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Dog Agility

Why Agility: Agility involves the owner guiding their dog through a series of obstacles in a specific order. Aiming to complete the route in as lower time as possible with no mistakes. The owner cannot use a leash or any food or toys as aids and neither the dog nor any obstacle can be touched during the course. This means that the only thing you can go by is how well the dog responds to commands and how coordinated the owner is.

Dog agility is a fantastic way to bond with your dog. In the wild dogs travel in packs and this creates a feeling of unity between the members that helps them to support each other through the hunt. Though you’re not likely to be going out hunting with your dog, agility can still produce the same trust and bonded feelings.

Arena:
Dog agility requires a lot of space as the dog needs to be able to run at full speed and still manoeuvre between different obstacles. The arena is usually between 30×30m and 40×40m and can be either inside or out so long as the flooring provides enough grip to prevent either the dog or owner slipping.

The dog agility course itself is usually set out by the judge who will be experienced at producing an achievable round and from this a series of standard times will be set. A different standard time is set for each of the different size groups of dogs competing as it would be unfair to expect smaller dogs to complete the course in the same amount of time as larger ones.

The course can contain any of the KC accredited dog agility obstacles and some of them may be used more than once. The route through the obstacles will be complicated enough so that the dog cannot complete it by himself and will often contain either u-turns or back tracking.

What Do You Need:
Very young puppies should not start agility until they are at least 12months old as the strain of constantly jumping can damage young joints. You should also be sensible about your expectations of very old dogs as well. But so long as you and your dog are reasonably fit and don’t mind a bit of running then you will both have a great time.

Any breed of dog can take part in, and will love, agility so long as he is under control when off-lead and will listen to basic commands. Even if you never reach the stage of competing in big events the fun the pair of you will have had more than makes up for a bit of disobedience.

Course or home start?
If you are handy with tools and have the space then you can set up your own set of obstacles at home to practice with. Make sure you follow the size guide lines for the obstacles so that you are not working with the wrong materials.

Professional Dog Agility courses are a great start as it will give your dog much needed socialisation and practice at listening to you when there are lots of distracting things going on. It will also give you access to the obstacles that are difficult to make or take up a lot of space.

Learn More About:

Obstacles >>>

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