Four Words You Never Want to Say in Dog Agility

Where.  Am.  I.  GOING???!

Yup, that's what I said during this run with Rocco on an AKC JWW (jumpers with weaves) course. We were running for our Excellent title.

But, alas, I got a bit turned around and Rocco stopped as if to say, "Mom, figure out what it is you want to do and let's get this show going!"

Take a look for yourself...

5 Tips for Agility Success Outside the Ring

Today we're participating in the quarterly Dog Agility Blog Action Day, where agility bloggers from across the universe post on a specific topic. Today's topic is…

Outside the Ring

Whether you compete in agility or another sport, what you do OUTSIDE of your sport can make all the difference in how much you enjoy participating or competing IN your sport.  Check out the great collection of blogs who posted today and then read down for the top 5 non-agility activities we do outside the ring to help our success and enjoyment inside the ring.

Rocco and I had a great time as we kicked off our first full agility season together this past weekend at a USDAA trial in the Atlanta area.  We're gelling as a team, we're both focused and fit and the time we spend inside the ring is just plain fun. 

Here are the top 5 things we've done outside the ring to help our performance inside the ring.

Rocco works out on his K9FITbone

1. Cross training not only builds up our strength and stamina, but it also keeps us from overtraining in agility. Early this year, I knew I was going to have to step up my game to keep up with Rocco, and that means strength training, core conditioning and endurance work for me as well as for Rocco. We can participate together in some of the workout activities I teach as a K9 Fit Club instructor and we also hike, walk and play backyard running games.
2. Good nutrition and hydration for both Rocco and me is super important to keep us fit, trim, focused and feeling great.  I stay away from fast food and overly processed foods and Rocco gets high quality food and treats. It wasn't always this way for me… it's too easy to stop for a quick burger on the way to agility class, but I was feeling pretty awful. So the fast food had to go and it's made all the difference. 
3. Stretching helps keeps both of us flexible to help reduce the risk of injuries. Other benefits include less muscle soreness, improved range of motion and the ability to run without pain!
4. Play is perhaps the most important thing that's helped us come together as a team. There's no stress, no pressure and it's just fun to work together. For us, play includes learning new tricks, fetch, chasing discs, running in circles around the house, playing tug, playing chase in the backyard and just about anything we can think of!
5. Rest may be the most overlooked activity of them all. We all need a day of rest to recharge and recuperate. Rest helps to keep us focused when we do train or compete and it help keep us both from overtraining and getting injured.

What do you do outside of your regular sport or activity?

What Does Success Mean to You?

Rocco soars, successfully, at his first AKC trial

This week, agility bloggers from across the world, participated in Dog Agility Blog Action Day.  Every quarter we're given a topic to inspire us and write about.

And since this week's topic was Success, I thought it would interest our active, FitDog Friday pals, too. So today, we're mashing up our Dog Agility Blog Action Day post with FitDog Friday.

What does success mean to you? Is it winning? Participating? Getting your next title? Having a brilliant training session? Going on a great hike with terrific pals?

After we thought about it for a while, we realized that success is subjective and can change as often as you change your own personal goals. There's long-term success and short-term success. Success for today and success for a year. Success when you're injured and success when you're healthy.

When I had shoulder surgery a few years back, success was being able to get my hand behind my back!

So back to Dog Agility Blog Action Day… whether you do agility or not, I think you'll find plenty of interesting and inspiring articles among this list of bloggers who posted on the topic of success.

Great teamwork and a Q!

At the moment,  agility success to me is keeping Rocco in top condition so we can continue to compete and have fun in agility for a long, long time.

We're doing core conditioning, strengthening exercises, stretching and exercises that give us stamina -- for both of us, I might add!

Because for us, we define our agility success as a team. 

For those of you who were here last FitDog Friday, Rocco has completely recovered from his neuter surgery and he's up and zooming again. I'm pretty sure Rocco would say that's a success!

I made it my goal this year (and forever!) to eat better and exercise more… so that I can keep up with Rocco and just feel better all the way around! So far, that's a success!

Having some fun on the way to another Q!

No excuses is a success!

I'm not too old (or too short!), Rocco's not too short or too fluffy (or too distracted!) to achieve success. We can work through who we are, use it to our advantage and find a way to reach our goals.

So far, as an agility team we're doing pretty well. Of course, as anyone will tell you, having fun as a team should be your first goal. But I got to admit, it sure was a lot of fun to start posting qualifying runs right out of the box.  There, I've said it! Winning is just more fun than losing… but that's just where we are right now.

Rocco's haul at a USDAA trial. We thought this was pretty darn fun… and a success!

In Rocco's second USDAA trial, we also earned our first title -- in Snooker! Now THAT was a lot of fun… and a success!

We're looking forward to more agility trials in the fall, but for now, we'll find our successes in good training sessions and other fun activities like hiking and learning new tricks.

Because ultimately, even though it's awesome to win, we just want to have some fun. And that's a success!

What's a success in your book?

The fun and games continue every Friday with FitDog Friday, the weekly Blog Hop brought to you by To Dog With Love, SlimDoggy and Peggy's Pet Place to promote a healthy active lifestyle for pets (and their people, too!). Join in every Friday by linking up your FitDog story or visiting the blogs in the Hop.

5 Tips to Get Your Puppy Started in Agility

Today we're participating in a Dog Agility Blog Event where agility bloggers from across the universe come together several times a year to share their stories on a specific topic. Today's topic is Starting Your Puppy,  the perfect topic for us since young Rocco is just 17 months old and about to start competing in agility!

Cosmo

For those of you who don't already know us, Rocco is my second agility Havanese. I started agility with my first Havanese Cosmo when we lived in a condo and Cosmo badly needed an outlet! We started agility just for fun, never intending to compete. But when Cosmo showed promise -- and I got hooked -- we decided to start training for competition.

