CAUTION - Agility Ahead

by Laurie Leach

Agility began as filler. In the late 70s, two guys, John Varley and Peter Meanwell, were charged with finding some special event to entertain the crowd between classes at Crufts dog show in Great Britain. They thought of several ideas, all bad. Then they were watching arena jumping at a horse show to distract themselves from the fact that they had no plan, when they both lit up and almost banged heads. What if, they said, we did an obstacle course like this, but we adapted it for dogs. They raced gleefully from the arena to begin planning. Mr. Varley and Mr. Meanwell were just happy to keep their jobs. Little did they suspect that they had set off a revolution in the dog world.

Agility, as the game came to be called, captured the hearts and minds of dog lovers around the world. People have abandoned obedience competition, conformation competition, and their families to play this game.

Now that the sport has been in existence for 25 years, some lessons have been learned. Below are a few lessons for those of you who are thinking of competing in agility or who have been doing it for a while but have not yet mortgaged your homes to pay the entry fees. Here are nine important cautions about agility:

Agility is not just a dog sport. It is an entire orientation to the world. One becomes unable to pass an open field without checking it out as a potential agility field. Those who bought lovely (pre-agility) homes on hilly property find themselves looking longingly at flat, square yards. Previously safe drivers are capable of sudden u-turns complete with squealing tires if an actual agility field is sighted. People who have never built anything find themselves covered with epoxy and surrounded by pieces of plastic pipe used to construct jumps. Holiday cards that used to display doves and Santa are replaced by homemade pictures of dogs in costumes posed on contact equipment.

Everyone knows gambling can be addictive. Intermittent reinforcement is a powerful tool in behavior modification. Agility is intermittent reinforcement of the purest sort. On those wonderful and rare occasions when one places in an agility trial, there might as well be flashing lights and that wonderful sound of chinking coins. It is easy to become obsessed in the quest of those oh so lovely ribbons.

Agility can cause mental instability defined by huge mood swings. We go clear on an agility run—we're happy, happy, happy! We D (Dog is disqualified during the run - Ed) —we're lower than low. After a short time competing in agility, otherwise healthy people begin to define themselves by how they do on any given run. Good-bye healthy ego. Hello fragile agility ego.

One reads frequently in agility literature about the need to set reasonable goals. For example, a reachable goal for me might be that I won't fall over during this run. This advice about goal setting appears to be the work of other agility competitors, but it is really the work of mental health professionals hoping to help competitors keep their perspective and stability.

You may be interested in agility. You may see yourself on the national team in five years. However, your couch potato pup may not see himself as an athlete, particularly if it requires getting his feet wet.

Let me just plant one thought in your brain—if you never considered a Border Collie before, you probably should get one now or soon. Just hold that thought. You may need it.

Agility causes people to tear out award winning perennial gardens in the back yard to fit in the contact obstacles. In general, this is not a good idea. Half the yard, maybe, but not the whole thing.

Agility causes the previously fiscally responsible to unravel. Houses are refinanced to pay entry fees, buy expensive agility equipment, travel long distances to trials, and to pay for the privilege of staying in a motel room that may or may not come with a toilet.

Agility causes people to give up normal vacations to attend agility boot camps. These events involve attending workshops from dawn to dark and dining with people who think of dog hair as "the other seasoning," to say nothing of spending the week in the exclusive company of others who believe that a balanced life is thinking about agility 18 hours a day.

Agility can cause tension with spouses. This takes one of two forms. Dragging the spouse - who refers to the excitement of agility as "watching paint dry" - along to trials thirty weekends a year. This is not good. On the other hand, leaving the spouse at home thirty weekends a year is not a good plan either. The addicted believe that the solution is getting another dog so both of you can compete. Of course, when the new dog arrives, the spouse is not allowed anywhere near it.

Agility changes your wardrobe. Where previously black power suits used to hang in the closet, agility slowly causes them to be replaced with sweats, wet weather gear, dog walking gear, equipment building outfits, and of course club uniforms items. Where there once were leather shoes requiring polishing there are now gumboots with a polish of mud, touch shoes with dirt from the last trial still embedded in the studs, and running shoes that are great for walking the dog but leave you sliding if you try to do a reverse flow pivot in them.