Little wink, little wink.
February 18, 2016 8:53 AM   Subscribe

 
That's great. The herding dogs have a real advantage in this -- they take direction from their handlers so well.

My Wire Fox Terrier and I did a few months of agility training when she was a year old. She has the athleticism and determination to do well, but it was a constant struggle to keep her focused on me instead of that leaf- shadow over there or the lab on deck giving her the side-eye. Still, I learned how to get and hold her attention and she learned to trust my direction, and we ended up doing pretty well.

Not good enough to beat that one Corgi, though.
posted by notyou at 9:07 AM on February 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


God, I miss agility. I need to figure out how to work weekly classes back into my budget, because there's nothing quite like it in terms of making you pay attention to your body language as you race around the course like an idiot.

Plus it's fun and my dog loves it beyond all else. She's not a herding type at all--she is some sort of bully/Boston Terrier X thing--but she lives for praise and she seems to find the tunnels some sort of delightful adrenaline rush.
posted by sciatrix at 9:07 AM on February 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Masters Agility Championship

I thought this might have something to do with old people. Anyway I gfycat'ed the slow-motion bit with the weave poles.
posted by exogenous at 9:10 AM on February 18, 2016 [10 favorites]


My parents took our Samoyed to agility training. The end result was mostly that now he likes to stand on the coffee table.
posted by maryr at 9:21 AM on February 18, 2016 [37 favorites]


Yeah, I could have done without my thirty-pound dog's recent discovery that she is flexible enough to crawl through the hole in the top of the sterilite tubs that we use as cat boxes.

She thinks the litter--not the cat shit, the cat litter is a neat snack. What even, dog.
posted by sciatrix at 9:28 AM on February 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Not as fast as last year's winner, but Holster's running at the speed of light compared to this.
posted by peripathetic at 9:46 AM on February 18, 2016 [18 favorites]


My favorite part was when Holster jumped up on his trainer for luvin's. GOOD DOGGIE.
posted by KingEdRa at 10:01 AM on February 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


That's great and all, but 98% of Holster's mom's waking hours are spent throwing slobbery tennis balls and drinking double espressos.

This snarky comment brought to you by a lazy dog dad.
posted by vverse23 at 10:05 AM on February 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


I will kiss this doggy right on its little nose and no one can stop me
posted by poffin boffin at 10:14 AM on February 18, 2016 [5 favorites]


I can't get over how HAPPY the dogs look while they're doing this. What's a stronger word for joyful?
posted by maryr at 10:20 AM on February 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Ecstatic!
posted by probably not that Karen Blair at 10:25 AM on February 18, 2016


What's a stronger word for joyful?

Dog.
posted by mudpuppie at 10:26 AM on February 18, 2016 [20 favorites]


AHH!
Whoooose a good foofy doggie?

YOU ARE!

I want to do agility with my heeler. *sigh*
So little time, so little money. So much dog.
posted by BlueHorse at 10:47 AM on February 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


I'm jealous. My damn cat regularly runs head first into the wall. Go, Biggity-Boy!
posted by CincyBlues at 10:50 AM on February 18, 2016


The aforementioned Samoyed does that too. Like I said, the agility class did not lead to strong field performance.
posted by maryr at 11:02 AM on February 18, 2016


My favorite agility video paring is the papillon and the mastiff.
posted by ChuraChura at 11:02 AM on February 18, 2016 [8 favorites]


Aww, he's a good boy!

Yes, he is!
posted by Naberius at 11:22 AM on February 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


I can't help but imagine dogs watching this and wondering "wow, that Holster has really trained that woman to run well."
posted by chavenet at 11:25 AM on February 18, 2016 [1 favorite]




I will watch this again with my pug, as soon as he wakes up.
posted by a lungful of dragon at 12:38 PM on February 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


All those stuck pets in the thread the other day were agility practice run errors. This dog kills it in the squishing through the Venetian blinds event.
posted by bukvich at 1:01 PM on February 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Accidentally found this kids' dog training show bit on YouTube. Worth watching the boring bits of well behaved dog for the ending.
posted by maryr at 1:17 PM on February 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


Just to note that in these big highfalutin' agility things on the teevee you should always skip the tall dogs so you can root for Roger and his dog Keebler in the eight inch heigh class who are totes awesome and Keebler is a rescue and Roger is good folks and biscotti trials with them a lot and so yeah go Roger and Keebler.

