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How NZ Agility Works: The Club Level

This post is one of a three-part series on how our sport is administered in New Zealand. I hope it will be useful for newer agility folk, especially those who are curious about how to get involved in the running of their club.

Incorporated Societies

Almost all dog clubs in NZ are incorporated societies. An incorporated society is a separate legal structure – a bit like a company – which keeps the financial affairs of the club separate from those of its members. The key feature of incorporated societies is that they must not be run for the profit of their members, e.g. they can’t pay dividends to their members.

A club becomes an incorporated society by applying to the Incorporated Societies Register, part of the Companies Office. The club needs to submit an annual return to the register with details about its officers, its financial returns, and any changes made to its constitution. Incorporated societies can also become registered charities on the Charitable Trusts Register (also managed by the Companies Office) but most dog clubs don’t, because this creates more paperwork for little additional benefit.

The Future of DogsNZ Governance

DogsNZ are currently consulting with members about modernising their government structure. In a previous post I described how things work currently – now I’ll share my own thoughts about what’s going well and what could be better.

Representation

Currently 84% of votes at ACOD belong to one code. The only change to the voting structure in recent decades has been the separation of agility from the Dog Training Committee, resulting in 4 extra votes at the table for non-breed show people, but we are still very under-represented.

Over those decades, pedigree dog registration and participation in breed showing has been declining. I’m not a member of a breed club but I’ve heard a few stories lately about how much these clubs struggle to find volunteers to organise their shows.

In the meantime, other codes have been growing in popularity. Two new codes have emerged – rally-o and scentwork – and soon we will have hoopers trials too. An increasing number of people are involved in multiple disciplines, which makes it difficult to categorise members into distinct blocs for voting purposes.

How NZ Agility Works: The National Level

This post is one of a two-part series on how our sport is administered in New Zealand. DogsNZ are currently conducting consultation on changes to their structure, but I thought an explainer on how things currently work would be helpful for newer agility folk who want to understand what’s going on.

Dogs New Zealand (DNZ/NZKC)

Dogs New Zealand is the new name for what used to be called the New Zealand Kennel Club. It is basically a federation of clubs that are involved in dog showing and dog sports.

All clubs that run agility shows (or any other shows) must belong to Dogs NZ, but not all clubs are considered equal. There are “affiliated” clubs, which run championship all-breeds conformation shows. Then there are “associated” clubs, which are all the rest – the ones that run conformation shows which are limited to particular breeds, and the ones that run shows in any of the other codes under the DogsNZ umbrella – agility, obedience, rally-o, scentwork, tracking/working trials etc.

All people who compete in championship agility events (or in championship shows for most other DogsNZ codes) must be individual DogsNZ members. They must also be members of a DogsNZ member club, and that is how they get representation in DogsNZ decisions – individuals don’t have a lot of power to get things done within the DogsNZ structure.

DogsNZ has a small paid workforce of about 8 people who look after the admin and accounting of the organisation. These are the people who send you the bill for your membership each year, collate and publish the Dog World, do most of the show secretary work for the National Dog Show, and much more besides. Some of them have been with DogsNZ for quite a few years and I’ve usually found them very helpful.

Annual Conference of Delegates (ACOD)

The Annual Conference of Delegates is the DogsNZ equivalent of an AGM – the place where the members get together to discuss the direction of the club, elect a new batch of officials, and vote on any substantial changes that have been proposed. It happens in Wellington each winter.

Agility Training with Food

If you ask Google for tutorials about tugging and toy play for agility, you’ll get thousands of hits, and most of them will be quite relevant.

If you ask Google for tutorials about training agility with food, you’ll get … not a lot that’s relevant. A mix of dog food ads, and blog posts telling you that it’s really important to get your agility dog tugging and yes you can do it even if your dog is only interested in food.

Tug toys are great. I view them as the gold standard choice of reward for many agility training exercises. Virtually all of the top agility competitors, both in NZ and around the world, use tug toys for a lot of their training. This is why the content you’ll find online is so heavily skewed towards “So you want to do agility but your dog doesn’t like tugging? Here’s how you can invest hours of your life into getting him tugging!”.

But what if you don’t want to do that? What if you have limited time to train and want to make progress on “real agility” skills rather than tugging? What if you want to try agility training or competition, but you don’t have elite ambitions for your dog and you’d rather just use food? What if it’s your first agility dog and you don’t have the skills to teach your dog to enjoy tugging with only the guidance of a 15-minute video on YouTube?

Sometimes tug toys aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. Especially when they’re stuck on a cactus.

Agility Competition Paperwork (2023 update)

A few years ago I wrote a blog post about the paperwork you need to do before entering your first agility competition. A few things have changed since then, so here’s an up-to-date version with everything you need to know.

Step Zero: Check Your Dog’s Birthday

Your dog must be at least 18 months old to enter any agility show.

