No Hurry

Pixel is going to be a great agility dog when she grows up. She is 15 months old and will be old enough to trial in three months. Will she be trialing in three months? No.

At 18 months old dogs are allowed to compete in AAC Agility. Does that mean they should? Not neccesarily. If the dog is ready mentally and physically than sure, why not. But if the dog is not trained enough, or mentally is not able to handle it then no. Why the rush? It is my biggest pet peeve in agility to see these barely 18 month old dogs running around a course doing whatever they want, jumping off contacts, running out of the ring, not listening, and the owner thinking it was a "good experience" for the dog.

Pixel is mature enough to be ready at 18 months but frankly I haven't put the serious training in until recently. I just finished her first set of classes with contact equipment last week. That is eight weeks of contacts, jumping, and general obstacle learning. Before that we did lots of foundation work on the flat. So she had no problems at all with anything we did in the intro class. The next step is more handling, and of course more equipment work.

I still have to learn how to handle her- each dog is different and because I have taught her differently (i.e better) than the other dogs my handling has to change aswell. We have done short little sequences and she is doing very well. She is a natural jumper and is very springy. So far running her reminds me a lot of how I ran Sam. He too was a very upright dog. Pixel has lots of speed which is nice. She is very responsive to my body and I will have to be careful that I am not creating bad habits already.

She has LOTS of learning to do still. She doesn't have a full understanding of contacts. She is just learning weave poles. She is almost ready to do a full teeter (we've been playing teeter games up until this point) and she is just doing small sequences. I am aiming for March for a few events, and May for her first standard runs. I am not in a hurry with her though, so if she is not ready she won't be entered.

I see too many young dogs entered way before they are ready. By "ready" I mean that the dog is able to do all of the equipment, understands basic handling, and is mentally prepared for the stress of a trial atmosphere. It always makes me wonder why someone would enter their dog knowing that the dog isn't going to be able to do it. It is one thing to enter a dog to see where they are at- but if you know that your dog can't do the dogwalk in practice, what makes you think your dog is going to do it a trial. Trials are a place to test your training- not to train.

It is painful to watch those starters teams sometimes- the handler spending a full minute at the first jump trying to get her dog over. The dog that races around frantically taking whatever is in front of it. The list could go on, and really what do they think the benefit is of continuing to trial a dog who isn't ready?

I certainly don't want my young dog to learn bad habits, and learn that at a trial the rules are different than in training. I also want to make sure my dog is 100% sure of what her job is before I put her in a stressful situation and ask her to perform. I think the only exception for my own rule of not entering the dog until it knows all the equipment would be the weave poles. It is easy to enter classes without them until the dog learns them. I would not enter a class with weaves and just run by them however. I made that mistake with Wicca, and for a while she saw nothing wrong with running past the poles.

Each of us has to make our own choices for us and our dogs, and I do understand that everyone has different opinions. My own stance is that I'd rather take it slow and train, train, train and know that my dog can go into a ring and win her class than go in wondering if she'll magically have learned how to do the dogwalk since the last class. I am all about being prepared, and making sure that while my dog is having a positive experience in the ring she is also doing what I've taught her.

So Pixel maybe heading to her first trial in March, or she might not be. It will all depend on how she's doing, and how we are doing as a team. I'm in no hurry.

Gyp is a good example of a dog who started trialing only when she was ready. She earned her ATCH in a year! (she is a great dog, with a great trainer which also helps...) But still. Her first trial she didn't mis-step at all, and with time and more trials she keeps getting faster and faster. She is most definately a dog who knew her job before she went to trial.