Parkour to Benefit Other Dog Sports
Canine parkour is an excellent activity which offers our dog the opportunity to interact with items within the environment to perform fun and engaging behaviors. As your dog is mastering the various canine parkour behaviors, they are developing body awareness and physical confidence. This could very well be part of the puzzle that your dog was missing when playing other dogs sports and now can help them take their performance to the next level.
Here are just some examples for how canine parkour can help us with a variety of dog sports:
Agility: canine parkour can offer our dogs other contexts where they can develop body awareness and surefootedness. This will allow them to better tackle their agility courses. Additionally, we can help our dogs generalize other types of behaviors, such as 2-on-2-off for an A-frame or teeter or a jump onto, collect and stand or down on the pause table. Having our dogs practice these behaviors in other contexts, locations and with other objects can be immensely helpful.
Barn Hunt: navigating a straw or hay maze can be more challenging than it sounds! Some dogs may find the prickly surface off-putting or the instability of the bales unnerving. Also, going through a tunnel that seems endlessly dark and claustrophobic can be scary. Canine parkour to the rescue! Use shaping as a training approach, we can build the dog's ability to do 2 Feet On, 4 Feet On, Balance, In, Through and Under with lots of different obstacles, items and in different contexts. Make this a fun game! You can even place these behaviors on a verbal cue. Once the dogs is solid, weave these newly learned and loved behaviors into your Barn Hunt practice sessions, cueing the dog to perform one of their parkour behaviors to get them up onto the bales, traverse over the bales and through the tunnel.
Competition Obedience: some dogs can find competition obedience incredibly challenging, stuffy and even boring. We can spice it up by weaving in some canine parkour behaviors as we are practicing our obedience routines. For instance, perhaps you are doing some precision heeling and your dog is giving it their all. Giving them an opportunity to then do a fun canine parkour activity can be a way to reward them and grant a release of sorts. We can also use these mini-parkour celebrations at trials as well to keep our dog happy and engaged.
Scent Work: there is so much more to Scent Work than simply focusing on the odor or finding the hide. Our dogs are expected to search in any environment under a wide variety of conditions. This is asking a lot! As an example, one search area may be inside of a school gymnasium with slippery floors and booming ceilings whereas another search area is held outside in a gravel parking lot where your dog is expected to search a series of vehicles. There are dogs who will be bothered by the slippery floors or be unable to walk over the gravel. How can canine parkour help? We can practice our canine parkour behaviors in various locations, generalizing the dog's ability to work in any type of space. Those skills will then apply to later searches. We are incredibly fortunate that Lori Timberlake of Do Over Dog Training did a full webinar talking all about this, so be certain to check it out.
This is far from exhaustive but gives an overview for how we can use canine parkour to build the skills our dogs need in other dog sports. Better still, our dogs will LOVE playing canine parkour, it will work them out physically and mentally and help you develop important skills as a both a handler and a trainer. Not to mention, canine parkour is FUN!
If you haven't already, get started in canine parkour today. Check out the various resources Lori Timberlake has put together us with her Canine Parkour Program.
Happy Training and have so much canine parkour fun!
Dianna has been training dogs professionally since 2011. She has done everything from teaching group training classes and private lessons, to specializing in working with fearful, reactive and aggressive dogs, to being a trial official and competition organization staff member.
Following a serious neck and back injury, Dianna was forced to retire from in-person dog training. But she was not ready to give up her passion! So, she created Pet Dog U and Scent Work University to provide outstanding online dog training to as many dog handlers, owners and trainers possible…regardless of where they live! Dianna is incredibly grateful to the amazingly talented group of instructors who have joined PDU and SWU and she looks forward to the continued growth of PDU and SWU and increased learning opportunities all of these online dog training platforms can provide.
In June 2021, Dianna and her business partner, Sean McMurray launched Cyber Scent Work, Inc., an organization that operates in the gray space between training and trialing in Scent Work. With Cyber Scent Work, Inc., handlers have the opportunity to earn Qs, titles and ribbons while also receiving helpful training advice regardless of whether they qualify or not! Be sure to check out Cyber Scent Work, Inc., you will be happy you did!
#petdogublog #canineparkour #playwithyourdog #traincaineparkour #dogsports #traindogsports #dogownership #dogowners #dogs #puppies #dogtraining #dogtrainers #dogtraininginstructors #doginstructors #petdogu
