1)Your Q rate will be really low. Baby dogs have low Q rates to begin with, even under veteran handlers. Baby dogs with novice handlers have REALLY low Q rates. The handler is still struggling to figure out how to handle the courses and remembering to que her dog in time so they aren’t going to be giving the dog the best information possible. So now you’ve got a baby dog making baby dog mistakes and you’re adding bad handling to the mix.
2)The above is especially true if your dog is super fast and talented. Baby dogs have low Q rates. Baby dogs with novice handlers have really low Q rates. FAST baby dogs with novice handlers have really, super, insanely low Q rates. This is because a dog that’s inexperienced, and being led by a novice is already struggling. Add in super speed and the stress of the trial environment and you’re asking for disaster. At the very least, a slow dog has time to watch and see what’s coming up and the novice handler has time to think about their next move. That all goes out the window with a fast dog. NOBODY has time to think about anything (dog or handler, either one). Coming from Rally and Obedience where a decent training regimen guarantees a decently high Q rate at the novice level, my first few months of novice agility hit me hard. I had trained hard. I had proofed and trained and done all my homework. My dog had solid skills. She was used to traveling. My trainer said she was ready to enter. And I couldn’t get a Q to save my life. I think our Q rate those first 6 months was under 10%. We knocked bars. We jumped over contacts. We ran off course. We flew off teeters. We refused weaves. We went over time (not because my dog was slow but because we kept having refusals). We balked at obstacles she had never balked at before. We took the wrong jumps, went in the wrong ends of tunnels and one time we just stood in the middle of the ring barking at the judge.
3)Your dog doesn’t actually know how to weave. Or stay at the startline. Or hold contacts. You think they do. But they don’t. Insert any specific difficult behavior here and your dog doesn’t actually know how to do it. You think they do, but trust me, they don’t. They know how to weave at home. They know how to weave at class. They don’t know how to weave when they’re stressed. Or on a type of ground surface they’ve never seen before. If you train on mats, they don’t know how to weave on turf. If you train on grass, they don’t know how to weave on mats. If you train indoor, they don’t know how to weave outdoor. If you train outdoor, they don’t know how to weave indoor. They don’t know how to weave when the spectators are too close to the weaves or when the judge is too close. They don’t know how to weave when it’s too early in the morning or too late at night. I promise you, they don’t know how to weave. You will have to go to a lot of trials before your dog actually knows how to weave. Or stay. Or hold contacts. Etc.
4)No matter how much energy your nutbar sheltie/BC/Aussie has, they aren’t ready to do 10 runs in 2 days at 18 months old Trust me. Their body may hold up, but the mind won’t and half way through day 2, you’re looking at a melt down. Pick a couple of classes a day and a make it count. If you over-do it, it will backfire.
5)You aren’t “competing” your first year that you enter. If you happen to Q or title, that’s great. But if that’s your goal, you’re going to have a lot of long stressful rides home. I think it took me about 4 months to figure this out (again, I came from the Rally/Obedience world where my girl won 2 titles in 3 days at 9 months old). It took me taking a step back and seeing this entire thing as “practice” to stop being upset and disappointed.
6)Something will get better every time. Focus on that. Maybe you knocked a bar, maybe you missed a contact. But something else went right. Maybe you killed that start line stay. Maybe you sent to that tunnel from an awesome distance. Find what went right and be proud of it. Then you can work on what went wrong. If you don’t do this, you’re going to get really, really depressed. Ask me how I know 😉
7)Explore different associations. If you’re lucky enough to have multiple venues near you, try them all. You’ll be surprised at the differences. Though AKC was my end goal, none of their trials were very close to me so I wanted to wait until we were pretty solid to start making the drive. I did UKI my first 4 or 5 months because they were fairly close and I was told they were super beginner friendly. And in a way, they are. They’re friendly, they allow training in the ring, they’re laid back and all of that is great. However, they also have INSANELY difficult novice courses (I’d say their novice is close to AKC Excellent) and I didn’t even realize that until I went to my first ASCA trial. I showed up at ASCA and thought I must be reading the map wrong because I was so used to seeing backsides and 17-18 obstacles with 3 or 4 side changes and here I had 2 side changes, straight lines of jumps and 14 obstacles. Turns out ASCA was actually a much better novice ground for me. I had a fast dog who was still struggling with obstacle discrimination and some of her handling at speed. The ASCA courses allowed for her to be much more successful. However, the standard course times were much tighter than UKI, so not so great for people with slower dogs who were struggling to make the course time. UKI had me knocking bars left and right with tight turns and crazy lines. ASCA was smooth, flowing and allowed me to just go run my dog and let her be confident.
8)You have to keep showing up. It’s hard. It’s expensive. It’s stressful. It’s time consuming. But you have to keep showing up. If I could give just one piece of advice, it would be this one. Keep showing up. It really is that simple. There are certain things you just can’t conquer at home or in class because they simply don’t happen at home or at class. My dog was a SUPERSTAR at home and at class. Trials were totally different. Even when the trial was held at her own school! Her first trial was held at our own training school and she nearly completely shut down on me the first day because the sound and sights overwhelmed her (and mind you, this was a dog who had been shown extensively in other venues/disciplines). You just never know how they’re going to react. The only way to pull them through is simply to keep showing up.
So get out there and do it. Keep showing up. It starts out hard. It gets better, but only if you keep showing up!
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