You can read a bit about Cosmo as an agility dog in the first time we participated in Agility Blog Action day. Sadly, shortly after that post Cosmo was diagnosed with lung cancer.  Cosmo loved agility and he was a very special teammate for me,  but I vowed to do a few things differently when training my second pup, Rocco, so we could enjoy it even more.

This is only our second time participating in Agility Blog Action day, and the topic of Starting Your Puppy inspired us to jump back into this blog event.  I'd like to share with you the things we're doing differently this time around.

1. Take Your Time

Good foundation training is key and has made all the difference for us this time around. In the past few years, I also became an agility instructor and the most common thing that I see is that folks want to rush to learn all the obstacles.

Puppy Rocco

Rocco started agility foundation classes when he was six months old, so it was a good six months before we started serious obstacle training. That allowed us to work on focus and our connection as a team as well as basic skills such as start line stays, going out away from me and establishing good contact criteria.

2. Cross Train

Since is seemed like FOREVER until we could get on equipment, we took a Puppy S.T.A.R. class, a rally class and a puppy manners class before Rocco was a year old. We also took an online puppy tricks class when Rocco was about four months old, and we continue to teach new tricks to keep things interesting and fun! This was a terrific way to start conditioning Rocco for agility while showing him how much fun it was to learn and play with me! Which brings us to…

3. Play With Your Puppy

A Fit Paws Wobble Board helped Rocco gain confidence
with  movement and learn a two-on, two-off contact

Playing helped us establish a bond that has translated to agility. Playing included fetch and retrieve games, tugging, playing box games and crate games. I also simply ran around the backyard, changing directions so that Rocco would learn how fun it was to run with me and turn left and right! We also used our Fit Paws equipment to play games.

4. Expose Your Pup to Different Venues

Rocco and I train on agility fields in various places and you can also take a practice jump to a park to help get your pup ready for competition distractions.  Early on, I also took Rocco to a few trials so he could get used to the environment. 

Reinforcing basic skills like sit and down while you're shopping at your favorite pet store also helps train for distractions!

Rocco had a blast at his first Agility Intro Trial a few
weeks ago. The results weren't too shabby either!

5. Attend an Intro Trial

USDAA now offers an Intro Program, a great way to introduce your pup to the stimulation of an agility trial. You can read about our first experience at the Intro Agility Trial we attended a few weeks ago! 

You can enter your pup as young as 14 months old, so it's a great way to find out where your pup is at and what you need to work on. 

Rocco and I are looking forward to competing at our first trial in the next few months, and I think we started out on the right paw this time. I learned so much from my first agility dog, Cosmo, and the learning never stops! That's one of the things that continues to make agility fun and challenging for us!

Thanks to Steve at Agility Nerd for hosting this Dog Agility Blog Event today. Check out more great articles on Starting Your Puppy from the rest of the talented bloggers in this event!

Superdog!! Jumping Agility Havanese

 Will Cosmo make it over the jump? He sure looks aerodynamic enough!

Photos by Phyllis Ensley

Wheeee! Made it! 

Havanese Agility: Cosmo's ASCA agility weekend

A few of the ribbons we earned last weekend and the
course maps for our two Jumpers runs

Last weekend we competed in an ASCA agility trial. ASCA stands for the Australian Shepherd Club of America and is one of several organizations that sanctions and hosts agility trials for all breeds of dogs.

We had a blast at last weekend's event and brought home four qualifying runs!... although as long as you're having fun with your dog it doesn't matter whether you win or lose, right?!

Here's a look at our Gambler's run. In this event, the handler (that would be me) must devise a strategy to maneuver the dog (Cosmo) throughout the course while accumulating points for each obstacle under a designated amount of time. The contact equipment and weave poles are typically worth more points than the jumps and tunnels (although they take longer). This part of the run is the opening sequence.

Then, in a closing sequence, the handler and dog complete "the Gamble" which tests the dog's ability to complete a series of obstacles at a distance. Here, you'll see me send Cosmo to four jumps at the end of the run, separated by a taped line in the dirt that I needed to stay behind. A whistle is blown once time has run out in the opening sequence, and the handler should then proceed to the Gamble. For some reason, I didn't hear the whistle in this run (you WILL hear it clearly in the video) but we somehow qualified under course time anyway! Take a look!

One of the fun things about agility is there are a variety of events that test different skills. This next video shows our Jumpers run, which is all about speed and accuracy, testing the ability of handler and dog to work as a fast-moving, smooth functioning team. There's a change of direction on this course that we execute with a rear cross, which means I send Cosmo on while I cross behind him. See if you can find it... it IS very smooth! Go Team Cosmo!

Some of our runs are less smooth than others, and while this Regular run is a little messy, we still qualified because we completed this course under time, and completed every obstacle in the designated sequence. AND, Cosmo successfully completed every contact obstacle without flying off above the yellow contact zone. Yay!!

Cosmo relaxes with a few ribbons between runs

Good job little buddy!

Now, let's go to the Pet Bloggers Hop!

Wordless Wednesday: Jumping Havanese agility fun!

Photos by Active Dog Photography

Facing a few agility jumps is inspiration enough for Cosmo to get his Wheeeeeeeee! on.

And now we bring you a few more jumping inspirations from some famous people of the two-legger kind.

 

“You have to find something that you love enough to be able to take risks,

jump over the hurdles and break through the brick walls

that are always going to be placed in front of you.

If you don't have that kind of feeling for what

it is you are doing, you'll stop at the first

giant hurdle.” -- George Lucas

                         “No animal should ever jump up on the dining-room furniture

unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own

in the conversation.” -- Fran Lebowitz