Clean Run - February 2015 - 33

As the

World
TURNS:
Flip
By Mary Ellen Barry, photos by Lynne Brubaker Photography, Inc
In the last several years, there has been a
surge of what's been called "international
handling" in dog agility. What exactly
does that mean? Well, in my mind, international courses are those types of courses that have become common in European agility and feature many technical
elements such as backsides of jumps,
threadles, 270s, and difficult entries and
exits for weave poles and tunnels. But
these technical elements can actually be
quite easy to master if you know how.

principles described in Linda Mecklenburg's book Developing Handling Skills
for Awesome Agility Teams which uses
the following cues:

We are starting to see these types of
courses and challenges on a regular basis
in the USA thanks to the Masters Challenge and Dog Agility Masters classes
in USDAA in addition to UK Agility
International (UKI).
There are many handling techniques that
have been developed to help handlers
cue the jumps and move away quickly so
that they can gain a head start on the dog
in order to get to the next challenge the
course presents. Many of these moves involve cues that the dog naturally understands and if the handler cues the jump
with the correct combination of cues, the
dog will often just do it and virtually very
little training of the dog is necessary.
My own handling toolbox comes from
my fairly thorough understanding of the
February 15 | Clean Run

Motion

Shoulders

Location

Eye Contact

Verbals

Hand Signals

Of those cues, the first four are considered natural and the last two are considered trained. As a handler, I need to
combine the combination of cues that
my dog needs in order to get the desired
performance from him.
One World?
Recently, my education has been expanded while working with Janita Leinonen and Jaakko Suoknuuti of Finland.
They are the innovators behind the OneMind Dogs methodology. Their training theory is based on the dog's natural
understanding of "techniques" or cue
combinations. They have over 30 techniques-all of which have individual
names-that they use to cue the dog.

They would like to see the agility world
use a common language of terminology
so that it is easier for us to communicate
with each other. Such a language exists in
a number of other sports. For example,
in gymnastics, everyone knows what
a "Gaylord" is and, when a gymnast is
performing that maneuver, the judges
expect a specific performance. However,
because in agility we are judged by the
dog achieving a clear and fast round, not
by our handling, I don't think we can
ever get to that point.
For the purposes of this article series,
I will be using the names used by OneMind Dogs. OMD describes the following handling elements, which are
very similar to those used in Developing Handling Skills: movement, position, eyes, chest (laser pointer), feet,
hand signals, and verbals.
But I do think it's important for all handlers to have a basic understanding of
the cues in terms of how and why they
work. This is important so that a handler
knows what she is trying to cue before
choosing a particular move. Also, if a
move is not working for a particular dog,
the handler can understand why and apply additional or fewer turning cues, or
another technique altogether, in order to
help the dog.
33

Clean Run - February 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - February 2015