By Donna Duford (USA 1999, Paperback, 64 pages)
For Improved Attention, Flexibility and Confidence
Donna Duford owns Companion Dog Training in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, specialising in positive reinforcement techniques for training and behaviour modification. The book speaks about Walking the Course: Techniques for Training, prompting, shaping, capturing, combining techniques, effects on learning, reinforcement and timing, clickers and other conditioned reinforces, using training as a reward, reinforcement schedules, jackpot, pace, keeping your dog in the game, teaching in increments, cues, mixed cues, troubleshooting. Running the Course: Teaching the tricks, touch, sit pretty or beg, bow, spin, weave or figure eight, wave or high five, crawl, rollover, back up. Tricks have traditionally been viewed as cute, silly, and often inconsequential to serious agility trainers, the author shows us how to make tricks a useful item in our agility toolbox. You can use tricks to reduce your dog's stress at trials, enhance your relationship with your dog, increase strength and flexibility, teach your dog to tune in to you better, or simply as a warm-up before going in the agility ring. In Agility Tricks the author provides several different methods for teaching each trick so that you can choose the method that best suits how your dog learns and what motivates him. The book includes a chapter on the basics of positively training any skill to a dog.