I was at a Suzanne Clothier seminar in CT this last weekend and was speaking about agility with dog behaviorist and researcher Dr. Rudy de Meester from Belgium. He mentioned that he was concerned that people who compete in agility can push dogs harder than is good for the dog's health. He told me about one dog sport and one type of agility competition that were new to me.

The new (to me) dog sport is canine cross country or CaniX. It is basically skijoring without skis. The human and dog are connected by harnesses and run together over a course. Since it involves running with your dog it requires the human to be as fit as the dog. I wish I was in shape enough to consider it.

The other interesting thing he mentioned was an agility game played in Belgium (and maybe elsewhere in Europe) where the object of the game is not to beat the clock but to match the clock. The team that comes closest to matching the course time wins. The thing I love about this game is it can be played by all ages of dogs and competitors. Dr. de Meester liked it because it didn't encourage handlers to push their teammates past their abilities. Unfortunately, I didn't get the name of the organization or this game. So if any of my European readers could give me some more information I'd love to learn more about this game.

The more I do agility the more I enjoy the games. At first I was intimidated by the rules. But now I'm older and not afraid to screw up on course and get disqualified. It doesn't take long to develop some simple strategies and the planning of your run can be fun. Running the courses can also challenge how flexible you can be when things go wrong.

Also the local availability of CPE and, lately more, USDAA trials makes it easy and inexpensive to play more games and earn titles in the games. Some parts of the US also have a lot of NADAC which also features games. I think Bud Houston is bringing back JFF which will feature a lot of games too.

Are there any unusual agility games that you enjoy playing?

Dana Pike had another great course this past week; I liked it because it had an interesting and challenging sequence leading up to the weave pole entrance. I've pulled it "out of context" and added obstacles 1, 2 and 3 to get you into position for the part I liked best. Cut out this way you can set it up in a smaller space than a full course.

Sequence Setup

Course Legend

Don't pay strict attention to the dimensions in the diagram, they are rough estimates from my memory. Here's how you should set it up. The distance from jump 8 to the weaves should require that your dog collect to make the Weave Entry. To make the sequence more interesting the distance from the tunnel to jump 5 should make it a real stretch for you to properly execute a Front Cross [FrontCross, LearningFrontCross] between jumps 5 and 6. If you do those two things you'll have set up the course as Dana did for us. See the final section of this article for some ideas on changing the jump rotations.

Handling Options

Here's a quick run down of some handling options. For the opening you can Lateral Lead Out to the landing side of jump 2 and you dog will collect as it turns in to you and should enter the weaves without a problem. Otherwise you run with your dog on your left and Front Cross at the location of the Lateral Lead Out. A Rear Cross [RearCross, LearningRearCross] on the take off to jump 2 and then Rear Cross the entrance of the weaves (with tight jump to weave spacing some dogs will require the handler pause as they approach the weaves to make sure they aren't pushed past the entrance). A final alternative is Rear Cross 1-2 and Front Cross on the exit of the weave poles.

If handling the weaves with the dog on your right, then if you have independent weaves you can fade toward the tunnel a little. Once your dog is committed to the tunnel you can run to get a Front Cross between jumps 5 and 6 (as shown by the X in the diagrams below). If you can't get in position for the Front Cross then a Rear Cross between jumps works just as well.

Sequence 6-7-8-9 is a nice little drill. It is a 180 blending into a Serpentine [Serpentine, SerpentineHandling] with the weaves as the final Serpentine obstacle. The layout of the obstacles and the handler's approach into the 180 pretty much requires that the sequence be handled entirely with the weaves on the handler's right side.

The cross (Front or Rear) between 5 and 6 turns the dog over jump 6. The turn over jump 7 is a Jump Wrap which is best handled as Front Cross wrap so you pick up the dog on your right hand as they come over the jump.

At this point there are two primary handling methods (shown below) for getting your dog into the weaves. The one I was successful with Meeker is shown on the left. I just turned and moved with him on my right, sent him over the jump and slowed sharply to cue collection into the weaves. With Milo that method didn't work as well because as soon as I turned toward jump 8 he took the jump in full extension and ended up at the second weave pole every time. So for him I used the method shown on the right below. Once he came over jump 7 I stayed facing jump 7, extended my left arm and moved backward to the take off of jump 8. Milo reads this "backey-uppy" correctly as a jump wrap (see Single Sided Threadle Handling to see this in action) so he took jump 8 collected. I then turned to my left and he turned back to the weave poles.

Another approach noted (but not shown) in the right figure above is to use just enough of an RFP or False Turn after jump 8 to get your dog to check in and not miss the weave entry.

Alternate Layouts

To change the difficulty of the exercise not only can you change the distance from the weaves to the jumps, you can also change the angle of jumps 6/8 and 7 in relation to the weaves. The diagram below shows some options in red and green.

Alternate Weave Entry Jump Locations

If you are interested in more weave pole entries you might want to play with this sequence too.

