Agility Help! I have a monster :’)
My Border Collie mix (almost 3yrs) has been doing agility for a little over a year and a half. When she first started, she was able to run full courses of 11-12 obstacles. She also used to bite me quite a bit when she got excited, but with a lot of work from my trainer and me, that has improved significantly.
The issue we’re running into now is overarousal. These days, we can usually only do about three obstacles before she gets so amped up that we have to put her back in a kennel to reset. To put it lightly, she’s a ball of fucking chaos.
Both of the trainers I work with have told me she’s more intense than any dog they’ve trained before. They’ve suggested finding someone with more experience handling dogs with this level of drive, but unfortunately nobody within an hour of me is taking new clients right now.
I’m looking for ideas from people who have worked with dogs like this. How do you channel that kind of drive and keep their attention on the course? We’ve tried toys (tug leash, leather toys, balls), we’ve tried removing treats from the equation entirely (ironically, she seems to think the tunnel is even more exciting when I don’t have food), and we’ve worked on handling changes like using my feet and body position more because she’s a little piranha when my hands are out.
I also can’t really praise her with much excitement because she feeds off my energy immediately and goes from working to bouncing off me like a rubber ball with legs.
Has anyone dealt with a dog that struggles this much with overarousal in agility? What helped you get them back to a point where they could think and work instead of just reacting? I’d really love to start competing with her by the end of the year, but right now we’re struggling to get through more than a few obstacles at a time.
She never shows this drive or frustration at any other point in her life, so I do fear that agility might not be for her.