You may have a long list of things you want to teach your puppy: focus, fitness, directionals, equipment skills and, eventually, distance. Knowing which skill to work on today — and how it prepares your puppy for the next step — can be the harder part.
The ITZ Puppy Program takes away some of that guesswork. Follow a progression of age-appropriate training, see how the pieces fit together, and build on foundations as your puppy grows.
The program includes age-appropriate puppy fitness exercises alongside connection, cue training and agility foundations. See how fitness and body-awareness work fit into your puppy's training as they grow, with guidance from Lisa, a Certified Canine Fitness Trainer.
You can begin teaching your puppy to understand your cues through safe, age-appropriate foundation exercises long before they are ready for full agility courses. Progress with your puppy's readiness, rather than rushing to the next challenge.
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In Raising a Distance Superstar, follow Myelin's training from early puppy foundations toward performance. Watch skills develop over time, so you can see how the work you do now connects to the dog you hope to run with later.
The additional courses bring in examples from my other puppies and dogs. You'll see different stages of learning and how foundations carry forward into agility. You get to watch the training process, not only the finished behaviors.
Seven courses bring together an organized month-by-month progression and additional examples to help you understand and apply the foundations.
Use Myelin's month-by-month training as a guide to what comes next. Learn how connection, confidence, fitness, clear cues and directionals develop into agility and distance foundations, with age-appropriate steps along the way.
Learn how to build the everyday foundation of a performance partnership. Work on focus, fitness, connection and understanding cues and rules, so your puppy has skills to build on when agility becomes more demanding.
Join me and my nephew Luke, who was eight during filming, for unscripted conversations about training the two puppies we rescued together. Learn through our puppy-training discussions, with Luke's candid observations, news and weather segments bringing plenty of humor along the way.
Watch Inspire's puppy training to see how foundation skills are developed in practice. These examples help you connect the early learning process with the skills you will later use in performance and agility.
See how equipment introductions and teaching turns build on earlier training. Use these examples to understand the transition from foundation exercises to beginning agility skills.
Follow Emmy and Zoomy's training at a year old through hoops, tunnels, turns and more. See how foundation skills come together in new agility challenges, giving you a picture of what you are preparing for with your younger puppy.
Watch foundation training with Tucker, a beagle. Seeing another dog learn gives you an additional example of the foundation work and a broader view of the training process.
Raising a Distance Superstar: The 12-Month Blueprint from Puppyhood to Performance is normally $197 by itself.
The complete ITZ Puppy Program Bundle is also $197. It includes Raising a Distance Superstar plus the six additional puppy courses described above. You receive the month-by-month guide and the additional training examples together.
This program may be a good fit if:
I'm Lisa, founder of In The Zone Agility and a Certified Canine Fitness Trainer. I've spent decades training and competing in agility, with multiple NADAC Championships and Distance Cup achievements with multiple dogs.
I've raised and trained numerous performance dogs and have extensive experience developing dogs for distance agility. This program brings that experience back to the beginning: building fitness, understanding and connection through the foundation work you do with your puppy.
$197
The complete seven-course puppy program, including the Raising a Distance Superstar course that normally costs $197 on its own.
The early work focuses on age-appropriate connection, body awareness, fitness and learning cues. You don't need to wait until your puppy can run a full agility course to begin building foundations. Choose exercises and progressions that suit your puppy's age and readiness.
Many early foundation exercises require little or no agility equipment. Later training examples introduce equipment as the dogs build toward agility.
No. Clear cues, independence, forward focus, connection and body awareness are useful foundations for agility generally. The program also includes specific foundations for handlers interested in future distance work.
The skills you want in your future agility dog don't suddenly appear when your puppy is old enough to run a course.
They are built through the foundation work you do along the way.
Train Smart. Run Connected. Stay In The Zone.