{"id":359649,"date":"2026-07-31T06:05:33","date_gmt":"2026-07-31T06:05:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/uncategorized\/do-you-need-another-cue\/"},"modified":"2026-07-31T06:05:33","modified_gmt":"2026-07-31T06:05:33","slug":"do-you-need-another-cue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=359649","title":{"rendered":"Do you need another cue?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p>Verbal cues have almost become a must in modern agility, but how do you decide what cues you need? As judges find new ways to challenge agility handlers, I sometimes find the need to add another concept to my list of useful cues. You don&#8217;t have to decide on every cue right from the start \u2013 you&#8217;ll find that you don&#8217;t need some that you thought you had to have, and that you might want to add something that&#8217;s missing later on. Before I add a new cue, I have three questions that I consider:<\/p>\n<h4>Do I need this cue?<\/h4>\n<p>Does it solve a problem that I encounter that I can&#8217;t fix by using the cues and concepts we already know? For me, some cues are widely used by other handlers and trainers, but I don&#8217;t see the need for them, and therefore I have chosen not to train them \u2013 for now. I&#8217;m always open to the possibility that there might come a time when I need to add more cues. As course design evolves, my toolbox needs to evolve with it. Because agility is evolving, there are also cues I used to teach that I no longer spend time on. Ten years ago, I taught my dogs a verbal cue to take the non-obvious tunnel entry. Because judges now are much more aware of setting good lines to tunnels, I haven&#8217;t seen the classic tunnel threadle situation in competition for ages. If the situation were to arise, I would have to handle it with my other handling cues and verbal cues, and I think we would be fine. The cues you need can vary greatly depending on the venue and the level of agility you&#8217;re enjoying. You can&#8217;t just copy someone else&#8217;s toolbox when the tools you need might be very different.<\/p>\n<p>Your style of handling might also strongly influence your choice of verbal cues. Many of my cues are based on the dog following my physical handling. If I had to get around courses without running, or even without moving at all, I would probably have to add some more cues and change many of the ones I am currently using that are based on the dog following the line I set with handling.<\/p>\n<h4>Can I define the criteria?<\/h4>\n<p>Some cues would be very helpful in theory, but I struggle to define the criteria. If I can&#8217;t visualize clear criteria that would work in all the situations where I would use the cue, I usually leave it and spend more time thinking about other solutions or possible criteria that work for me. When I was first introduced to the concept of having two different backside cues \u2013 one for wraps and one for slices, I immediately started thinking: What about all the options in the grey zone? At what landing point from the backside do I switch from the wrap cue to the slice cue? And will that be a clear criterion for the dog? I was also a bit stuck on the first question: do I even need two different backside cues? My dogs usually landed in the correct spot based on my handling, and if I needed to help them out, I could always use my directional tight turn cues as they committed to the backside.<\/p>\n<p>I decided to wait and a year later, after discussing with others who made the change, I decided to have one general backside cue where the criteria are &#8220;get to the backside of the jump, take the jump, and follow my handling to adjust landing spot&#8221;, and one backside cue that would always be a perfect slice, landing close to the second wing of the jump. I reasoned that backside slices were the hardest jumps for my dogs, and that a different verbal cue might help with the jumping effort. I know that some of my friends have made the opposite decision \u2013 adding a new cue for the tight wraps and using a general backside cue for all other options. This comes back to the first question \u2013 what cues do I need with this dog for the courses we want to run?<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s been a few years with my two backside cues, and I don&#8217;t feel that it changed much at all. If I had to make the decision again, I would probably have stuck with just one backside cue. For others, using two different cues has been very helpful.\u00a0<\/p>\n<h4>Do I have a good plan for teaching it?<\/h4>\n<p>It&#8217;s not enough to feel the need for a new cue and be able to visualize the criteria. I also need to have a good plan for teaching it. Sometimes, the process seems straightforward; other times I can&#8217;t figure out how to make a good training plan. If I can&#8217;t think of a good way to teach the behavior, I will wait until I figure it out. If I can&#8217;t think of a way to teach it, it often comes back to ambiguous criteria \u2013 <em>what do I really mean by a soft turn<\/em>? But it could also be that some concepts are hard for dogs to grasp, and the time spent trying to teach a dog to read the numbers on course or understand multiple soft turn cues for all the different jumping angles they encounter might not be worth it in the end. I really do believe that some concepts are harder to teach than others, but I&#8217;m also open to the possibility that I just haven&#8217;t figured out a way to teach it yet, and that I will be laughing at my incompetence ten years from now.<\/p>\n<h4>Keep it simple, but don&#8217;t be afraid to add when needed<\/h4>\n<p>For me, the key is to keep it as simple as possible and as complex as needed. I love adding new verbal cues when I see a clear need, can easily define the criteria, and have a good training plan. I have some verbal cues that make total sense for me and my dogs, but are not commonly used by most handlers. I&#8217;ve also decided not to teach some very popular verbal cues, like directional backside cues and soft turn jump cues, mostly because I don&#8217;t feel the need to add them to my toolbox when what we currently have works really well.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>This week in The Agility Connection membership blog, I give you a complete list of my verbal cues for jumps (and sometimes tunnels\/weaves\/contacts). I describe why I need them and what the criteria are. I will also link to the lessons showing how to train them.<\/p>\n<p><a class=\"btn btn--md btn--solid\" title=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.agilityconnection.com\/purchase\/206563-Membership\" target=\"\" data-magic-login=\"\" data-internal-uri=\"simplero:\/\/93888\/products\/206563\/order_form\">Sign up now<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a class=\" btn btn--md btn--solid\" href=\"https:\/\/www.agilityconnection.com\/community\">Learn more<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Verbal cues have almost become a must in modern agility, but how do you decide what cues you need? As judges find new ways to challenge agility handlers, I sometimes find the need to add another concept to my list of useful cues. You don&#8217;t have to decide on every cue right from the start [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":359650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[88],"tags":[31075],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-359649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-cue"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Do you need another cue? - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=359649\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Do you need another cue? - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Verbal cues have almost become a must in modern agility, but how do you decide what cues you need? As judges find new ways to challenge agility handlers, I sometimes find the need to add another concept to my list of useful cues. You don&#8217;t have to decide on every cue right from the start [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=359649\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-31T06:05:33+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/20230916-Hassleholm-Fanny-FotoMartinRimby-003-web-2000w-1333h.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"2000\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"1333\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"6 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=359649#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=359649\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b85e3c3dc0e1daea076524dc8810c371\"},\"headline\":\"Do you need another cue?\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-31T06:05:33+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=359649\"},\"wordCount\":1133,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=359649#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/20230916-Hassleholm-Fanny-FotoMartinRimby-003-web-2000w-1333h.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"CUE\"],\"articleSection\":[\"News\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=359649#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=359649\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=359649\",\"name\":\"Do you need another cue? 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