Jump to content
Dogomania

Agility


zheelah

Recommended Posts

Well, my older dog, she is 5 and 1/2 now, is the current agility champion here in iceland (second year running). she is a BC mix and we have been doing agility together since she was one year old.

Well my dilema is this, she is by far the best dog here and competing with her is no longer a competition because the other few dogs are not half as good, and there are only two other dogs (large not small) currently that can do the weave without a problem. Training her now is becoming a replication, there doesn't seem to be anything else in agility that I can find, to teach her so we just run for the fun of it (she LOVES agility). I am stuck in Iceland and dogs must be quarenteend if they want to come to Iceland so my chances of competing with my dog against other dogs is limited to IAL, and the last IAL course we used (we changed it a little bit for the Icelandic agility championships) she ran it clean in 33,15 seconds I think, but we will not be sending the results in (since we changed the course a bit). It is sad that I might have a dog good enough to compete in the world championchips but I will never go there because of the quarenteen laws here.

Do you have any ideas of things I can teach here in agility????

And as a side note, in what kind of housing do you train agility in, because we have to find a new place and we are running out of horse arenas that we can afford :)

I will include some pictures of my dog Fluga here, the first one is the table (this is on our website to introduce the obstacles)

[img]http://www.hrfi.is/agility/images/Bord.jpg[/img]

and one in action at a show :)

[url]http://www.bestivinur.com/spjall/album_pic.php?pic_id=841[/url]

Well youl just have to follow the link if you want to see that one, since all I got was a bloody red X when I previewed it.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I do empathise with you. Meg has been the top agility dog in N.I for 3 years running now and is also the current top obedience dog. She also holds the fastest time here for the completion of a standard 20 obstacle agility course in a time of 26.54 seconds, with standard 2 foot 6" jumps (and that was after my leg had been out of plaster cast 2 weeks earlier! :P ). We started a few years back to compete in England which gave us more competition and let us compete against fantastic blazing fast accurate dogs, and happily now my dog is up with those dogs and is qualified for Crufts again this year in senior agility and the obedience world championships also to be held at Crufts.

I really do feel for you with quarantine laws, but there are plenty of things you can do to keep your dog stimulated. Also are you a trainer? You can get so much pleasure from teaching others agility.

What sort of obstacles do you do and are you under FCI regulations?

One of the exercises in the obedience world champs competition is that the dog must retrieve a dumbell over a jump. You could try little things like that. You may be a handler like many who detest obedience and think that it can't be mixed with agility, but personally I love the mix and so does Meg, and when we aren't doing agility over winter, obedience is still fun to do. As an advanced handler I feel that I can never know it all about agility and we are not guaranteed to go out and storm a course. I train plenty of jumping exercises and combinations of boxes, double jumps, zigzag lines, pull throughs, and tighter turns. All these little things with a confident trained dog will shave off seconds from a time.

I hope this gives you a few more ideas, but at the end of the day remember to keep it fun for both you and your dog. Yes I am very competitive but at the same time I love it and Meg loves it and the day that she doesn't find agility fun, will be the day that we will stop. Some handlers I see over in England push their younger and older dogs to the limit resulting in all sorts of injury and still they continue for the sake of themselves and don't give a tap about their dog :evil:

Few piccies of my girly:

[img]http://sander.servehttp.com/kat/Meg%20crufts%20obed.jpg[/img]

[img]http://sander.servehttp.com/kat/meg%20jump%20wales.jpg[/img]

[img]http://sander.servehttp.com/kat/me%20and%20Meg%20Crufts.jpg[/img]

[img]http://sander.servehttp.com/kat/megweavingcrufts.jpg[/img]

[img]http://sander.servehttp.com/kat/Meg%20and%20Mike%20in%20jeep.jpg[/img] (as you see she enjoys a variety of activities including off road driving!) :wink:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

yes I am a trainer, and I am currently one of two agility trainers here in Iceland, the other trainer is a guy who has two BC mixes that are the only dogs I have been able to compete with for the last four years, So in advanced open large breeds it is either me or him who takes first place (well now mostly me since his older dog (7 yrs) is loosing interest and his younger dog (5 yrs) is currently way to fat :o ) So my motivation is not very high :)

But I do teach and have been teaching for four years now. We only have classes once a week, and we might be losing our training place and are looking for another. We have been training in a horse arena and it is an exelent place to train because the footing is soft and it is heated and large :) Where do you guys train in the winter? What kind of housing do you train in??

