Just Need to Brag a Little About my Dog This Week! *Squeal*

Not only am I an adult skater, but I also "play" at agility competition with my dog. It's fun and great as a way to relieve stress and work on competition nerves (since you never know when your dog is going to goof off, it makes it easier to relax ). I play in a venue called NADAC which is very low key - everyone cheers everyone on and a great run is a great run whether you did it or someone else did it. All successes are treated as a major deal by the respected players (ie, the handlers I admire and look up to as amazing handlers are just plain nice people) whether it's the first time you get your dog to stay with you on the course (even if you don't beat the course clock or you have some other kind of course fault or you take him/her only through the last couple obstacles) or you just won Championships. This coming weekend, it is VERY likely that my rescue dog that came to us frightened of everything is going to earn his NADAC Trial Championship!
When we first started classes, he was like velcro - didn't want to be more than a few inches from me when doing stuff in class. We finally got over that and we started trialing about a year after starting classes (when he was 3). That first season, I spent more time chasing him in the woods and doing recalls than any real agility in the ring. I think we trialed about 20 days total and we got 3 total qualifying runs (clean within the standard course time). It was really frustrating. The second year, we had some issues, but started making progress. Last year we made tons of progress and since January of this year, we have made amazing progress and now need one final qualifying run for our first Championship. The amazing thing is, while I literally played agility with my other dog (who runs with my husband usually) before we started working with our current trainer (we used to do agility at a PetSmart with our older dog when she was young), my boy is my first agility team mate (well, he's 1.5 if you count my older dog). I am just so excited that something I didn't think could happen is going to!

That's so cool! Congrats!

I'd love to train my next dog to run agility... Yuka's had knee surgery and she isn't allowed to do all that stuff (she does it anyway but I can't stop her lol)... I know of a couple of folks who run agility with pugs and do very well!

Congratulations! i'd love to train my dog to do agility, too, but as Toni knows, my dog is a BIG beagle.

blue dog said:

Congratulations! i'd love to train my dog to do agility, too, but as Toni knows, my dog is a BIG beagle.

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that's a nice way of putting it... you need to substitute half of your dog's dog food with green beans and get them down to fighting weight lol

She won't even look, much less eat green beans. The smell (or lack thereof) is unappealing to her.

blue dog said:

She won't even look, much less eat green beans. The smell (or lack thereof) is unappealing to her.

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Carrots? Apples?

Congratulations, mskater93. That sounds like such a cool activity. And what a lovely way to build a bond with your dog.

Blue - my boy got a little overweight when we got him (he was a rescue and is a 1.5 minute/food bowl kind of guy) after he put on the pounds he was missing. We started cutting back his rations by ~20% and it worked and he lost the 5 pounds he was overweight (he's also a really BIG BC/Aussie - 23" at the shoulder, so 5 pounds was only about 10% of his weight not 20% like a smaller dog). Also, by playing more with him out in the yard working on days we didn't have formal training, he worked off extra calories.

Toni - it's sad that your pup has knee issues. I know a lady who puts a brace (!!!!) on their dog's reconstructed knee to run agility and he's just fine and runs like a loony (6-8 yards per second).

Thanks for the congratulations! It's been a ROUGH 3.5 years to get here (well, the first 2 were ROUGH)!