Emina & Tango, 3 years old, Croatia

Heeey, welcome back! Just the other day I was thinking about Tango how are things going for you2 now. I can’t really be sure about what is causing this problem for him. I remember we worked on it when it first started and before his injury, but yes, it has definitely gotten worse. If it is just a confidence thing we should be able to se improvement quickly!
I would start with my first lesson, but with bars on the ground – better yet on the ground + if you can, replace them with pool noodles, so he knows that they are completely soft and safe. Make it light and fun, lots and lots of playing and running, not asking for any particular agility skill. You can also run little sequences on your garden with just wings and tunnel(s) – so the jumps are dismantled, each wing standing independently, no bars. Just turns around those wings in any random order. Have normal distances between them and you can include the tunnel too.

“And it was better at that moment at home but when we got to the club, it got worse. We will try again for a longer period and see if it gets better ?
What about trainings at the club? Should he run the course normally but with pool noodles on the ground?”
Yes, you have to be consistent and give it time. At the club you can start with no bars at all and than gradually progress to pool noodles.

“In two weeks we have a competition in Zagreb, and then a break until may. Should I run in this competition? Is it a bad idea? I would like to go so he gathers experience. One thing I loved at the competition – he loved the atmosphere there. He was hyped. He didn’t sniff around as he usually does at the training. But the jumps stressed him out.”
If it was me, I probably wouldn’t go, because I wouldn’t want my dog to practise avoiding jumps and overall feeling insecure on the course. However he didn’t look too “put off” by it, his overall attitude was happy and motivated, so if you really want to, I guess it wouldn’t do much harm.

Too bad for your accident on the first jump, he seemed to have started quite confidently and given that A-frame was the second obstacle, it could have worked as a little boost.. but things happen. So now let’s play and see how much we can help him relax.

Way to go Tango! When not stressed about the bars he is really flying! Your improv was exactly what is needed. Can you do the same at the club? At least in the first round and than maybe upgrade to some very simple sequences?
I would like to add an additional game for your backyard training. Put a jump on the lowest possible height and sit close by. Get him to jump, but without telling him to do it or indicating it in any way. Pure shaping. At first you can be siting directly in front of the jump so he will eventually probably offer going there, wrapping one wing and coming back to you. That is good for a start. If you have a T&T machine, you can progress to “straight line” exercise where you sit next to the jump and reward him for jumping with T&T in one direction and food throw in another.
Also keep doing all those games. He is a lot better, but I can still see some early takeoffs or calculations even with no bar, so I think it is important we keep this going without actually having him jump “real jumps”, so we can see if it totally fades away or not.

“Notice when he ran the sequence he entered the tunnel and it took him a while to get out. Probably something happened inside. Immediately on the next run, he slows down completely on the entrance. Just shows you how silly he is with his “fears”. ”
I wouldn’t call any fear silly, because no matter how rational/non rational it is, it doesn’t change how an individual feels in that moment. I just recently read a post about an early takeoff syndrome and it is now believed that the reason why dogs struggle on the jumps can be short sightedness (which I believe they can fix now) or a processing error between eyes and brains – meaning that the eyes work well, but image gets processed wrongly in the brain. The fact it that we ask A LOT from the dogs in agility and even though there are many dogs that do it seemingly easily… it is still not an easy job. And you have to trust your vision damn well if you want to race full speed over jumps or in a dark tunnel. The thing is – the image “distortion” can be small at first, but it causes the dog to fall/crash the jump more often than usual, so the dog begins to loose his confidence and flow and makes things even worse for himself (gets himself in even more accidents),… and the vicious cycle continues. The dog has to learn how to “read” the images he gets correctly and trust himself to be able to clear things. So “forcing” the dog to “shake it off” is not a solution as you can’t shake it off once you loose confidence in yourself.
So you have to be on his side. He has reasons for his behaviour, no matter how irrelevant they seem to you or anyone else. It is clear to me that he has a reason, because with no stressors (bars) he absolutely LOVES agility, he moves really efficiently and he is really driven. So it is not that he is not motivated or he doesn’t like the sport. He struggles with an element. Not being able to trust your eyes and still run full speed can lead to accidents and he knows that, so he is rather playing it safe.
I think we can help him (to some degree at least) BUT with very smart training and the basic guideline is that he has to feel good and confident all the time. So if he has an accident I would stop, reward and comfort him and not ask him to do the same thing again in that training session. Give him time to shake the fear off. I would walk away from that area of the field completely and just do drills on the other side. And I would follow that rule every time he has a fall or an accident.

“Normally he loves tunnels, they always speed him up.”
True but I remember he had exact same problems before. Not wanting to go through the tunnel from one side in that exact same training hall. His refusal or being reluctant about something always has a reason. And I think it is really important that he is not being pushed through that emotion, because it is clear that it doesn’t work. He doesn’t just say “oh, I fell before, but now I didn’t so I have nothing to worry about”. He can’t just shake off what he is feeling in such a short time.

IMPORTANT: The more often he is “forced” to do something in a wrong state of mind (when he is hesitant of things) the more it undermines his confidence and the less likely he is to get through the issue. So the only thing to do here is to get him out of the situation and allow him to do something different, something that helps him get his confidence back and have fun.

Apart from that, the training wen’t well! He is a little beast when he is feeling good! All the different drills you did were nice! Apart from the additional jump shaping game I suggested in the previous post, you can also do more of straight line sends to static toy at home. Starting with pool noodles and than after a few repetitions you can put bars on the lowest possible height halfway (one side of the bar on the handle one side on the ground). It is even better if you manage to do it with a pool noodle, but I am not sure you will be able to make it stand that way. So anyways, I would do 1 or two repetitions with a slightly increased difficulty and than few more with just the pool noodles on the ground.
So for example 4-1(2)-4.
Always send him to static toy in this drill, so the reward is predictable and not moving – so it is not distracting him from anything.

The eyes – it wouldn’t hurt. We have very good ophthalmologist here in Slovenija, Tadej Zemljič. Has his own clinic. Not sure anything would come up, but maybe it is worth to check.

Do you have a little cavaletti jump you could use indoors (or you can improvise something), so you can try shaping where he is more used to be doing it and with less smells and distractions around. With a little bit of warm up inside he will probably engage more outside as well.

Jumps with static toy look nice, but he did crash the second one once and jumped extra high the next time. Next training do it same way to begin with, than after a few reps put the first bar on lowest possible height for one or two repetitions and than back to noodles.

Nice training!
Sniffing – if he does that in the beginning but than works with great focus, I would probably just try to give him time to sniff in the beginning but let him know that it is his sniff time and don’t fight for his attention. Just walk him around and let him do his thing until you feel he is ready for work.
He was doing really well throughout the training. You can have normal trainings like this with pool noodles. I would’t be changing anything at this point to really have time to imprint this feel good, no stress vibe.
See-saw: it always takes a while for the dog to balance the speed correctly. If I see that the dog is stopping early I won’t repeat it without help. Either I will not do it at all or I will have someone hold it again and give a HUGE jackpot afterwards. If he is too wild, but at least somewhat correct (not flying off before see-saw even comes close to the ground) I would just keep going and than maybe repeat it again in the next sequence. Usually they feel like a superheroes once and than re-adjust themselves. But if you correct them immediately, they will correct themselves too much.