Or at some of these events you could root for biscotti running Nina and/or Zhora. Most likely at the next AKC Invitational if they're streaming it again next December! I also note for the record that Nina was the overall most points-gettingest Swedish vallhund last year so neener neener.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 1:57 PM on February 18, 2016 [2 favorites]


Agility is the perfect sport, if you ask me. A combination of cute, amazing, and unexpected slapstick.

I did the beginners level last year with Wilson. Poor lil fella wanted so badly to be a Really Good Agility Dog for me, trying very, very hard to understand what it was I was asking him to do. For some reason his conclusion was that it was ALL ABOUT THE A-FRAME. We'd be running the course really well, and suddenly he'd be all TO THE A-FRAME! and then he'd go speeding towards it. Totally focused, in the zone, completely wrong. No matter how far from it we had been on the course, that's what he thought he needed to do next. It got so bad that whenever it was our turn, two instructors had to be posted on either side of the frame to try to redirect him, and then he seemed to think it was his task to get past them of course. And if he managed, he scrambled on top and then stood there, beaming at me with this look of jubilant pride, clearly convinced that he had just done everything precisely like I wanted.

Another bad one were the tunnels, because during one lesson he had ran one in the wrong direction. Following the instructor's advice, I had to then send him immediately back in the right direction. Being a quick learner, after that he would always run through a tunnel and then stop when he got to the other side, waiting to make eye contact with me to see if I wanted him to dive right back in again. Because his lil doggy brain had deduced that this was clearly what I needed him to be prepared to do, and he would NOT forget that.

Miraculously, he didn't do either of those at the final exam (everybody came to congratulate us afterwards for managing to avoid the A-frame farce they had clearly been expecting). But it slowed us down enough to lose the race to the chihuahua, dammit.

I don't think we'll be any threat to Holster for a while yet...
posted by sively at 2:26 PM on February 18, 2016 [12 favorites]


Holster is awesome!

I just started with my rescue GSD in agility, and we haven't yet had the chance to do tunnels or A-frames or anything: we're working on "foundation skills". Which are important, but pretty boring compared to the real stuff. My GSD seems to have a lot of potential (she's attentive, relatively fearless, and both toy- and food-motivated, plus athletic), so I fear any failures will be all on me.

I love watching the dogs who are so happy to do the sport that they bark with joy all the way through.
posted by suelac at 3:05 PM on February 18, 2016


My dog Shakedown would be hella-awesome at Agility if she would listen to a single thing I say. She jumps walls like nobody's business, runs over river-crossing logs without pause, dives under crazy-low fences, and turns on a dime when pursuing rodents.

Unfortunately, when there is no rodent to be seen, she just sorta chills and looks at me for treats.
posted by You Should See the Other Guy at 4:26 PM on February 18, 2016 [5 favorites]


I will take this opportunity to share once again the awesomeness that is my youngest child, The Tiny Tornado.

Here he is at age 4, teaching one of our dogs to go over a jump.

Here he is a few months ago, age 8, with the same dog, in agility class. The dog is almost completely deaf now, but he will do absolutely anything the Tiny Tornado asks of him.

He really wants a dog of his own, preferably a smart, high-energy one he can do a lot of cool stuff with. We're waiting for the moment to feel right, which, given that we have three dogs already, it just hasn't. But the day will come.
posted by not that girl at 5:22 PM on February 18, 2016 [3 favorites]


You Should See The Other Guy, Shakedown is the cutest dog ever! Those whiskers oh my god. *keels over*
posted by not that girl at 5:24 PM on February 18, 2016


Also love all the stories about Shakedown. What a great dog.
posted by not that girl at 5:26 PM on February 18, 2016


I am reminded that Keebler jumps 12 inches, not eight, though he is in fact a wee corgi.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 5:27 PM on February 18, 2016 [1 favorite]


The videos and photos here are adorable. I love to see happy dogs running around.
posted by Dip Flash at 5:36 AM on February 19, 2016


ChuraChura that papillon video actually made me tear up, and i can't tell if it's because it made me so happy and reminded me of my family dog or just because i'm starting to PMS or both but i love it so much
posted by burgerrr at 3:18 PM on February 19, 2016 [1 favorite]


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