When out shopping for your dog, you may see that there are many different leads for your dog. You may be left thinking how ridiculous it is to have a 15 metre dog lead, but actually, there is a great use for that. Or when getting started in agility, you may be wondering what all the different obstacles are and what requirements you have to meet with them.
We have an overview of a few different types of dog leads and agility equipment. Of course, there is more out there, but these are the basic common leads and agility equipment that you might come across.
Leads
You may come across many different types of dog leads. Standard leads, retractable leads, long lines and slip leads are just getting started. Of course, some people have different names for each of these and they are not all necessary for use with dog owners.
Your dog lead that you use every day is most likely a standard lead, these are good length dog leads that come in lots of different materials (common ones being nylon). These are of course regularly used for walking but can also be used for training your dog. Different trainers however, prefer different lengths of leads for dog training (when they are used).
Looking at different types of regular nylon leads, you can get the most common walking (and occasionally used for training) lead of 182cm, shorter leads which are usually around 121cm, and long nylon leads which can go from anywhere just 15 metres to 30 metres!
Long leads can be a really great tool to practice recall training with your dog in a safe way. You can basically let your dog get away from you, then call their name with their verbal cue (and a visual cue if you have one), once they come to you reward them. Practice this a few times and you will have your recall training covered!
You can also add a little bit of tension to the long lead when training this to encourage and remind your dog to come (when done correctly, this is like tapping a person on the shoulder). Make sure this is only enough to remind them and encourage them, instead of making training this command a bad experience.
Shorter dog leads can be used for other specific training techniques and commands. They are a helpful tool to be used when training a dog beginning in ‘Canine Cavaletti’.
Some trainers also may use them for teaching agility jumps. This can be an effective training method, just make sure you are constantly aware of your dogs language so that you are not forcing them to jump over a pole that they don’t want to do. There are also some other effective ways to train a command like this that do not require a short lead (or any kind of lead) that we recommend.
Agility – Contact Obstacles
A part of an agility course normally consists of ‘contact obstacles’, these are the obstacles that have a contact zone on (usually marked in yellow) which the dog must touch with at least two paws in order to not receive a fault.
These obstacles are the Seesaw, A-Frame, Dog walk and occasionally the Pause Table. The Seesaw’s contact zones are the areas at each end (where your dog gets on the obstacle, and where your dog gets off).
The A-Frame and Dog Walk have similar contact areas to the Seesaw, again being at each end. On the other hand, the Pause Table (which does have different variations of the name) has a contact zone of the whole top surface, it is normally required that your dog spends 5 seconds on this zone before moving to the next part of the agility course.
Other Obstacles
You will likely encounter many other types of obstacles in agility, and you will see that all courses differ in the layout and the equipment used.
Starting off, a common and usually simple obstacle to train is the Jumping aspect of agility. There are many different types of agility jumps, and a wide range of names for each one. But with all the varieties, they all have one basic goal – for your dog to jump over it. You could get started naming different dog jumps with tyre jumps, bar jumps/ hurdles, wall jumps and long jumps.
Tunnels are very commonly used in agility courses. You will probably come across the standard tunnel that is generally 3 – 6 metres long. The basic outcome of this obstacle is for your dog to go in one end and come out the other. The tunnel is normally bent to make different shapes, the most common one for agility competitions is a ‘U’ shape.
The Weave Poles seem simple but are one of the harder commands to train dogs. They are basically a set of 6 – 12 poles (generally 12 are used in competitions) that your dog weaves in and out of. When approaching the first pole, your dog is usually required to enter on the right so that their left shoulder is next to the first one, then the dog continues to weave in and out of all the poles.
These will most likely be the main (or only) obstacles you encounter in agility and also the leads you will come across most frequently. Of course, there a few different names you might hear for some of these obstacles.