One question - I have been doing agi for about three years now with my GN; since he is my first agi dog, I had and still have some problems with him, most of the being caused by his great talent and... well, not the best instructor. She was great, but simply didn't know what to do with a dog that is so fast and full of drives (she had a golden retriever that wasn't so excited about doing agility). So the last year I have been working really hard to calm him down - before it was like Taz, the tasmanian devil from the cartoon - some creature, moving in a tornado, spinning around and producing unimaginable sounds (get the picture?). Now he is finally much more calm and most of all, concentrated. He obeys very well and we finally managed to be secure on the second contacts, but now we have a problem with the first ones, so the entry zones.
Sambo usually runs in full gallop all the time and with the A-frame it's mostly no problem, but on the dogwalk and the teeter he usually comes and in a large gallop jump flies over the zone . So I would like to hear some suggestions about which system to use for a dog that wasn't well trained from the start. Stopping him is not an option, I think - for the second zones ok, but not the first ones. Some say I should teach him to sprint over - a dog, running at full speed can't jump. Makes sense, but will it work? Others say target training. How?
Any suggestion to help us finally move to the next level will be most welcomed!
Ursa
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''If sometimes you feel a little useless, offended and depressed, always remember that you were once the fastest and victorious sperm in your group.''
hello, i had a similar problem with my poodle, imagen a toy poodle that was so fast so fast and crazy that jumped over the entries and also the exists, yes it was true, and so people say that tiny little dogs do not give these problems AH AH AH !!!!
Well i manage to solve this problem with three different type of helps:
Allways enter and exit at full speed ( the exist then was trained seperatly with the method that you can find at http://www.crazymaesy.co.uk )
i studied the lenght of the "step" of my dog and put a poll above the ground 5 cm ( for your dog maybe 10cm ) so that when he entered he had to land on the contact zone and then another on the obstacle just after the enterence so that the dog does the entrance with 3 steps. Another on the obstacle near the exit so that he had to land on the contact on the exit
and last but not least i allways allways used the arrow on the enterence when training, the only time the dog does not see the arrow is on trials. I use transparent arrows.
Another thing, i practise these in diferent agility training schools so that the dogs does not connect the tricks i use with the obstacles of the school where i usually train.
If you have any doubts please let me know. it worked really really well for my dog. She was the fastest dog i ever saw doing the dogwalk but unfortunatly died before her first trial with only 1,5 years.
Rui, thx for the advice! Just to clear things up, because I'm not sure I understood you correcty: I should put a pole horizontally 5-10 cm of the ground just before the entry zone (and the obstacle) and another 5-10 cm of the obstacle just after the end of the entry zone - on the obstacle somehow? And the third pole is again above the obstacle itself before or on the exit zone? Did I get it or not? And how do you place the poles - on what? Chairs for th high ones, wooden bars for the lower ones? I will have to improvise, you understand, because we never used such a system in our club.
The arrow system I don't like much, but now I see others use entries and exits at full speed to, so it must work .
And I do know that medium or small agi dogs can fly over the contacts as well - we have a woman competing with three miniature pinschers that often seem to grow wings and just flyyyy...
Thank you very much for the tips and the link, I will study it as soon as I find some time. Nevertheless, if anyone has some other experience in handling this problem, welcome to write it as well.
Bye for now, Ursa
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''If sometimes you feel a little useless, offended and depressed, always remember that you were once the fastest and victorious sperm in your group.''
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(get the picture?). Now he is finally much more calm and most of all, concentrated. He obeys very well and we finally managed to be secure on the second contacts, but now we have a problem with the first ones, so the entry zones. 
. So I would like to hear some suggestions about which system to use for a dog that wasn't well trained from the start. Stopping him is not an option, I think - for the second zones ok, but not the first ones. Some say I should teach him to sprint over - a dog, running at full speed can't jump. Makes sense, but will it work? Others say target training. How?
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