I have been folowing your posts about crufts and that you are going to be competing and I so envy you, but in a good way, because that is what I want to do, dog training is a pasion.

Agility is not the only thing I do with Fluga, she herds horses and I use her a lot, she also knows a lot of tricks, like counting (she will bark the number of fingers I am holding upp, we are upp to three fingers) weeve through my legs, roll over, jump throug and over my hands an all the tricks I have been able to come up with, she is very smart and when we are working together the world could fall apart and she would not notice :)

I Have also been playing with her to teach her tracking, and we do that once in a while, but since she is not a purebred she can not take part in working tests and obedience tests, and we dont have enough people training obedience here to be able to compete. When you have a mixed breed here you options for training are very limited, you can do agility, or train obedience or tracking with out ever beeing able to compete with the pure bred dogs (and they hardly even compete)

Yes we are under FCI regulations since we are an agility club that works under the Icelandic Kennel Club. We have all the regular obstacles, jumps, tunnels, shute, A-frame, teeter, bridge, tire, weeve, table and broad jump.

My dog is very fast an I have timed her in a 12 pole weeve going trough in 2.1 seconds 8)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I train at an indoor facility ( [url]http://www.caninecapersagility.com/photos.htm[/url] ) so, the weather has no impact on my training schedule.

As far as who do you compete against when you're the best one around goes...compete against yourself! Do you track yards per second on every course? If not, start doing that and train to increase your yards per second. (I'm just getting to 5yps on jumpers courses with my boy. Not too difficult for a BC but, when you consider the build and turning radius of the larger bodied and less flexible Dobe, pretty darn good for him!) You can also work at layering more things and increasing the distances you send your dog.

Just using a stopwatch to time obstacle performance and working to shave a few seconds or fractions of a second off your obstacle performance can be challenging.

Do you subscribe to Clean Run magazine? If so, set up some of the international courses and run them. See how you do (have someone time you) against the international competition.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Guest Anonymous

WOW :o

Girls!
You've nice dogs!
I love bc.
Now, I have little girl, and we want to try this kind of sport. I'm looking for good agility trainer and place where we can practise.

I've some experience, because I practised it with my another dog (bc). Unfortunately, he doesn't like it. :-?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

[quote name='Mami']
Now, I have little girl, and we want to try this kind of sport. I'm looking for good agility trainer and place where we can practise.[/quote]

You can search for an agility training club near you here [url]http://www.cleanrun.com/infocenter.cfm?CFID=295516&CFTOKEN=31683751[/url]

Link to comment
Share on other sites

oops sorry Zheelah I forgot about that part of your question!

Our dog club used to train over winter in an indoor equestrian centre, but we stopped because so many dogs and handlers were being injured from running on the uneven and deep soil turf that they used. Now we do very little training over winter as our dogs work hard for us during the summer months, and they like us need and deserve a break. We just do a little bit now and again to keep them supple at our agility field, but no formal training as such. It just doesn't do them any good to be worked constantly and we deliberately avoid the winter league over here where other clubs take part every few weeks, and think it will improve their dogs come summer shows. The proof is in the pudding and the proof that the top dog club in the country is our club with Meg being the top agility dog, shows the winter league is of no benefit at all.

Mami: congrats again on your pup. start doing little bits and pieces of obedience now, which will be the foundations of your agility. Also get a kids play tunnel and push it right in so it isn't long, then gradually lengthen it and train her the tunnel praising her each time. start by getting someone to hold her, then you can call her through using treats and praise. Also lay a flat board on the ground and get her used to walking over it. These are all little bits that will get her used to agility equipment, but you will not be able to start formal training fo several months yet. :wink:

Link to comment
Share on other sites

For some reason there isn't very much interest in agility here, an people who train tend to take a long brake during the summer and we dont get any new people until in november, the winter training has only been in fact aimed to get new people in. It looks like we will have to change our training area and pehaps train only outside.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 months later...
  • 1 month later...
Guest Anonymous

So, you have a training in winter, too? Wow! I am impressed!
We train our dogs only in summer/spring time. Classes are weather permitting, if it's raining, trainings are dissmised.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...