OneMind Dogs customer service receives many agility related questions on daily basis. We picked a couple of the most popular questions from the last month and answered them.
Question
"Why do you teach tunnel/contact discrimination using verbals, when it is the least important element and dogs don’t listen to it? I found a study showing that dogs can understand and interpret human words.”
Answer
Voice is one of the seven handling elements we use in the OneMind Dogs method. Words are important for us people, but they don't naturally mean anything to the dogs.
Having said that, through repetitive training, dogs can learn to understand words. OneMind Dogs is based on the language our dogs naturally understand: the body language. We prefer not to use repetitive training if it is not necessary for the dog to understand us.
In OneMind Dogs method we don’t usually use obstacle names as a command. When we use verbal cues, they tend to tell the dog what needs to happen between the obstacles, like “slow down” or “take a connection to the handler”. Contact - tunnel discrimination is one exception for this: since it's not always possible to unambiguously cue the dog to the correct obstacle, we teach our dogs to be able to discriminate the tunnel and contact obstacles based on verbal cues. We also use verbal cues for contact release and startline stays for example.
As our leading OneMind Dogs Coach Jaakko Suoknuuti says in an article about verbal commands : "you can, and should, add verbal commands, whatever they might be, as long as they serve a purpose and are benefiting the dog’s performance."
Read more about Voice as a handling element here.
Question
"Do you have any videos on your site that teach threadles / pull through and push through?”
Answer
We don't use a specific technique for just a pull through or threadle. You can cue the dog to come between two jumps with a variety of techniques depending on the situation. The things you need to consider are for example the angle of the jumps and where the next obstacle after the threadle sequence is. You could use a False Turn, Japanese, Lap Turn, Double Lap Turn, Forced Front Cross etc. for different kinds of threadle situations.
In the False turn video you can see multiple straight threadles done by leading OneMind Dogs Coach Mikko Aaltonen at 0:40
In the no arms threadle and serp. challenge you can again see how we use our motion, position, eyes, chest and feet to cue the difference.
In the Japanese Epidemics you can see threadles done with a Japanese.
In the Lap Turn video you can see a threadle at: 0:32
So as you can see, we don't use the terms pull through or threadle to explain any one technique, but we can cue the dog to come between two jumps with a variety of techniques depending on the situation.
For push through and serpentine we use Running on the Dog's Line, you can see multiple push throughs in a row in the technique application video at 1:45.
Question
"Where do I find a list of OneMind Dogs seminars?”
Answer
There is a list of seminars in the Forum that is updated regularly by OneMind Dogs Coaches.
