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6. Cross train. Obedience, rally, and agility can really complement each other. Racing is great for increasing focus and speed for lure coursing.
7. Use videotape. Videotape is very humbling. Especially if you believe your dog is doing something different at trials, get videotape. 99% of the time, your handling is different due to increased speed or nerves. Dogs can have their own nerves too (often caused or aggravated by our nerves.) Figure out what your dog needs for support in the ring. It can be something different from what you do at home.
8. Always be a good sportsman. Always congratulate someone who wins or beats you. Be supportive or newcomers but don’t overwhelm them with unsolicited advice.
9. Help out. You can get a lot of help if you help. I started out with racing and was a line judge as we slowly tried to train Wyatt for racing. (Wyatt loves the bunny but resorts to foul means to get the bunny for himself.) But as we were training Wyatt, I helped our local club and was given many training opportunities too.
10. Always use positive training methods. Whippets respond really well to positive training methods and they help keep them motivated. I personally don’t use corrections and have never found the need to do so. I do have an oops word Wyatt to gently mark a mistake. I even use this selectively and most of the time just try again with comment or marking. Most of the time you think the dog makes an error or ignores you, it is really your handling or a training issue or a lack of proofing. I can’t tell you how many times I have seen people pulling their dogs violently into the down position as a way to learn down. How can you correct a dog for something it does not even understand yet? And what are you doing to your dog’s motivation and your relationship to your dog. How much better to lure your dog into a down
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so that he knows what you want? How many times have we all seen a handler ask a dog what they were doing when we saw an obvious handling error in agility such that the dog did exactly whet the handler’s body language was saying. Remember that 90% or more of your communication is with your body language and not words.
See you on the field and in the ring and have fun training!
John Heffernan is co-owner with his wife Dawn of Wyatt of Dodge City and Ch Seaspells Concord Point “Patriot”. Wyatt and Patriot together are close to earning 100 titles in lure coursing, racing, agility, obedience, rally, and conformation.
See http://goodwhippet.blogsport.com/ for John and Wyatt’s training blog.
