I’ve recently travelled back home from this year’s FCI Agility World Championships held in Finland. Being on a plane always gives me time to think… and my thoughts turned to what leads to agility success.

Agility success can be at any level of the sport, from if you are just starting right through to being part of a world team. To me, success in dog agility comes down to two key groupings of elements. I went live on Facebook this week to share those elements AND my take aways from this year’s Agility World Championships. The recording is below for you.

 

I was on my mobile for the chat, so if you want to watch at a larger size, click on the icon on the lower right of the video to expand it to a full screen. The poll I mention is in our Free Dog Agility Workshops Facebook Group.

2 Key Elements to Agility Success

To recap, it does not matter if you are training your first ever agility dog or you’re working to compete at the world championships of agility, these two elements are the same.

Obstacle Performance: The elements for obstacle performance include our dog’s fitness, criteria breakdown (weaves, tunnels, contacts, the different jumps, tyre and start line), understanding and speed.

Handling Execution: The elements of our handling execution include knowing our dog’s line, knowing our best handling line, proper appreciation of motion, cueing lines for our dog well in advance to allow him to prepare his body and know what path to take, keeping the connection with our dog throughout, and our fitness.

No matter where we are in our agility life, we need to know one thing … our agility dogs are doing the absolute best they can, with the education we have given them, and with the experience of the environment that we are asking them to perform in.

Today I am grateful for the joy Momentum and I shared at the AWC and for the volunteers who do so much to bring us events at this level, and for the opportunity to catch up with my online students who were in Turku!

Update: The Masterclass I mention in the video is over now, but you can get news when we next run a free series for dog agility or open one of our agility programs to join by registering on our Agility Nation and Handling360 notification lists.

Big thank you to časopis Psí sporty for this photo of Momentum and I at AWC 2019