Step 1: Join a Dogs NZ Affiliated Club

For most people this is an easy one. If the club you train at holds shows, and you’re a current member there, you’re covered.

There are a couple of non-affiliated clubs I’m aware of, in more sparsely populated parts of the country. If you’ve been training at one of these, or you’ve been training on your own, you’ll need to find a club to join. I generally recommend joining the nearest one (even if that is several hours’ drive away) as you may have access to members-only seminars or other events there.

Technically this is optional if you are going to enter a ribbon trial for your first show – but I recommend doing it anyway, as you’ll likely find the members very welcoming and supportive on the big day.

Step 2: Join Dogs New Zealand

Ideally your first show would be at a ribbon trial – a smaller, less formal show that is designed to help people dip their toes into the competition water. One of the benefits of starting at a ribbon trial is that you don’t have to join Dogs NZ, so it’s much cheaper. If you are planning to enter a ribbon trial first, you can skip ahead to Step 3.

Your First Agility Show: Running Your Dog

This is the third in a three-part series on what to expect at your first show. So far I’ve covered what to pack, and the general dos and don’ts at agility shows – now let’s talk about the main event, your actual debut run!

Arriving at the Ring on Time

The general rule of thumb in agility is to allow one minute per dog. This can be quite variable in Elementary and Jumpers C classes though, because the courses are often quite short and fast to run, but some inexperienced dogs and handlers will take a lot longer to get round.

The running order will be displayed on the call board, near the ring entrance. You should always check this after walking the course – even if you’ve brought along your own copy – because it might show you that some other dogs have scratched, and you’ll be earlier than you thought. If you’re not in the first 10 or so dogs, the best approach is to hang out where you can see the ring, count the dogs as they run, and check on the board every now and then.

Your First Agility Show: Outside the Ring

In the last post I went through a list of things to pack. Now the big day’s arrived and you’ve turned up at your first agility show! This post covers the etiquette for hanging out at an agility show with your dog all day. Part 3 will look at what you should actually do before, during and after your run.

When You Arrive

Drive into the show venue slowly – there may be dogs running around off lead.
For your first show, it’s best to turn up at least 15 minutes before your first course walk. This gives you a chance to walk your dog around the venue and let her see the sights.

Your First Agility Show: What to Bring

This week I’m bringing you a three-part series on what to expect at your first agility show. Competing can be great fun, but it’s always daunting to start something new when you don’t know the dos and don’ts. I hope these guides help you to have an enjoyable debut with your dog.

The Basics

Your dog. I can tell you from first-hand experience that in a multi-dog household, it is actually possible to leave home minus one of the dogs you were planning to compete with…
Collar with no tags. The only collars allowed in the agility ring are flat collars with one D-ring no attachments. This means no slip or martingale type collars, and no council or contact info tags. If your collar doesn’t meet the rules, you can either take it off before each run, or keep a dedicated collar that you put on for agility shows. Some people like to swap collars the night before so that there’s one less thing to do on the morning of the show.

The New Graduation Points Threshold in Practice

I’ve already explained what’s changing about graduation points, but for those who want the short version of how graduation points will work in 2023:

In a class with 16 dogs, 2nd place will get 1 graduation point. If there’s 31 dogs, 2nd place gets 2 points, and 3rd place gets 1. And so on and so on, every time the class size goes up by 15, there are more points on offer.
3 graduation points “counts” as one win to graduate to the next level – BUT you also need at least one 1st placing. You can move up to Senior with 2 wins and 3 points in Novice, or 1 win and 6 points. If you have 9 points but no wins, you’ll be staying put.
Graduation points can only be earned if you go clear.

Today I’ll look at a few examples of how things would work, considering Novice classes from 2022. I’ve chosen to focus on Novice because this is usually the largest class which dogs can graduate out of, so the effects might be more significant here.

Real World Example #1 – Very Large Show

Let’s consider the Novice 500 classes at this year’s NZDAC. These had between 111 and 115 entries.

Second place would have earned 7 points, and third place would have earned 6 points. Remember that 3 points is equivalent to a win, but you still need at least one actual win to graduate. Any dog getting 2nd or 3rd in Novice 500 at this year’s NZDAC would have 6+ graduation points (2 win equivalents), and only require one win to move up to Senior. It’s actually possible for these dogs to move up to Senior with just 2 clear rounds in Novice – their placing at the NZDAC and their win.

35 Years of NZ Agility Graduation System History

There have been some changes to the criteria for earning graduation points introduced in the new regulations on 1 January 2023. I found it hard to explain what graduation points are without putting them into historical context, so here’s a brief tour of how the graduation system in NZ has changed over the years.

In the Beginning…

Once upon a time there were two height groups (760mm and 380mm) and no splits. The first NZKC agility rules came into effect on 1 July 1987. I went to my first agility show in around 1994. There were definitely not a lot of dogs competing in agility yet, and most shows were only one day so people tended not to travel very far. There were people winning with dogs of all sizes, from German Shepherds to Shelties.