Clean Run - September 2015 - 27

I remember absorbing Greg Derrett's teaching like a sponge back in the 90's. I was craving clearly defined foundation
work that could be built on for my school, and I found that in his training and handling methods.
The benefit of his approach, in my opinion, was that he had developed "rules" that could, once a student became
fluent with the methodology and the decision-making process, be applied on any agility course. Now, over 15 years later,
I see his techniques still working well, standing up to the test of time.
After all these years I had some questions for Greg, and he agreed to be interviewed. Enjoy!

A CONVERSATION
with the

Man Behind
THE SYSTEM
By Sandy Rogers
© 2015 JUKKA PÄTYNEN / KOIRAKUVAT.FI, JUKKA@KOIRAKUVAT.FI

Sandy: Can you tell me what inspired you to create such a clearly
defined approach to agility and how long it took to develop to the
point where you made your first DVD?
Greg: I began agility in the late 80's and at that point "handling"
wasn't really considered in much detail, as many still ran the
whole course with dog the on their left. Seems strange now, but
as a teenager coming through the ranks I had a very competitive
streak. I guess what inspired me was the goal to get better so
I could win more and beat the adults! I started repeating what
was working for me at the time but also trying to ﬁgure out why
it worked. As an instructor I started talking about a method/system of handling in the mid 90's and by 2000 the DVD was made.
Lots of the "rules" as they are called were put in place just to
help people understand the "hows" of the system. There are
many reasons for why we cue behaviors in a certain way and
why we don't want conﬂicts in our cues in all aspects of our
dog training (not just agility). For example, I use the verbal cue
"sit" for my dog to place its backside on the ﬂoor. I follow the
phonetic rules of language to keep this the same each time. The
rules of a cue just deﬁne/describe the way you execute it.

S: How much has changed since then?
G: To be very honest, I think the fundamentals are very much
the same. The basis of them is extremely simple to follow for
both dog and handler. What has changed, though, is our explanations and understanding of many aspects of the system.
Our knowledge goes a lot deeper as we have learnt from our
successes, our failings, our dogs, and from others. An example
of this is acceleration and deceleration. If you look at how we
were using this to get to front cross positions and cue the turn
back in the mid 90's, we used a lot of acceleration and deceleration cues. These happened automatically as you had to move
fast to get there and slow down to execute a front cross. The application is still roughly the same 20 years later, but our training
of acceleration and deceleration and our understanding of the
importance of these has improved considerably.
September 15 | Clean Run

S: I remember being grateful to have handling rules to take back to
my training school. They seemed to be the backbone of your methodology and made things clear to my students when they had to make
decisions on course. But, now when you mention "rules" for handling,
the concept often isn't well received. What are your thoughts on this?
G: Having come from a scientiﬁc background, with a BSc originally and then studying behavior, I do approach my dog training in a scientiﬁc manner. I believe handling is just a series of
well-trained and deﬁned cues. In its essence, handling is a series
of deﬁned behaviors performed by the handler in repetition in
training, to gain a behavior from the dog, which is followed by
a reward. The more we pair these consistently (cue = behavior =
reward), the stronger the dog's understanding becomes, and the
quicker they can respond and the more accurate they become.
We need rules to deﬁne behaviors so they stay the same. Handling is animal training and really does follow the ABC principles of behaviour: Antecedents - Behaviour - Consequence.
Antecedent is deﬁned as something that "logically precedes
another thing." Can anyone really argue it makes sense not to
follow these principles when cueing our agility dogs? I'm really unsure why anyone wants to vary their cues. When cueing
the sit behavior I would not say "sit" one day but then use the
word "sit" the next day to cue the down behavior. That makes
no sense, so why would I do this with my handling cues?

S: Was your methodology originally developed for American-style
courses or more for international-style courses?
G: I'm not really sure course style has a lot to do with it as the
behaviors we cue appear on all courses. Originally though, the
basis of the system was used on UK courses and at that time I
probably had the reputation of being a handler that excelled on
the more technical courses. Evaluating courses today and the differences, I would suggest that "international style" courses just
need the dogs to respond faster and require more cues in succession. I have had all my personal success in the UK and Europe,
but I have had students in many countries around the world win27

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Clean Run - September 2015

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