Agility

Volume 3, Issue 3

International Parti Poodle Gazette

July 2007

Inca clearing a jump

AGILITY 2007

Author: Deb Hammond

I have been breeding Toy Poodles for over 25 years and have also had a few Standard and Mini litters. At one point, I began attending puppy socialization classes twice a week and then went on to Beginner Obedience classes. It was so much fun that we started going to Obedience Two classes, which was also fun.

While going to obedience classes, I noticed agility equipment and questioned my instructor about it. She said I should come and watch the practice class to see if agility was something I might be interested in doing with my Poodles. I began going three times a week to watch agility.

My obedience instructor, a Golden Retriever breeder, fell in love with my Poodles, especially my girl Lacey, a small Standard. At the time, she had not seen many Standard Poodles and encouraged me to do agility with Lacey. Now I spend every evening at the training center!

Agility began in England in 1978. The AKC held its first agility trail in 1994. Agility is now the fastest growing dog sport in the United States and is the fastest growing event at the AKC. (Although there are other agility organizations, my Poodles and I participate in AKC Agility.)

Agility is an exciting sport for dogs, their handlers, and spectators. In agility, a dog demonstrates his agility and versatility by following cues from the handler through a timed obstacle course. The course has jumps, tunnels, weave poles, and other obstacles.

AKC offers two types of agility classes. The Standard Class includes obstacles such as the dog walk, the A-frame, and seesaw. The second is Jumpers and Weaves which only has jumps, tunnels, and weave poles. Both classes offer increasing levels of difficulty to earn Novice, Open, Excellent, and Master titles.

After completing both an Excellent Standard title and Excellent Jumpers title, a dog and handler team can complete for the MACH (Master Agility Champion title).

As I watched dogs and handlers practicing agility, I noticed a couple of things I thought would be vitally important in training a dog for the sport of agility: 1) your dog must have good obedience training, and 2) you must have a solid relationship with your dog and be able to work well as a team. Subsequently, I re-took the Obedience Two class to perfect Lacey’s skills and to enhance our working relationship.

Most people take their dog through a beginner obedience class and then go straight into agility. They figure if the dog can sit, stay, come, and heel that’s good enough. I watched many of my classmates fail to qualify trail after trail, and I privately suggested to my instructor that these people might be failing because they needed better obedience training on their dogs. She agreed. I tried to tell them, but most people wouldn’t listen, they just kept going to agility trails trying to qualify. In my opinion, if the dog fails it is the handler’s fault.

Eventually, some of them did achieve their titles, but the key here is that it took them years to finish due to being disqualified because of too many faults, too slow, wrong obstacle, missed contact, knocked jump bar, wrong course, etc. Many gave up agility altogether. It should not take years to finish. From start to finish, it took Lacey and me one year to achieve the following titles:

Running the weave poles

Novice Agility (NA)
Novice Jumpers w/weaves (NAJ)
Open Agility (OA)
Open Jumpers w/weaves (OAJ)
Agility Excellent (AX)
Agility Excellent Jumpers w/weaves (AXJ)

Why so short a time for all these titles? Because after we completed four to five months of obedience classes, we practiced agility and went to fun matches for over a year before entering a trial. (We did not compete for a Master Agility Excellent (MX) title as it takes ten additional qualifying scores (85 points or better) with no faults allowed. It was too much for me to do, and Lacey agreed!)

To do well in agility, practice, practice, practice until you and your Poodle can do a great job and be perfect before going to actual shows. We practice agility with all sizes and breeds of dogs three to four nights a week plus going to fun matches on the weekends.

Because Lacey is a small Standard Poodle, we have always had tough competition as she is in the 20-inch class. Guess what other breed is mostly in that size class . . . Border Collies! Yep, they are extremely fast and focused, and we had our work cut out for us!

However, as focused as Border Collies are, one thing their trainers find challenging is that these dogs are so intense that they try to think for you. Poodles are also good at focusing, but they figure out what you want and then follow directions. So, they also do very well.

Don’t get me wrong. We didn’t win every time we entered nor did we get all first placements. We got a variety of 1st, 2nd, and 3rd placements. There are four placements and also qualifying times and scores. Agility is a lot of work but also a lot of fun. You don’t have to place to achieve your title, but you do have to qualify, and that’s wonderful too. However, I personally want to place rather than just qualify for my titles.

There are many ways to teach your dog to do agility. It took my Standard Poodle Moody one hour to figure out that it was okay to go through the tunnel . . . and it was not even spread out to its full length of 15 feet. He only had to go through the compressed length of about two to three feet. It was funny. Picture an adult (me) crawling on the ground through the tunnel trying to get her dog to realize it was okay to go through the hole! Moody is not food or toy motivated, so it is interesting trying to motivate him to do things.