Dog Agility
When Rita and I got to Canada, we decided to join a dog agility class as an opportunity to meet some like-minded people and dogs! We had completed a beginner’s training course back home, but mostly for fun. In November 2021, we obtained a spot in Brittany Holland’s intermediate class. Brittany has competed worldwide on Team Canada (she is in Denmark at the European Open as I write this), and the training was certainly a lot more rigorous than what we’d done back home. However, it meant there was only one way for us to go, and that was up! This month, we competed in our first trial, and even came home with some ribbons - we are now officially hooked on the sport!
Our weekly classes take place at Maza Dog Sports, outside of Woodstock. Owned by Deanna Mitchell, this is an absolutely fantastic facility. It boasts a full set of competition-standard equipment and is heated in the winter. It’s available for hire, which Rita and I regularly do to train in-between class, alone or with friends. It is so popular, it gets booked up quickly during the winter months! There’s a sense of community at the venue too, which is evident in the Facebook group and the ode to “Scottish Emma” in the form of a print stating “Emma is kinda a big deal around here”.
Dog agility consists of various obstacles set in a course, and the aim is to complete a clean course in the shortest amount of time. The equipment includes jumps, tunnels, tyres, long jumps, weaves and contact equipment - see-saw, A-frame and the dog walk – on which the dog has to hit the yellow mark with their two back feet on and two front feet off. This is usually trained with the cue “target”. The jumps may be positioned different ways, requiring a backside, threadle or serpentine approach, and the handler can decide whether to run a front cross, rear cross or blind cross manoeuvre, to name a few! I find it just as tricky to organise myself as it is to direct Rita to go in the right direction.
At the time of writing, Rita can tackle all the equipment, but we are working on solidifying our “target” command and improving our weave entries. She has speed on her side, but we need to be able to channel this in the desirable direction and learn to be careful with all six of our feet! Even my own body positioning is important to indicate to Rita where we are headed next.
On the 9th July 2023, Rita and I attended our first trial at Ancaster Fairgrounds. This UKI (UK Agility International -haha) trial was organised by “PHD” dog sports, an association recently formed by Brittany and two colleagues, Deryl and Roxane. I entered Rita in the 12” category, although next time we will enter 16”, because when we measured her on show day (at 15.75”), we realised she would qualify for the higher height. We entered 4 classes - gamblers, agility, jumping and speedstakes. Gamblers was a bit of fun, where you could create your own course and aim to collect as many points as possible until the first buzzer, and then you would finish with a predefined sequence. The rest were fixed courses, with agility including all the equipment, the contacts and then the weaves removed for jumping and speedstakes respectively. Rita did a great job, but did not successfully manage the weaves in any class. However, she was very fast in the speedstakes, earning us a 2nd place ribbon for her category! It was a long day but loads of fun. At one point Rita managed to rip her crate netting and escape while I was across the other side of the arena, resulting in her name being called out over the loudspeaker to locate her mummy….there’s never a dull moment with Miss Rita! We are eager for our next trial already!