The AAC Canadian World Team, going to the IFCS World Agility Championship in Belgium in May, has put together 7 PDFs containing over 500 AAC courses and another PDF containing 80 practice drills as a fund raiser for their team.

I contributed my $ 20 CAD and got my electronic download tonight. After just a quick look it is certainly worth it if you have the space to setup a course for a class, a fun match or for your own training. The drills document has some setups for which the trainers have multiple sequences, for example the Susan Garrett setup has 15 different sequences. The only issue one might have is some of the practice sequences are full course size; but you could remove the unused obstacles to make them fit in a smaller space.

This was a great idea and I wish other teams would consider doing a similar thing; as you can never have too many courses to play with! So go on over to their website and download your own copy of the courses. I wish the Canadian competitors well at the Championships, but I will be rooting for Team USA and especially for the US team members with whom I've had the pleasure of training over the years.

Two weeks ago I posted two handling approaches for Bud Houston's two jump Minuet setup. After my post I got some good handling alternatives for the sequence from sharp AgilityNerd readers. So one morning this weekend before the frost fully melted and turned the yard back to mud, I setup up the video camera and took a crack at filming some of the alternatives.

To refresh your memory here is the course setup:

Bud's Two Jump Minuet

Here are four more handling approaches shown in the video. I name the approaches by the handling used to turn the dog between 2-3 and 4-1:

1. Front Crosses [FrontCross, LearningFrontCross] on the take off side of each jump.
2. Rear Crosses [RearCross, LearningRearCross] on the take off side of each jump (could also be viewed as a Post Turn [PostTurn, LearningPostTurn] followed by a Rear Cross. The wrap around the jump standard is then completed by performing a Front Cross across the length of the jump.
3. Blind Crosses on the take off side of each jump followed by a Front Cross to complete the jump wrap.
4. What I'd call a Single Sided Serpentine [Serpentine, SerpentineHandling] handling approach, where I stayed on one side of the jumps and brought Meeker over the jump into my back reaching hand as though we were handling a Serpentine. This was actually the first approach I filmed and you can see Meeker is launching long over the left jump because I'm giving him his turning cue too late.

So far we've got six different handling methods for this sequence. Of course you could mix up the crosses used in each sequence too to get even more permutations. Are there any more raw methods we've missed?

Updated with handling discussion - 14-Jan-08

This "How Would You Handle It" is a middle sequence of a longer course I ran at Anne Riba's Apex Agility this past summer. It is a pretty straightforward sequence with a couple handling options. Unlike the last course, in this course their are no handler restrictions to impede your handling options. The only restriction is you have to take the A Frame with the dog on your left (as that would have been the only option in the full course) as shown by the green handler labeled START in the diagram below.

Sequence 2

Obstacle Legend

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Agility pioneer Bud Houston posted some simple setups as part of a game idea with several interesting handling possibilities. He describes an agility game called the Minuet which is a timed game where the handler and dog repeat the sequence as many times as possible within a fixed time limit and get points for each complete sequence.

I had some time at ring rental when I recalled Bud's simplest sequence and thought I'd give it a quick try:

Bud's Two Jump Minuet

How would you handle this?

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UPDATE: handling thoughts posted

In recent weeks I've run some practice courses with interesting subsequences in them and I thought I'd start blogging them as little handling challenges I'm calling "How Would You Handle It?" I'll post the course diagram and then a couple days later I'll update the article and post the handling method(s) that were most viable.

This opening sequence of a longer course was devised by Nancy Reyes at For Your Canine in Schiller Park, IL. I've put a red barrier at the right edge of the course to let you know that there is a wall that makes up that edge of the ring. So your handling possibilities to the right of the jumps are restricted (there are about 4 feet from jump 3 to the wall and about 3 feet from jump 4 to the wall. Jump 4 is a winged jump and jump 5 is a winged double jump.

Sequence 1

Obstacle Legend

If you like please post your solutions in the comments and check back for some solutions in a couple days.

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After writing up my definitions of On and Off Side Weave Entries I started to think about what might make a really difficult weave entry and handling challenge. I came up with four approaches to work on and sequences for working on these challenges.

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With the kind permission of CPE judge Lisa Potts I am posting her courses from the trial at For Your Canine from the end of June. Lisa's courses presented honest challenges and had nice flow. I think both small and large dog handlers were happy running these courses. She made life very easy on us course builders too, the progression between levels and classes was smooth with nice nesting of obstacles. I think these would be good courses to setup for a fun run.

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I'm still working Meeker on contacts and obstacle discriminations and after this earlier setup I came up with this setup and some sequences to play with. These sequences "double" the discriminations by wrapping the A Frame and Dog Walk in tunnels and setting paths drawing past multiple obstacles. Also, based on an Anne Riba class course, I put in a "teeter to nowhere" which turned out to be a skill our team is lacking.

Course Setup

Obstacle Legend

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