Agility Questions

[Jamie]

Hi. Questions for those of you who do agility.....how do you know you are ready? Is it feasible to train three pugs simultaneously and compete? How do you get a height card? Thanks for your help!!

[bugs]

The only one I can answer is the hight card question and I don't know if I am even right on that. I think you get it at your 1st competition how I am not sure.

I can tell you that I know we are not ready to compete yet, well Jills ready but I am not, I have things I need to work on before we do any competitions.

I know a lot of people where I train at come with a truck load of dogs, which all have classes that night so I know doing more then one can be done.

[jwestoverpug]

Jamie,

Do you mean ready to compete? That's a hard question to answer and really depends on your goals. For me, they need to be proficient on all equipment, with no fears or issues. Be sequencing at least 10 obstacles without looking for their reward. I want my dogs to understand the cues for front and rear crosses, and understand basics like pinwheels and serpentines. If you're a really competitive person, I would say your dogs should be able to run EX. level courses before they begin at novice.

No matter how much you train and plan, the truth is you never know how they're going to react in the beginning to an actual trial. Around here a lot of clubs will hold run-thrus, so you can see how they act in a new building, with equipment that may be slightly different than they're used to. This can give you an idea, but it's still not the same as a real trial.

Yes, I started agility with Rudy, Willy and Kittie all at the same time. I like working multiple dogs, I simply can't overtrain, since I need to work with all of them! Their dad begged me to have Rudy and Willy to run, so that's made things much easier for me!

When you enter your first trial measure your dog to the best of your ability, or see if someone can measure for you where you train. When you get to the trial, you'll need to fill out a form with your dogs info; age, AKC # etc and the judge will measure all dogs without height cards before running. I believe AKC now requires 2 official measurements, once you have that you'll get your height card in the mail a few weeks later.

Jesse

Edited to add, competing with multiple dogs is done all the time, but let me tell you when you're at a 2-3 ring trial with dogs running in every ring and you need to walk 3 courses at once....you're brain pretty much turns to jello!!