(Mods: Not sure if this works here as a leisure activity or belongs elsewhere)
Our eleven month old dog, Kizzy, has completed/graduated from Agility 1 and is soon starting Agility 2. The instructor suggested looking into Rally in addition to Agility and some home exercises show that she would do well. Kizzy really enjoys doing these types of activities, as does my gf. I enjoy watching.
We did Nose Work with our GSD Kali (RIP) and she really excelled in it. Kizzy doesn’t have interest/ability in location by scent. Kizzy is a basic obedience graduate as well as obtaining her Canine Good Citizen Certification.
Just looking for advice from anyone who has worked with their dog(s) in these types of activities.
We did agility training with my old border collie (currently herding sheep across the rainbow bridge). It was a great activity for her to blow off some energy and fun for me to lead her through the course. She never mastered the teeter-totter, though - that bump when it shifted sides was terrifying.
We had fun doing random agility exercises on walks. Any raised surface could be “table”, and anything she could jump was “over”.
Our current dogs don’t have the agility mindset, and I miss it.
We’ve been doing that also. Point at a hay bale and say “table”, boom she’s on it. A fallen tree, “jump” and she does.
The teeter-totter was the most difficult thing so far, but she has gotten it down pat. I thought the tall A-Frame would scare her, but she took to it and loves it.
Tonight is her first Agility 2 class, we’ll see how it goes.
We’ve just started agility with our newly adopted 5 year old border collie/blue heeler. He’s really enjoying it so far.
We’re still doing a lot of basic training exercises and commands, and have only worked a little bit with equipment (tunnels, dog walk, A frame), and have not done jumps or weave poles or teeter totter yet.
Our trainer told us she introduces equipment very slowly on purpose, as we (owners) need to be trained first.
It’s amazing how the trainer(s) can get our dogs to do most anything, and then we struggle a bit. It’s so much a matter of body language so that the dog understands what you want them to do.
I love Rally. Most dogs like it too, though some get overwhelmed by the signs and the constant changes of command. In my mind the best thing about it is that it’s obedience, but not the rigid, silent, austere-seeming traditional obedience (though I love that too). You can talk to your dog, praise and encourage (within reason), and get a good basis for a variety of commands. There are also a couple of different organizations - AKC stuff is most common, but C-WAGS also does obedience and rally, with slightly different rules. It’s also a lot less of a money-grab than AKC can be.
If you’ve got a good instructor who will work in a positive way with you and your dog, and who can see when something is going from challenging to overwhelming, give it a try!
Any discussion of agility needs some links to rescue dog Kratu, who was a guest star at the Crufts dog show for a few years. He’s a support dog for his autistic owner, and they did agility as a way to bond. He was invited to participate to show that rescue dogs and their owners can have fun with agility, even if they’re terrible at it.
Too sweet! There was a Standard Poodle in the Agility 1 class who got half way through the tunnel and refused to leave, holding up the class for a solid 5 minutes.
