Every year, there are hundreds of events that showcase the talents of dogs all around the world. If you’ve ever stumbled upon the live TV broadcast of an event like this, then you have seen dogs running around courses, jumping over bars, and crawling through hurdles. Pet owners train with their canines for hours on end just to showcase their dog’s talent in hopes of winning an award in their canine companion’s name.
Many dogs look as though the moves are effortless and easy to complete, but the truth of the matter is that dogs spend hours upon hours exercising their hearts out and practicing the routines their dog owners create for them. Dog agility training is just as much of a commitment as athletic training for humans, if not more so. In fact, dog agility training is considered practice for an actual, recognized sport in the canine world.
Whether you are looking to enter your dog in a dog agility competition, or you are simply curious about dog agility and how it all unfolds, then this is the article for you! Stayed tuned to read about dog agility training in general, what it means for your dog to compete in a dog agility course, and how to figure out if your dog is well-suited for the sport of dog agility. Without further ado, let’s talk about what dog agility training is!
What is Dog Agility Training?
Before we tackle dog agility training, it helps to understand what dog agility is because understanding the sport will paint the scene for explaining why training is as important as it is. Essentially, dog agility, in the context of animal sports, does not refer to the agility of a dog.
It is common knowledge that the majority of dogs are incredibly agile, with the exception being those that are injured, disabled, very young, or incredibly old. With the outliers aside, dogs are incredibly agile animals. Through the lens of sports, dog agility is a sport saved for canines. The owner is known as the handler, and the handler guides the dogs through a series of obstacles.
The dog has practiced the routine time and time again, so the sport is more so an opportunity to display a dog’s propensity for memorizing instructions and recreating what they were taught. Dogs are not freely roaming and perfecting the course. Instead, they are playing out what they have repeatedly practiced over the course of many weeks, months, or sometimes even years.
While the dog is moving about the course, the handler is not permitted to assist the dog in any ways. This includes guiding the dog with hand signals, egging the dog on with speech, or any other way of incorporating an incentive into the situation.
The obstacle courses are not necessarily set out in the same pattern that the dogs learned to work with, either. Typically what happens is that the dog agility competition judges set up the courses in a way that none of the competitors, nor the handlers, are aware of the set-up prior to arriving at the competition.
This is a way of keeping the dog agility competitions fair across the board. If the courses were predetermined, then it would be easy for the dogs to be taught how to remember their movements in order, rather than learning how to successfully jump over any obstacle in their way, for example.
How Do You Know if Agility Training is Right for Your Dog?
Dog agility training is a personal choice. At the end of the day, you are the owner and it is very likely that you know your dog better than anyone else does. When it comes to figuring out if your dog is well-suited for dog agility training, we recommend taking your dog’s personality into consideration. Here are some ways of deciding whether or not to enter your pup into a dog agility competition.
In fact, the dogs and their handlers are not even aware of the material from which the course is made until they arrive at the location of the event. There tends to be a numerical order to things, too, so the dogs are expected to complete each obstacle in order. Dogs cannot tell which obstacle is supposed to come first, of course, so the handlers are responsible for guiding their canine companions along the obstacle course.
Going off of that fact for a moment, the obstacle courses are actually intentionally designed to be impossible for dogs to complete without the help of their human owners. If dogs could take themselves throughout the course successfully, then it would be difficult to actually say that the dogs were following orders with ease or completing the obstacles based on training. It would show nothing more than a dog’s ability to run around and jump over poles, and dog agility competitions are far more intense than a dog park or playground.
