This book provides detailed, step-by-step instructions for training your dog to master each agility obstacle with safety, fun, and competitive excellence in mind. It Includes important principles for building a happy and successful working relationship with your dog, as well as a solid foundation for all of your agility training. The focus is placed upon setting high standards from the start so that no retraining will be necessary later down the road.

Whether your dog is young or old, large or small, pedigreed or mixed breed, Agility is a sport you and your dog can enjoy together. Agility Training makes clear all aspects of this, the world's fastest growing and most versatile dog sport. Whatever your interest, whether purely casual or highly competitive, you will find the instructional methods and helpful hints meaningful for your goals. Agility Training tells readers how to get started in the sport, work on their own, attend classes, earn titles and organize a competition or practice event. Chapters describe training for all levels of Agility, from beginners through an advanced curriculum. A special feature provides detailed construction plans as well as a list of materials for all obstacles. A Howell Dog Book of Distinction

This book teaches you how to sequence smoothly from one obstacle to the next, to reach your dog's highest potential for speed and accuracy. The book: helps you to develop a consistent set of cues for communicating with your dog on the agility course. As a result, your dog will understand your directives in an instant, even at the highest of speeds and the greatest of distances; Provides detailed lesson plans for Beginner, Intermediate I, and Intermediate II agility training classes.

Do you long for a dog that will soar accurately and enthusiastically through the most challenging agility course, while working at great distances? If so, you have come to the right place. This book will show you how to train your joined-at-the-hip Velcro dog to both enjoy and excel at working away from you. The ability to handle your dog at a distance is a tremendous asset if not a necessity in all types of agility courses. Through the methods detailed in this book you can: Attain a competitive advantage through the enormous flexibility you will gain in choosing a winning handling strategy; Take a shorter path than your dog by working at a lateral distance, thus allowing you to take full advantage of your dog s fastest speed instead of being limited by yours; Acquire tools to enable you to smoothly handle courses with handler restrictions, long straight-aways, and layering challenges; Ace courses that specifically require distance skills, such as Gamblers and FAST; Enjoy the exhilarating feeling of ultimate teamwork as you and your canine partner master-fully negotiate the course together, yet independently.

Safe as well as spectacular jumping is a key component of many dog sports. Combine the agility know-how of Julie Daniels (Enjoying Dog Agility #DTA111) and the conditioning expertise of veterinarian Christine Zink and you get a ""must-have"" book for your training library.

Beyond Obedience is a revolutionary new training program for you and your dog from one of our country's foremost animal advocates and holistic practitioners. The idea that your canine companion is a fully emotional being and acutely sensitive to your changing feelings and moods is the foundation of April Frost's original and highly effective training program. One of the most difficult aspects of training your dog is communicating your intentions clearly. Beyond Obedience is the first book that works on the way you communicate with your dog, providing you with the necessary tools to truly understand how your dog's mind works and, therefore, how you can create an effective and mutually satisfying relationship. Drawing on her extensive experiences as an animal behaviorist, Frost teaches you that training your dog should not be a tedious chore limited to exerting physical and psychological control over an animal's drives, but instead an enriching and spiritually fulfilling experience--gratifying for both human and animal. Frost discusses such essential concepts as mutual respect, unconditional love, mental and emotional discipline, and your expectations and priorities. She shows you how the insights gained from working with your dog can have positive, far-ranging effects on many areas of your life. Beyond Obedience revolutionizes dog training by addressing the spiritual, physical, and psychological needs of dogs and people, teaching them to communicate effectively through powerful techniques, including visualization and energy work, and offering them valuable insight into the emotional bonds that enrich the lives of animals and their companions. Guidelines Dogs are born knowing how to bark, bite, dig, chew, chase, jump up on one another, eliminate when they need to, and snarl when they feel threatened. It is a challenge to get a dog to suppress or modify his instincts in order to make human existence more pleasant. If the dog reverts, you need to remember that these acts are not malicious; the dog is simply doing the best he can with information he has been given about living with and behaving in a socially acceptable way toward a totally different species. Dogs can learn whatever you can find a way to teach them, so long as it is within their physical capability to perform. Dogs, like humans, take the path of least resistance; they do only what works well and easily to satisfy their needs and desires. If it is a self-rewarding move, they will repeat and escalate the behavior, whether that behavior is in harmony or conflict with your wishes. Every dog has its own point of motivation, a trigger that will evoke a response and awaken its desire to respond to its human.

Enjoying Dog Agility (2nd edition) is the premier beginner's guide to the fast-growing sport of dog agility. Author Julie Daniels, a national and international agility champion and one of the early pioneers of the sport in the United States, has written an upbeat and informative must-read that shares her insight into all aspects of agility, from initial training of the dog to competing and succeeding in agility trials. A perfectly crafted guide for novice agility handlers, Daniels's book teaches handlers to motivate their dogs, use positive-training techniques, and, most of all, have fun with their dogs.Divided into two sections, the book begins with "This Is Agility," the section that introduces readers to the basic requirements of the sport, methods of handling the dog, conditioning for the dog, and developing true teamwork with the dog. The second section is devoted to "The Obstacles" and discusses how to train the dog for all of the major obstacles found at trial: the apertures (open and closed tunnels and tire jump), the ramps (A-framed, dogwalk, and seesaw), the jumps (bar and solid jumps, spread jumps, and broad jumps), the pause table, and the weave poles. Each obstacle in Section II is presented with step-by-step training instructions on how to introduce the dog to the obstacle and how to navigate it, including avoiding and fixing problems along the way.As Stuart Mah (of Rising Stars Dog Agility) says of the author and her classic text, "Long-considered one of the ‘grand dames' of dog agility, Julie Daniels writes in an easy-to-understand style. Reading Enjoying Dog Agility is like having Julie there, discussing agility with you personally." Fully indexed for ease of reference.