Week 1

We started the Contact Project to document how we are working through some of the challenges we face in agility.

The Contact Project is not a finished training tool yet — it is a work in progress. We want to share what we are doing, what we are learning, and, hopefully, how we are progressing along the way.

Our goal is to improve three important parts of our agility performance: the dog walk, the A-frame, and the seesaw.

We will share new content every week, following our training process step by step. Some sessions will go well, some probably won't, and that's exactly what we want to show. This project is about finding solutions, testing them with Sunny, and learning from the results.

The Contact Project: A-frame training 

For our first session, I started working on Sunny's A-frame contact using a simple DIY training aid: a square marking the area where I want him to land. We started on the floor at home. The second training session took place in the agility hall where we practised on the floor, then gradually added movement and finally moved the exercise onto the A-frame.

As you could see, the A-frame itself was a bigger challenge. Sunny was a little spooked by the new setup and initially moved slightly sideways rather than going straight down. Instead of correcting him, I stayed close, rewarded him when he found the square, and used play to keep the experience positive. For the next step, I placed his toy straight in front of the A-frame to encourage a more direct path. I'm happy with our work. It's definitely not finished yet, but that's the point of this project — to show the process, not just the finished result.

The Contact Project: Seesaw training

During a workshop, we were advised to add a "down" position to Sunny's seesaw. Before putting the exercise directly on the equipment, I decided to introduce the idea through a simple game where Sunny has to follow the cue I give him.

The rule is easy: Sunny listens to the cue I give and takes that position as quickly as possible. If he gets it right, he gets the best reward. If he makes a mistake or needs help, I calmly help him complete the task and give him a smaller reward before continuing the game.

The goal is to make following my verbal cue the most rewarding option — even when the environment becomes more challenging.

Here's how our first attempts went.

We are still at the beginning, but I like the direction we're going.

The next step is to keep building the behaviour and make it reliable on the seesaw — not just when everything is easy, but also when we're moving and working in different environments.

The Contact Project: Dogwalk training

We started with target training using a remote feeder, hoping Sunny would drive independently to the end of the dog walk. It sounded like a great plan… but it quickly became clear that food wasn't motivating him enough. So the sessions became less about contacts and more about finding what actually motivates Sunny.

The training plan doesn't matter if the reward isn't meaningful for the dog. I really wanted the remote feeder to work, but Sunny kept checking in with me instead of driving confidently to the target. At one point he even started stopping on the target, looking back at me, and running back instead of going to the feeder. That was incredibly frustrating because it felt like we were losing progress instead of making it. Switching to a toy completely changed Sunny's attitude. He was faster, more confident, and willing to drive all the way to the target, even from more difficult angles.

Unfortunately, there was one unexpected setback. When we got home, I noticed that Sunny had lost a piece of skin from one of his paws. I think we'll need to take it easy with contact training next week and let it heal properly. It's disappointing because we finally found something that was working, and we also have a competition coming up next week. We'll see how Sunny recovers and adjust our training one day at a time.

Some weeks are about breakthroughs. Some weeks are about adapting. This one was both.