Walking in the woods may not sound like a trendy or relevant activity for those who concentrate on competitiveness, but actually serves as an agility dog’s mental and physical training. Also, as a side effect, it does wonders for the handler. Erika thinks long walks in the woods are a much undervalued way of taking care of many things.
“Teamwork and the ability to perform at my own and my dog’s highest level is my actual goal. If we perform at our best and we manage to put all the training together in a run, my goal is reached. If that also results in winning, that’s of course extra fun, but it’s actually just a bonus.” Read Jenny Damm’s views on agility, her goals and what kind of challenges she has had with her own dogs.
IFCS stands for International Federation of Cynological Sports. They organise World Agility Championships that include four classes: Agility, Jumping, Snooker and Gamblers. The latest event was 10.-14.4.2019 in Netherlands. But what was the event like? We asked Becky Sinclair who represented Team Great Britain with her border collie Who.
I’ve been doing agility for 15 years now. My life revolves around agility to a great extent. I love it – it allows me to have an even greater bond with my dogs, I’ve met some of my best friends through agility, and I travel the world thanks to agility. At the same time, it’s sometimes easy to get lost in all the competitiveness, mean gossip, judgement, striving to succeed no matter what. With all my love for the sport, I see some things around me that I don’t like and because of that I try to have some things to keep me grounded. I call them my anchors. Do you want to know what they are? Then, read this article :)
I recently got myself a very nice gift, a sheltie puppy from Sweden. He’s definitely a character and he soon became the creative director of AgiNotes. He’s creative and he’s productive. However, he lacks some education, as regarding his hoped for career as an agility dog. So, I started looking for puppy courses that are safe for a young puppy (I want to keep him healthy), and fun (I want to build a strong team out of the two of us).
I found a lot of courses! They are scattered in different places so I collected them here in one place. I also asked Dan Shaw and Dave Munnings to tell us all what the most important things when training with a puppy are. So, here we go!
We asked Rosa-Maria Ikäheimonen, the coach and founder of Speed Up Agility, to explain how an agility handler can get in top condition for the most important competitions of the year, how a year should be divided into different training periods and what these different training periods actually mean.
