Agility Training

With the recent talking of agility training, how would one start this, and at what age? I have always been interested in training likethis, if only to keep a dog happy and learning...since I will be getting a pup next year thought it would be good to learn about it now

From what I've been discovering as I talk to agility trainers and go to the classes just to watch you can start them as puppies once they have their puppy shots and rabies. So around 16 weeks. But you can only do flat and contact work like A-frame, Teeter, tunnels, and Dog walk. Jumps and weaves have to wait until they are around a year old because of the stress on bones and joints. They have puppy intro classes that I plan on enrolling mine in once he's been through basic puppy training.

foundation work with a puppy includes things like a super recall, touching noe to hand or plate, learning that things that wobble under foot are safe, hind end awareness ladder work etc
mostly learning to have fun

I have three dogs currently competing in agility - one started agility when he was 5 or so and we didn't do the foundation work I would today the other started when she was 4 or so same thing

One started when she was about 6 months old and she has had a very carefully laid foundation for most work


this summer I started playing with my husbands dog who has just turned a year old - all we do with him is tunnels, 16 inch jumps and the table so far ...<br /><br />__________ Fri Aug 27, 2010 9:02 pm __________<br /><br />in terms of relationship building I know people love thier own dog sports for various reasons - for me, personally and my mixed bag of dogs agility is the BEST ever for this ..

Our group requires at least one obedience class and sometimes several until your dog can mostly work without a leash. Then you go in to basic agility where more flat work is done covering agility specific commands and movements and they are introduced to the equipment one at a time with it all set as low as possible. Once they will consistently following directions and go over the obstacles correctly you move up to the next agility class. Like obedience it might take 1 basic agility class or 5. It depends on you and your dog. In the 2nd level agility classes you start putting obstacles together in series and can then start going to competitions.

Age is pretty much irrelevant except that you would not take a really young dog over jumps. For large breeds you want to wait longer. It was suggested not to do jumps with my akita until at least 18months old.

you need to be particularly careful when you start your first agility dog if you areplanning to compete from the get go ... it's very easy for a pet oriented class to get you doing sequences quickly (which is what everybody wants to do) and rush the foundation work ...

akane - do you still do agility?

Not at the moment. My akita just wasn't the type to go to competition. We never got beyond basic class after going through it 4 times because there were obstacles she just really really did not want to do and would shut down on me. Her foundation work is actually pretty solid and we did get to doing a few short series of obstacles she did like. Surprisingly she did the weave poles great and the obstacles she will do she does pretty perfect, making contact right where she needs to. The teeter she never did stand on. No amount of bribery would get her to set foot on that thing. She'd purposely step right over it or when all options were blocked she'd just lay down and no amount of treats, toys, or encouragement would get her back up again. Laying next to it while other dogs banged it was no issue so I'm not sure what her aversion to it is. She also hates jumps. She can be sent through a jump standard in all manner of ways but if the bar is too high to step over she spends all her time trying to find a way to avoid it even to go so far as to crawl under it. She has no health issues and I watched her do an absolute perfect jump over a 3' fence containing some young chicks as well as climb/jump the 5' fence around the dog yard on numerous occasions to get to me. It's all a mental and lack of motivation problem. So we did bits of agility for fun while planning to get a more energetic dog in the future.

I finally have a shiba who would probably be great at it if I could keep her attention from wandering but half way through the preliminary obedience class I developed health issues and was hospitalized. I spent a year unable to do much of anything and this year catching back up on it all, we were just knocking down weeds taller than my horses in the dog yard, so I haven't had time to start taking the dogs to classes again.

isn't that a shame?

I'm sorry about your health issues - agility is a great sport - hopefully sometime you'll be able to play with it again at least