the key to a good agility dog

[smith family kennels]

if you want to make a good agility dog you need one good accomplishment first. Obiedence. An agility dog has to have good obiedence training. They have to be able to follow commands right when told to do so. Stay and directional commands are a must. After you have gotten your dog on a good obiedence level the next place to start is on small coarse of jumps and tunnels. Start leashed and show your dog their is nothing to fear that means do it with your dogs. Then once they start to do it with out alot of incouragement then lead your dog into the tunnels and lead them over the jumps. You need to be putting a command with this as you do it. AFter you have gotten them to enjoy this you can take off the leash and use your command words to direct them over the jumps and through the tunnels. Alot of dogs are afriad of the tunnels at first especially if they cant see through to the end thats why it is important to change up the tunnels. Don't just leave them straight but also curve them around. If your dog doesnt respond to you put the least back on and start from the beginning. The key to agility is confidence. If your dog lacks any confidence on agility coarse they will hestaite and most likely quit. After you have complished jumps and tunnels then you can use the same techiques and apply them to ramps, walks, and tetter totters. There is a trick to the tetter totters. In a compitetion a dog must pause until the the tetter touches the ground. The trick is to teach your dog from the being not to jump off the tetter to teach them to stay and then release them . So at first it wont move quickly cause you want to hold your dog in that stay until they stop jumping off then after you get that down you can speed it up. Its better to teach this on leash. If your dog jumps of the tetter make them get back on it and stay its better they learn the stay and then release on the tetter totter then by their own minds. If they jump off to soon then its a point deduction. That means your mind must be sharp and quick. Don't worry about how fast your time on the agility coarse goes you want techique more than you want speed at the beginning. You will notice the speed comes with confidence. Anybody can do agility compitetions all over the U.S. with their dogs no matter what kind of papers you have. This is called the USDAA and they are one of the best to compete against in agility in my opinion. Pay 8 dollars for a registery and go compete world wide if you want too. Its fun for both you and your dog and always has a spice to it never gets dull or borning.

[NATE]

lol like your post yoyo is all bahhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[George Bailey]

Back in the early '80's, Sara Nugent (UKC rep, senior ob and conformation judge, ex president of the AST national club), myself and my husband, Leah Purcell of Spindletop Rescue, and a couple other people, formed a UKC club and built the first agility course in Texas. We set it up a few times in Sara's back lot, which had a small barn where we stored it, but it became too popular to hold it there, so we would haul it around to various parks, baseball fields, churches, etc., and set it up to let people train on it on the weekends. We had some different obstacles than you see today including a sway bridge and a four tier tower.

Back then, most dogs starting in agility had an obedience background (we only had breed, obedience, and tracking for the most part), many of them titled. In 1986, there was a proposal at AKC that all dogs must have a CD before competing in agility, but it was voted down. I think the sport may have been quite different today if it had passed.

At the big Astrohall World Series of Dog Shows, at the first demonstration and competition of agility in Texas, complete with imported UK judges, we had an all pit team, called The First Airborne. We had really cool team t-shirts with the little piebald dog jumping the moon, I still have a couple of them. Those dogs could have been competitive in the sport today. I believe we got second place, and would have won except for my dog, Moomintroll. She was a retrieve crazy dog and fixated on a number on the course early on-- they were little wooden blocks, and back then, dumbells were wooden dowels with little wooden blocks on the ends. If I would have let her pick it up and carry it, we probably would have won. As it is, every once in awhile, somebody drags out the old video and everybody has a good laugh on me!

I quit doing agility and focused on obedience--- one day while unloading our equipment, a high walk board fell on the top of my head, and I decided obedience was safer for me. Moomintroll became a UD and a U-CDX, she died of cancer one leg short of a U-UD.

George