[OutWest]

So I took our large little puppy (6 months, 57 lbs.) to participate in a group evaluation today, with his handler, my 16 YO daughter. You may recall that I posted here several months ago asking about agility and if it might be a good fit for them.

Well the trainer ran all the dogs through various simple exercises and Tucker passed. Better than that, I think he and my DD really enjoyed the whole exercise. I really like the emphasis placed on focus between handler and dog. It will be great for my DD (as with many teenagers, she could use practice on focusing! ) and for T-man.

The next step is a 5-week focus class (no jumping). I think they are going to do a special one for puppies. She made it clear they wouldn't be pushing jumping with young dogs.

The trainer mentioned the type of handling that they practice at this club, but I couldn't catch the word. She said three are about three such methods of doing dog agility. If you know where I could find more information about them, please let me know.

I took some video of Tucker going through the chute (he was very proud of himself) but had trouble getting it edited. Will try again tomorrow and see if I can post it. Although I'm sure all of you have seen thousands of dogs go through chutes! LOL

Thanks all for the great input a while back. I'm hoping my daughter really takes to this. It could be a great thing for her and Tucker.

 

[Sunrise]

Congratulations for both Tucker & your DD

The handling methods she may be referring to are:

Greg Derrett
Linda Mecklenburg
The 3rd system could be a few others but the two above are the biggees

There is also the Susan Salo system of Jump Training, and Linda Mecklenburg also has a system for jump training.

But there are other systems as well, since agility is an ever evolving sport

 

[sammydog]

What fun! Congratulations on passing the evaluation! The class sounds perfect as well.

I only know about the two listed above. To be more generic Derrett is a positional based handling system, using positional cues. Mecklenburg is a motion based handling system. Mecklenburg is also called Awesome Paws or APHS.

Good luck and have fun!

 

[MarieP]

Congrats to Tucker! Agility is great fun, and there are lots of young handlers (at least from what I have seen). I still want to see the video of him coming through the shute

 

[OutWest]

Here is the (brief) video

I was unsuccessful in trimming it. There are two dogs--ignore the first, the Yorkie.

My daughter and Tucker are next.

Tucker at agility.MOV - YouTube

 

[Jige]

That is fantastic. I am sure that both will love agility it is great fun.