FOUNDATION WORK

Dog Sports Northwest offers training programs designed to help you and your dog develop into the best working team you can be.  We believe the key to success in the dog sport world is through building a positive and solid relationship with your canine teammate.  This is accomplished by understanding how your dog learns and how to establish a clear communication between the two of you and by learning how to motivate your dog to want to play with you.  At Dog Sports Northwest our approach to dog training is very “pro-dog”, but we like helping people just as much, and believe they deserve the same respect and dignity in their training journey as their canine partners!

We Love Foundation Work!!

Working with our canine friends can be one of life’s most rewarding activities, not just for our dogs, but for us, as well.  At Dog Sports Northwest we strive to provide the best instruction we can offer your team. To accomplish this, we must first develop a solid foundation upon which to build our skills.

What is Foundation Work?

Foundation might be described as the groundwork upon which more advanced training is built. We develop the sets of signals that we will consistently use throughout our performance career.  If we look at our signals as a sort of language, then we can think of foundation work as teaching our dogs this language, beginning with simple “words and phrases”.  These “words” will consistently have the same meaning, which our dog learns to understand. From here, and only from here, can it be possible for us to expect our dogs to comprehend when we put these “words” in different contexts and linked together to build the complex chains of behavior needed for the sport.  Further, we develop an understanding of how to break things down into the components that comprise it, allowing our dogs to always be successful.

This is also the time for us, as handlers, to begin to become proficient in reading our dog’s language.  There is a tendency for us to interpret our dog’s signals from our human perspective, and it is invaluable to learn signs of their stress, connection to us, inability to comprehend a task, etc. Just as we hope our dog will listen to us, so must we “listen” closely to them. So much is gained by cultivating this conversation between dog and handler.  Each dog has different training needs, and through this dialogue, along with instruction on different training methods, we hope you can apply the most practical theories for your team to experience the most success possible, ultimately, getting the most enjoyment possible out of working with your best friend.

In more concrete terms, foundation consists of introducing the skills necessary to navigate an agility course before adding obstacles to our path. Handlers must be able to direct their dog’s movement at a walk and a run, off leash, with changes of direction, around distractions, all while staying totally connected to each other. Some often underappreciated challenges, such as stays at the start line and fast downs on the table, must be introduced early on, asking for focus during these exercises before asking for such control during the excitement of running courses. Obstacles are introduced individually, and an amount of independence in execution is attained before putting them in a sequence with more obstacles. Positional cues are taught and practiced, an important facet to how handlers communicate information to their dogs on course.

All of this training is absolutely critical to the performance of your team. This is a thorough approach that requires a commitment from you to take your time and practice these exercises. Certainly there are plenty of people pursuing this sport without working on these important details. One could just “go at a course” and execute it to completion much quicker than we allow our students to. We believe, though, that this work is so imperative, that if you fail to start here, problems crop up in the future that will bring you back to this material. Truly, beginning with foundation work is the only way to be fair to your dog in the expectations such an involved sport demands. If you are ready to give as much as you hope your dog will give to you, we’d love to help you with this awesome journey!