Dog Agility

Dog Agility is great fun to watch, it’s probably great fun to take part in too but it seems to me that the dog handlers do as much work as the dogs which goes to make it hard work as far as I’m concerned. Some breeds of dog are just meant to work, but these days less of us have a flock of sheep to herd, for example,  but more and more of us like to have these breeds as pets – stands to reason that we need to find them something to do, they’d go stir crazy without something to think about wouldn’t they (and lots of them do incidentally).

So what’s it all about, this dog agility? Well, the handler has to direct the dog through, over and across a series of obstacles (a bit like a jumping course for horses except there are tunnels and things too!) without touching either the dog or the obstacles. It takes a ton of training to keep an extremely fit and excitable dog under control and have them listen sufficiently to their handler to do all of the obstacles in the right order, and in the right way, although it’s pretty amusing too when things go a bit “pear shaped” – well, it is for the audience but not necessarily for the poor handler.

Dog Agility Obstacles

Each dog agility course will have a series of obstacles for the dog to negotiate.

• A-frame – this is literally two boards of wood formed into a peak, for the dog to climb over. They are usually hinged at around 5 – 6 feet high, with the bottom 3 feet or so painted a bright color, the dog must put at least one of its paws onto this bright section both on the way up and on the way back down at the other side, they’re not allowed to jump off no matter how excited they are.
• Dogwalk - this is a bit like walking the doggy plank. The planks are much narrower than in the A frame (about 9 – 12 inches wide) and go up to around 4 feet high, then the dog has to walk along a platform and down the other side. Again, there are areas where the doggy paws must touch.
• Seesaw – to make things even more difficult, these dogs also have to walk along a see-saw, they have to walk up one side when it will tip the other way, then walk down the other side (again with touch points). This can take a bit longer for smaller, lighter dogs so they are usually allowed a little bit more time.
• Tunnel – most dogs love to run through the tunnel, a bit like kids really on an adventure playground, in fact, dog agility courses really are adventure playgrounds for dogs, it’s just that they have a few rules and regulations. The tunnel can be anything from around 10 to 20 feets long.
• Collapse Tunnel - is similar to the above except that, instead of it being rigid so the dog can see where they are going, it is made of softer fabric which is collapsed, so the dog has to literally push its way through. The majority of them don’t seem to mind though.
• Jumps – a bit like a horse jumping course, each dog will also have to jump over a few obstacles without knocking down the poles. It’s getting them to jump in the right direction that can be a bit tricky when they get really enthusiastic.
• Pause – very often there’s some sort of platform or table where the dog has to jump up, then lie down and wait for around 10 seconds before being allowed to leave.
• Weave poles - are very good to watch, many of those dogs seem to be so bendy that they’re shaped around 3 or 4 poles at once.

So that’s about it really. A course is designed by the judge and then each dog and handler have their turn around it. The dogs have been trained over each obstacle beforehand, it’s just getting them to do everything in the right order without touching them that can be the difficult part. As I already mentioned, some of the handlers seem to run just about as far as the dogs, but often with much less style!