Hello and welcome to Yorkie Talk.
At four months old, I would start with the basics. I prefer clicker training which is a great way to work with puppies as it teaches them to think and figure things out (important for both agility and earthdog trials!). The first command I’d teach any dog, no matter what the age, is the “attention” or “watch” command. Teaching a dog to hone in on you, solves a lot of problems (puppy eating shoe, owner says “watch,” puppy needs to look up at owner, drops shoe, owner gets shoe from puppy). But it is VITAL for agility that a dog learn to pay attention to his handler and for other dog sports at well (equally vital in competition obedience for example if you decide you’d like to do that). I put up a post, not too long ago, about teaching a hand touch using clicker training (I responded to a question about “what is clicker training”). That’s another good exercise to start with a very young puppy. There’s also a post under Yorkipower concerning training with a target stick. Targets sticks are great tools in training dogs! You can then use this training (watch, hand touch, touching a target stick to teach the come, down, sit, and stay command (read up on these commands because, believe it or not, there is more than one way for a dog to do a down. For agility, for example you want your dog to do the fastest down possible, which would be rolling in from front to back).
If you are serious about getting into dog sports and you are fortunate to start out with a puppy, I can’t recommend this book enough: Building Blocks for Performance. You can get it from
http://www.dogwise.com . Another great book for building a performance dog is Susan Garret’s “Ruff Love” available from
http://www.cleanrun.com (which is also a wonderful website to learn more about agility). I do not recommend reading “Ruff Love” without understanding the really technical aspects of clicker and motivational training first, however. There are two bibles, that if you are truly committed to getting into dog sports, are a MUST read (although they are very in depth!) The first is The Culture Clash and the second is Don’t Shoot The Dog. A less technical book that reads like an instruction manual for beginners to clicker training is Quick Clicks (this book has a detailed explanation on how to teach the watch command). I believe CleanRun magazine has back issues you can purchase. A few months ago, they did a special feature on training puppies which included teaching a watch command, incorporated into crate training. Go to
http://www.cleanrun.com . Thought it was a great article! There were a ton of other tips in there too. Greg Derett has a two video series on foundation training for agility. The first one of the two, is a must have I wish I had existed when I got started. It’s technical too but really lays out what your dog needs to know and be able to do before she can ever see an agility obstacle. On the less technical side, there’s a great new electronic magazine geared specifically towards beginners and people who train agility on their own. It’s called agilityaction magazine
http://www.agilityaction.com . You wont be able to start her on obstacles for quite some time as her growth plates must be closed and she needs to develop some attention and mental maturity but you can start working on fundamentals right away. I sell a book from Hobday that will also be of help to you – made especially for puppies (check out the link on my website on agility books). I’m also working on an article right now for the Yorkshire Terrier Magazine about the basics of agility. Hope to get it out soon .
http://www.mightymitedoggear.com
From your comment, are you just interested in agility and earthdog or are you just interested in finding out what dog sports are out there that you and your pup could participate in? I have a short list under “Training” under the links page of my site but that’s probably not even complete! Off the top of my head: Agility, Obedience, Rally-O, Carting, Conformation, Tracking, Pet Therapy, Earthdog, Disc Dog, Trick Training . . . .
I am new to earthdog too but if you go to the first few threads on this post, you’ll see info on the American Working Terrier Association and some links to other websites explaining how it is done. Earthdog, interestingly enough, does not involve the intense training that agility does. It is based on your dogs instinct and getting her psyched up about the mouse.