Beginner Agility. Help Please.

Ditto!

I am *hoping* to sign up for agility. Any tips for the both of us would be apreciated!

Your dog is NOT too old by a longshot!!  I didn't start agility with Luke until he was three and in the span of a year he has gone from novice to elite!  With young dogs you have to start agility slowly because they are still growing -- with adult dogs you can jump right in and have fun!

My biggest offer of advice to make agility fun for you and your dog is to make sure that your dog is well behaved off leash and has a very good recall.  If you have those two skills you will both have more fun in class and excell more quickly.

I just finished teaching my first round of beginner agility and, as an instructor, I was so proud of my dogs & their handlers!  Everyone improved a lot over the span of the classes -- there were many different levels basic training in the dogs and obviously the ones with more obedience work advanced faster, but even the ones who started out "nuts" in the beginning really came around at the end.

Just work hard on your dog's basic obedience work -- sit, stay, wait, down, come, etc. -- and you will have a fine time in agility.  Most dogs (and handlers) love it!!

If the competition bug hits you there are many different venues to play in.  AKC is a little on the hard-core serious side, IMO -- Venues like NADAC and USDAA are a bit more fun & laid back; plus they offer more classes to play in over the course of a weekend.  Your instructor(s) will be able to help you with this if you should decide you want to compete.

My dog Kota began at the age of 5.  ;)  But strong attention skills are a huge bonus, so work on that.  Read Control Unleashed for some good ideas on games to play to work on that.  Having a good stay is also a plus but not a requirement for fun.

Just working on that working relationship will really help.  What I mean by that is, can your dog listen to you in distracting situations?  Can they play with you in those same situations?

Also, keep in mind in classes, that just because your dog may be friendly, does not mean that other people's dogs are.  it may not even be that they are mean/aggressive but they may have a wider comfort zone around them and do not like dogs running up to them.

And CPE is a great venue to begin in.  USDAA and AKC are the two most competitive in the US.  I've not competed in NADAC so can't speak for that. 

Ditto to what Karissa said - he's not too old and it's a lot of fun!  I started in agility with my lab last June....in April, we're going to be competing for the first time.  I never thought I would compete, when we started, I just thought that it would be something to enjoy and add to my dog's training, but we LOVE it.  Agility is, I think, a really great way to improve the bond with your dog - even if it is great already, there is something indescribable about working as a team the way you do when running a course. 

Take the basic obedience class and work hard at it, and you'll have a good grounding for beginner's agility.  

And enjoy! 

be careful, it's addictive. Before you know it you'll own an entire set of equipment and five dogs. Anyway, my advice is to visit Clean Run's website and pick a few books to read.

And after a while you won't even scoff at the $48 subscription price for their magazine.    I wish I would have subscribed sooner -- I love it!

You can join the Clean Run yahoo group for free, though.  There are lots of good discussions on the NADAC list as well (also through Yahoo).

One thing I would like to add, be careful as who you train with.  There are all kinds of places that have jumped onto the cash cow of offering agility classes and those instructors often have never taken even a class themselves in agility, but now they are teaching it.  Make sure that whom ever you are getting instruction from competes in agility, and they are competing now, not 10-15 yrs ago.  That they have Titled dogs in agility and their students are Titling.  You can also ask them who they train with to this date and what seminars/workshops they have attend in the last year.  Because most agility instructors that compete are always continuing with they're own education, they continue to take regular lessons and attend workshops and seminars every year.  In short they are competitive and they are up to date on the latest methods.

A lot of people start agility just curious as to whether they or their dogs will like it, at that point they have no intentions of competing.  And if that person starts with someone who has never been trained in it or competed, there is no way they can train you correctly.  So now your hooked, its fun and you want to compete...............you go to your first trial and find out the hardway that you and your lovely dog are not prepared and that you are lacking of many of the even the basic skills........in short what could have been a great day isn't for many reasons.   Now you find another trainer and find out that you have to almost start at the beginning again, and those first behaviours learned are often the hardest ones to change.  In the end it will cost you more money and time.

I have such a 'trainer' near me, every year I get new students that want to compete that have started there and the people are so disappointed and sometimes even angry that they were not trained properly in the first place.  The handlers have no handling skills, no idea about crosses, often there is no contact behaviour and the dogs are either out of control or painfully slow.

I don't require that my students compete, but it is my responsiblity to train them correctly right from the beginning in case they change their minds ( a surprising number of people do), at least then they can go to a trial and be successful.

I recommend that you do yourself and your dog a favor and make sure that the person training you is qualified.

Good luck and have fun

Lynn