#agility courses

Here's a challenge for dog agility folks!

This is one of the current games for the International Dog Agility League. Which is a great program that I highly recommend! You join a team, film the monthly courses, and submit them to earn points and titles, and compete against teams all over the world.

This game is called Copycat. And I have a challenge for you: how would you handle this for your dog? Not for a hypothetical perfect, fast dog who can do distance sends. YOUR dog, with their strengths and weaknesses.

The thing that makes this tricky is the rules of the game:

You must use the start and finish lines

You are trying to earn as many points as possible in 45 seconds

You may perform each obstacle twice to earn points

Jumps are worth 1 point

Tunnel and tire are worth 3 points

Contacts and weaves are worth 5 points

Obstacles must be performed correctly for points. Hit the contacts, don't knock the bars, perform the weaves correctly. An incorrectly performed obstacle is a waste of time.

No copycatting! This means that you cannot perform two obstacles with the same point value in a row. This means no going back over the same obstacle, no two jumps in a row, no tunnel to tire, no teeter to weaves, etc.

This week's IDAL course was really interesting. Honestly pretty challenging, just remembering where to go next! I totally messed up the numbers on my first run.

How would you handle this? Which order would you choose?

Just Haley being a more competent agility dog in her retirement than in her competition years. Hecking decent clean run. Actually listening to my vocal cues for once. What a jerk.

Hey agility people, here's a little challenging jumpers course

I found this extremely confusing and hard to remember.

Anywhooo who wants to give this a try lol?

Here's me and Bree running it:

Agility people! Potentially a fun discussion? How would you handle this course? What would your opening sequence be?

Assuming other agility organizations have Snookers. If not ... It's basically a points game where you have to do a red jump and then a numbered obstacle for points. If the obstacles are like 5a-5b-5c you must do the whole sequence. Once you've done 3 or 4 red jumps & numbered obstacles you do the closing sequence, which is the course as numbered. You must get at least the number of points listed for your category to Q. If you take a wrong obstacle, you are whistled off immediately.

I did R1 to 7, R4 to 7, R3 to 7, then I had to complete the final sequence up to number 4 to get my required points (30 - my dog is a Mini Vet). My dog is not fast, so I don't want to run back and forth across the ring too much. And this maximizes my points in a relatively small area.

Saturday’s courses.

This link has a few different courses on a pattern that is 40’x50’ (12mx15m)

10x20 meters This one will definitely fit, I know that. Has some long distance weave pole sends with hard entries, might be fun to work on small sequences to build up to being able to actually run this level of a cours.