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.
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.
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.
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.
Our new regs come into force next month, and I’ve had a few people ask me questions about what the changes to AD and ADXA mean for them. I’ve had my head under a rock, mostly because it doesn’t really affect me – I have an older dog who is more or less retired, and a young dog who is yet to achieve his first clear round.
As an instructor I feel like I should know the answer so that I can give newer competitors a better answer than “go and look at the regs”, so here we are – the most common AD and ADX questions answered.
What’s this all about?
The last standalone AD and ADXA classes have now been run. Starting from next year, you’ll have an opportunity to earn AD and ADXA clear rounds at every champ agility show – but these will be on regular courses that you can also win ribbons in.
At each show the club will nominate one Novice class to be the AD course, and one Intermediate class to be the ADXA class. You don’t need to do anything special for your clear rounds in these classes to count towards titles – just enter them like you would any other class.
Today was Able’s “agility birthday”. He’s now old enough to compete at an agility show. He celebrated his birthday by running a wee course I set up for him with a few friends.
Able is still very enthusiastic about life, and is the only dog I’ve had who was still eager to play with strange dogs at this age. He also still thinks human feet are hilariously funny, and tends to pounce on them when he’s greeting people. It has been challenging at times to work with such a large and excessively friendly young dog – the time he headbutted me and broke my glasses was not a highlight – but his focus for me has improved so much and his little quirks are just what makes Able Able.
A very happy birthday boy after his run
Unfortunately Able has been diagnosed with epilepsy, and what with this and other things, he’s had almost no training over the last two months. He started a new medication last month which made him very drunk and severely affected his control over his back legs for a couple of weeks. He has improved a lot now so he’s been doing some agility training again this week, but we have an awful lot of things on our todo list.
Epilepsy is such a frustrating condition. Unlike the other diseases my dogs have had over the years, there’s no way to do bloodwork and quantify how bad it is. The only thing that can be measured is how many days or weeks apart his seizures are. This makes it difficult to get a clear prognosis for his future. It’s also impossible to know whether his meds (which currently cost $9/day) are having any effect at all, until he’s been on them for several months and I can compare the frequency of seizures over time.
If we find meds that work for him, he’ll be on them for life. Some of common anti-epileptic drugs in dogs can cause organ damage over time, which is pretty scary when I have a young, otherwise healthy dog. They also need to be given at the same time of day every single day, which means my social activities have to be carefully pre-meditated.
All of this (plus the fact that he’s an enormous galumph of a dog even when he’s not on meds) means that Able is not as far forward with his training as my other dogs were at this stage. I haven’t started his weaves yet, and he’s only had one session of Aframe training. Hopefully we can make some progress on this before the ribbon trials in August, but I am keeping my expectations pretty modest at this stage. We may need to train in the ring at our first shows, but I’m hoping that we will be ready to tackle the courses at NZDAC in a few months’ time.
A special birthday lunch: Stuffed Leg of Giraffe with Squeaker In.
He’s grown significantly bigger than I expected, and now clocks in at 23.5kg, nearly twice what his great aunt Spring weighed. He has grown into his paws at last – but my, what big paws they are!
He knows far less about agility things than my previous dogs did at that age. He’s only been over few low jump bars a few times, as part of his jumping grids, and he’s never done any agility handling over jumps. He’s never been through a tunnel. I’ve done nothing about his weave training yet, although if I had access to a good old-fashioned weave channel apparatus I probably would have.
He still hasn’t destroyed anything of value, except for one alarm clock and one sock. He has an excellent recall most of the time, but his delight in the company of strangers sometimes leads him into temptation.
I’m looking forward to the year ahead – progressing from almost no obstacle skills to running full courses, getting into the ring, and hopefully learning to run together as a team. The finish line seems very far away sometimes, but we’ll keep building on the basics and we’ll get there.
Next month we will be starting a foundation agility class at club, which I’m sure he will enjoy immensely.
Merry Christmas to you and your doggies from Rik and Able!
Santa brought Rik a replacement yellow smily face ball for the one that Able wrecked. Able got coal.
Waimate’s annual Christmas in the (very small) Square was cancelled this year due to covid. Instead a group of people decided to sit on the back of a truck singing carols while they drove around town. In Waimate no celebration is complete without our pet vintage steam engine, which was chosen to lead the procession, while volunteers ran along beside it handing out candy canes and Christmas Cake.
I never miss an opportunity to get Able out and about when strange things are afoot, so we headed outside before dinner to watch the steam engine go past. I vastly overestimated the peak speed of a vintage steam engine, but after a thirty-minute wait the world’s smallest Christmas parade arrived, and the dogs had their first face-to-face encounter with the steam engine. Neither of them were the least bit fazed, perhaps because their chances of outrunning it were excellent should it happen to veer off course and chase them.
Learning to Walk the Plank
My Christmas training project is to transfer Able’s contact behaviour onto a low plank, propped up on his mop bucket at one end to give it a tiny bit of height.
Our week got off to a very scary start when Able had a seizure in the wee small hours of Monday morning. It was a very surreal way to wake up, especially as he was completely fine a few minutes later, and it took me a good couple of hours to get back to sleep.
Our visit to the vet that morning did not give us any answers. He appears fine, so fingers crossed it was just a random once-off. If not, it’s possible that he could have epilepsy.
Even in my sleep-deprived state I managed to notice that Able was exceptionally well-behaved at the vet clinic. This has always been a place where he gets overexcited, and with the slippery floors things can quickly descend into chaos. We went to the clinic for a lunchtime every week this winter until the lockdown put an end to that, and it’s nice to see hard work paying off!
So that’s what scared me this week … what about Able?
This week we had our dog club Christmas party. My older dog Rik does not feel a lot of Christmas spirit when it comes to being in close proximity to other dogs, so Able got to have a turn at the games.
Mr Able McYoghurtface. Somehow despite having a much bigger head than Rik, he is better at cramming it all the way into the tub.
The Border Collie Stampede
Recall races are an annual feature at the party. Able won his heat easily, and then he had to wait while the other dogs had a turn.
Able did not want to wait quietly. Able very much enjoyed his five seconds of glory, and he wanted to go again NOW! He’s always been very calm watching the other dogs at agility, but now he serenaded me with a selection of his best monkey noises as he tried to drag me back to the start line.
