Doggy Agility Training | What? and Why?
November 4, 2014
Doggy Agility Training | What? and Why?
Does your dog do things that seem like behaviors only a super-dog would be able to do? Things like leaping over fences that are five times taller than your dog and other impressive behaviors like working through complicated entrances and overcoming huge physical barriers. Yes? Then you might have a dog on your hands that would thrive in agility training designed specifically for our canine friends.
What is Agility training?
So your dog might already be agile and you might be wondering what agility training actually is, if not just training your dog to be agile. Well, agility training for dogs focuses on using their natural agility to do tricks and to work through highly sophisticated obstacle courses and circuits that are designed to challenge them mentally and physically.
Each dog in these courses has a human overseer who is usually called a “handler” in more professional circles – but this can just be the doggy owner as well. The handler and their canine athlete can train for months and months in these agility training courses and then will often enter competitions that test for time and accuracy. Sometimes these doggy tournaments can have huge cash prizes and there are some folks out there who dedicate their entire lives to training and even breeding dogs specifically for these courses.
As if that’s not dedication enough there are actually huge organizations specifically dedicated to running these courses and competitive events – complete with rules and regulations as to how a dog is to complete a specific course and what counts as faults or “bad points”; for example, taking an incorrect direction for a course or knocking a pole out of one of the rungs on a leveled jump.
Why is dog agility training such a big deal?
All of that dedication is truly worth it! Your pooch can benefit greatly from agility training and of course it’s a great opportunity to bond with your furry buddy!
Some dog breeds – especially herding breeds like border collies and shepherds – can get a lot of excellent and much needed stimulation from agility training. Agility training stimulates your pooch both physically and mentally and some doggy breeds absolutely demand these high levels of stimulation! Dogs need this stimulus, they are instinctually built to hunt and conquer and overcome challenges – agility training offers an opportunity to use some of these instinctual parts of your doggies brains.
Of course, exercise, exercise, exercise! Exercise is probably the number one benefit that dogs receive from agility training – dogs need A LOT of exercise and just going to the park and tossing the ball around doesn’t always suffice as enough physical stimulation. Not to mention – it’s a pretty good work out for you too!
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Author: Aileen Schultz