#agility

[gifted-aurora]

NIIIIIIIMMMMMMMBBBBBBLEEEEEE

nimble, a border collie-papillon mix, wins the 12” class in the 2024 masters agility championship. the first time a mixed breed has won at westminster ever.

[viejospellejos]

El hombre lagartija 🦎

Enviado por: @clocasduende

[hazard-and-friends]

please ignore everything here except baby being SO GOOD at baby agility. just the best. i love her.

[tea-time-terrier]

We finally hit up some agility after it being a goal for literally forever. Baby dog got some Q's for a whole four Intro titles <3

[toacody]

Velocirahk, Rahkshi of Agility

Knows how to move with attitude.

Source

Creator: Antak3000

[sammythesheltie]

Not the best pictures, Pino ist to fast for me but he is doing so well!

[theadventurek9]

So for those that compete and are looking for a way to keep track of legs, points and more. A new app recently dropped that is worth the $20.

Add in info, registration numbers, title info, organizations and more. It's a fantastic app that you should get if you compete with dogs. No more excel spreadsheets for me.

RuffTitle

[pawsitivevibe]

Bree, the 13-year-old superdog, had her last competitive agility run at AAC Nationals recently. Happy Retirement, Bug dog!

Photo by Nancy Miller DVM.

[jaubaius]

Wow

Source

[twobigears]

more flying fur appreciation

📷 Happy Kampa Photography

[coffee-mage-sans-caffeine]

This is Benton. Benton is taking a shrimp nap after a hard day of totally breaking his agility teacher. But wait, you say, how did he break his teacher?

Benton has struggled with hind end awareness, which is dangerous for obstacles like the dog walk, a high, narrow bridge. If a dog on the dog walk turns wrong on it or forgets they have a hind end, they can have a nasty fall and get hurt. Fortunately, we have an excellent agility teacher who teaches backing up onto a platform to teach them to be aware of their feet.

First you teach them to back up. For 6-8 months, Benton and I worked almost daily on teaching him to go backwards on command. No matter what I did, for months, he sat down and visibly fretted, didn't try to back up, even though I've watched him climb stairs backwards. Finally he started reversing!

Next, you introduce a board or other contrasting texture so that they learn to target the object backwards with their hind feet. You repeat this until you see them searching for the board with their little leggies. Once he could reverse, he started looking for the board quite quickly and graduated to platforms.

Sounds successful, right? Why would this break his teacher? Sure, he went slow, but he can do it, right?

Well, there's one more piece to the puzzle. Eventually you have to get them onto a narrower platform because they need to aim. They need to be able to find the platform with their feet and steer towards them.

Benton goes backwards in circles. He cannot go straight at all. He just turns like a baffled Roomba until he finds the platform by accident or I call him off, reset him, and start again.

Today his teacher admitted defeat. He knows he needs to have his feet on the platform. He knows to look for it. He cannot go straight, even after a year. After thirty years of training agility, having her students be the best in the state at contact obstacles like the dog walk, she has admitted that he will not progress further so we're going to stop this exercise and move on to the next steps of agility.

He has broken her and I love him.

[fayeandknight]

Well tonight's practice did not fill me with confidence.

We treated runs like the real thing and had classmates in the ring. On our first run Forte broke his start line sit to circle the person who threw the piggy for him last week, looking for it.

It took an embarrassing effort to get him back.

Our second run he hit the contacts but blew through them instead of stopping for 2on2off. I went back each time and made him stop but it took several attempts.

And our last run was better in terms of performance but I was super anxious and the instructor called me out on sounding too stern. Which, fair. This is supposed to be a fun game we are playing together.

My plan is to not bring the piggy in from the car at all for the trial. I'm going to try to let go of any feelings of embarrassment and just figure we'll NQ.

It's an opportunity to practice in a different environment since I expect it will be far busier than practices. But at least it's at our club so there will be some familiarity.

At the end of the day, a Q is not more important than maintaining positivity both for Forte and for myself.

I am glad I only signed up for two runs a day and two days. I think trying for four runs in a day or three days, even with only two runs, would be too much for me.

This is a reminder to myself to take deep breaths and not let my anxiety get the better of me. We both enjoy playing agility and it would be foolish to sour it with putting too much pressure on either of us.

[vintage-tigre]

[hazard-and-friends]

camera propped on chair BUT stupid lil agility time featuring me forgetting what the hell im doing and her being so good about her pre-placed reward

[whereifindsanity]

Agility competition. Husky vs Border Collie.