8 Tips for Preparing to Compete with Your Dog

By Joyce Miller

The first Week of the Airedale (WOTA) 2003 captured the imagination of Airedale lovers worldwide. We thrilled at Airedales tracking, trailing, flushing and retrieving. We enjoyed the dogs in the companion day events. We applauded the rescue Airedales as they paraded by us. We marveled at how uniquely Airedales do obedience and agility. We applauded the Airedale drill team. And we admired the dogs in the conformation ring.

What does it take to train a dog for a competitive event like this?

After WOTA, I interviewed Mary Barker, the winner of the most versatile handler award and the owner of the dogs that won most versatile and runner up most versatile Airedales. In that interview, she outlined eight tips for training dogs to compete in events like this.

1. Use soft words. Be patient. Always keep your voice pleasant. Never raise your voice. And use corrections that give your dog specific information on how to do a specific exercise. For example, Mary sometimes used a wooden spoon coated with peanut butter to show one of her Airedales exactly how to do something.

2. Keep it simple and picture the behavior you want your dog to do. “Form a mental picture in your mind of what you want your dog to do,” Mary said. “With that picture, you can give corrections in such a way that you help your dog understand what to do.” Not only does Mary visualize her dogs doing an exercise perfectly, she pictures them doing it with a happy attitude and with their tails and ears up.

3. Make training fun. Since Mary competes in obedience, agility and tracking, she keeps training fun by mixing exercises from different sports in each training session. This helps her dogs pay close attention to her and have fun in every session. So mix things up and don’t overdo one thing in any one session.

4. Don’t rush into competition. Like a good teacher, Mary takes her time and makes sure that her students (her dogs), are ready to do what she wants before she puts them to the test.

5. Plan in advance. Mary attributes her success with her dogs to her professional experiences as a teacher and an engineer. She focuses on the details and breaks each task down into many small details. When she is training a dog, she works on different parts of an exercise every week. When she and the dogs have learned all the details of a specific exercise, she pulls the whole exercise together. To train for WOTA 2003, she planned every detail, from which events she would compete in, how she and her dogs would prepare, what distractions she needed to prepare her dogs for, and more. She broke every exercise into goals and then identified the individual things that she needed to do with each dog and did them.

6. Work every day. No matter how short or long, work your dog in some aspect of what they will be doing in a competition every single day. Mary and her dogs worked six nights a week for six months to prepare for WOTA 2003. Every night, they did routines and Mary focused on one specific thing in one exercise: heeling, head up, sits, downs, weave poles, etc. until she was satisfied that she and the dog had that part of the exercise down pat.

7. Be ready for anything. Mary says, “It’s the trainer’s responsibility to expose their dog to all the things that they may encounter in the competition.” Because WOTA 2003 was an outdoor event and Mary and her dogs were accustomed to competing indoors, she moved all her training outdoors as soon as the snow was off the ground in Wisconsin. “That only gave me a month,” she said, “but it was enough.” Then when she arrived at Purina farms, she noticed that the grass was longer than AKC regulations permit and the longer grass really bothered one of her dogs. So she took the time to practice with that dog in the longer grass until he ignored it.

8. Find lots of ways to measure your progress. Use fun matches to determine where you and your dog need more work. Ask friends to run you through routines so you can check on how you are doing. Work with your dogs until what you do matches the picture in your mind of each routine.