One of the benefits of our club is learning from each other. ARFF is offering a series of workshops this year, given by ARFF members. We welcome auditors as well as participants with dogs. You can sign up for as many as you like and as early as you want at our workshop signup page.

Strategizing Snooker, August 20, 2022

Nini Bloch

Agility people generally love or fear Snooker. The math seems intimidating. It doesn’t have to be. it’s a fun game. We’ll demystify Snooker, so that you can feel confident that you can come up with a plan that will work for you and your dog. You’ll get to test your plan on a Snooker course. Come play my favorite agility game.”    SIGN UP

Past workshops

Keep Moving, April 23, 2022

Nini Bloch

One of the hardest things to learn in agility is to keep moving. In practice, how many times have you stopped because you or your dog has made a mistake, and you go back to try to “fix it.”? At a trial, especially with a green dog, it can be demotivating to your dog if you stop. We’ll focus primarily on the interplay between motivating your dog and your body language in keeping your dog moving. I’ll put a lot of emphasis on running as silently as possible so you can concentrate on what your body is telling your dog.

How to Build a Skill (serpentines), May 14, 2022

Nini Bloch

It can seem daunting trying to teach your dog complex behaviors like the weave poles or handling maneuvers like threadles. Where to begin? What to teach in what order? We’ll go over some basic principles and apply them to teaching serpentines.

Backchaining for Success, May 28, 2022

Nini Bloch

Backchaining is a method both for teaching skills and for learning sequences. Properly taught, a backchained behavior reinforces the dog each step along the way, so it can make for a very happy, confident dog. We’ll discuss its advantages of backchaining and experiment using it to teach your dog to work away from you, even layering obstacles.

Wicked Weavies, June 11, 2022

Susan Giordano

Are you frustrated by your dog's weave pole performance? Learn techniques to make your dog's weave poles more consistent and independent. We'll look at entries, exits, and handler position. You'll come away from the workshop with some better training tools to help your dog be successful.

Those OTHER Jumps, June 25, 2022

Nini Bloch

How many times at practice have you done a tire? a double? a triple? Forget the long jump! Has your dog ever actually seen one? We’ll teach newbies the long jump and incorporate it and these other neglected jumps into sequences so your dog will feel more confident when he encounters them.

Building Better Contacts, July 9, 2022

Susan Giordano

Visualize a perfect dog walk performance: Your dog approaches the plank squarely, flies over the three segments, and nails a perfect 2-on-2-off landing, releasing only on your cue. Is that your dog? There are many components to a perfect dog walk, and we will work on some of these depending on the needs of the participants. If your aspiration is to running contacts, your dog will still benefit from many of the exercises. Although the A-frame is similar, we will be focusing on the dog walk and using exercises from Amanda Shyne’s book “Phenomenal Stopped Contacts"