Agility

Hi again!

Yesterday (Tuesday)  I had a fun afternoon, because we (the Agility group) gave a demonstration of the sport to a group of dog handlers of the Israeli Prison Service. It was great to have an extra meet in the middle of the week. Wish it would happen more often.

So this brings me to Agility, and today I will tell you all about it.

Agility is a dog sport where you get to run around an obstacle course without a leash, jumping over things, running along dog walks and A-frames, running through tunnels and sleeves, and stuff like that. It is really fun, and being the energetic dog that I am, I love, love, love it!

When I first joined the family in Feb. 2008, Honey was already pretty advanced in agility. She had passed her basic obedience, and a novice agility exam. Every Friday and Tuesday, there was training, and Linda took me along too. Of course, I didn't know anything at that point, even how to walk heel and come when called, and all that, so most of the time I just watched. But I can tell you, I knew one day I would just l-o-v-e to do agility.

Here is a little film of Honey running her first qualifying novice run. (You can tell it is novice, since there is no slalom obstacle - also called weave poles.) And here is the second that she qualified in. Sorry the quality isn't that great. But that's all I've got.

A dog must pass two novice runs to be able to go up to level A.

HOWEVER, before a dog can do agility, they have to be OBEDIENT. Which I wasn't.  So Linda enrolled me in an obedience course. Don't forget, I was a street dog. I hadn't been educated. This was in the summer of 2008. It was ten lessons, and right after that, I started to learn basic agility. It didn't take me long to pick up the idea.

Due to no fault of my own, I didn't get a chance to do obedience test for a long time, and then the first one (summer 2010) I failed because I ran away in the middle (there was something interesting to look at), and the second time (October 2010), I failed because I rolled in the grass right in the middle of the heel without leash. (It smelled good...I couldn't resist it!) So, believe it or not, I finally passed just this past Friday (Nov. 26, 2010). Yippee!!!

Now that I've got that test under my belt, I can start trying to qualify in novice trials. Usually a dog needs to pass two novice trials before he can start practicing in the "advanced" agility group. 

Despite that, I am already practicing Agility with the advanced group, and doing a pretty good job of it, if I do say so myself. I know I am not there because I am a genius (although I think I am), but because they need Linda to help teach the basic classes. So I kind of got bumped "up." So sometimes I am not so sure where to run, but it takes practice to "develop good teamwork with the handler" (I read that somewhere). Actually, they say that the dog NEVER makes a mistake, it's ALWAYS the handler's fault. So there!

Because I am a little dog, some of the obstacles have to be set lower (the jumps and the wall, e.g.), which is a pain, because I am always waiting for the other dogs (there are about 6 others who practice with me) to finish before I get my chance. I wish some other mini dogs would join the group!

One of these days I'll get someone to take a film of me doing a course, and you'll see what a great dog I am. I hate to brag, but I will be much better than Honey. Believe it or not, she told me that she really doesn't like agility all that much, can you believe it? and she would rather just sit at the side and watch. She just does it cuz there's some hot dog at the end!  Well, yeah, that's a good reason. But I would do it even without the hot dog!

You are invited to come watch the agility group (and me, of course!) in action every Friday afternoon at the SportKef area in Rishon le Zion. (Call first, just to make sure, and of course if it rains, there's no meet.) Here's the link to the Agility Israel Group.

All my love,
Pepper