After agility...

We don't really do agility any more, and I'm getting more accepting of that recently. I'll probably muck around with it now and then, I'll keep dropping in on training when I'm in town, and I might even enter the odd trial here and there, since Bill and Zig really enjoy it. But I wandered off the agility path a while back, and it's probably too hard to get back on that track now- it's heading into uncharted territory for me. I'm OK with the basics of fast dog training, the sending on and directionals and targetting and independent contacts and weaves... but the handling, the person's job, is something I never really did well, and living way out here in the bush, no club, no training group, no motivation, no time, realistically I'm not going to work it out any time soon. I do miss agility though, it's a great sport. Second to working a sheepdog, it's about the best activity you can do with your dog.

I've been thinking about it a bit recently, because some of the greats of the agility scene from my day have been moving on. Some of them are nearing retirement age or having it forced on them through injury. Others have sadly passed away, and it's bringing home the reality of my boy Jack's advancing age and impending mortality. He was twelve this year, and feeling every year of it. The deaths of dogs like Rod Stockdale's Bundy and Di Rose's Taylor, dogs that were there in the ring with us when we started agility almost ten years ago, pile heavily on my heart when I hold Jack's grey muzzle and look into his cloudy eyes.



Agility is very impressive these days: so many fast young dogs driving around demanding courses, precision and speed hand in hand. I love watching today's sport, but I'm also glad to have been a part of it "back in the day", especially during those exciting few years when the old style agility, with its left-side handling, "heelwork with jumps", point/shout/pray contacts started to open up to the concepts of independent contacts and weaves and dogs working on both sides, even (gasp!) away from the handler. Agility competitors these days would laugh at the idea that a dog could be "too fast" for agility, and while I was incredibly frustrated at the time to be told I needed to slow my dog down to have any hope of success, I'm proud of having stuck with it and been a very small part of such a huge change in the sport in our area.

So when I go to an agility trial now, I'm thrilled to see so many incredibly fast dogs doing things that would have blown us away. But it always seems wrong, somehow, that so many of the dogs that were WA agility for so many years are missing.



Photo- Tim Abidin, Your Dog Photos





Ash Poli's Bailey, a greyhound-kelpie cross, really was Mr Agility for me- I've never seen a dog so perfect for it. An insanely driven agility dog, he knew the possibilities of the sport long before any of us did, and set out to realise them, dragging Ash along for the ride. They started training at Northern Suburbs not long before Jack and I did, and right from Day One Bailey threw aside suggestions at heelside control and took off running. Fortunately Ash had long enough legs to stay close behind, and together they negotiated their own style, with independent weave poles, running Aframes and some of the tightest turns over jumps I've ever seen. At their peak, they were the team to beat here, and won at the top level across the country. Since injury forced Bailey into retirement (forced being the operative word) there's been a big lanky Ash-and-Bailey shaped hole in the WA agility scene.




Photo- Tim Abidin, Your Dog Photos

Emma Smith's Major was another dog I'll miss incredibly. Maj started agility around the same time Bailey did, and obviously they'd read the same instruction book. A stocky little kelpie cross, Major threw himself around a course like a cannonball, barking the entire time. Presumably he did take a breath somewhere on course, but it didn't sound like it.



Photo- from Tom Weir's website

Tom Weir's Paisley was really the dog that ignited my interest in training, when I took Jack along to our first PTODC obedience class and Tom and Paisley were practising tricks in front of the caravan. She was barking out the answers to maths questions, I think, and I decided that I would teach Jack to do that. She and Tom were an even more impressive team on the agility course. They ran like they were connected by an invisible elastic band, always knowing exactly where the other would be as though by instinct. I think Paisley won just about all the big events, and towards the end of her career topped it off with the inaugural Agility Dog of the Year title.

And where's Andrea Carde's Wicket, the ballistic Beardie? He was the permanent puppy, never taking agility that seriously (why spoil a good excuse to go fast and loud?) but he was always the most fun to watch. I don't know where agility dogs go when they die, but wherever it is, I'm sure Wicket and Major are barking the place down.


Photo- from ? Tim Abidin at Simone's old WestOz Agility website

There are so many great dogs missing from agility now, whether they're at home with their paws up or gone away forever, and I'm getting all misted up thinking about them. Rod Stockdale's Bundy and Frank Fitzpatrick's Harley, true masters of the sport, Karen Phillips' Soda, who jumped like a little rabbit and was just as quick, the Rhoden's big Max, a GSD in a border collie suit, Megan Bell's Jester and Tracey Wansborough's Jake, the start of the border collie ring domination in WA, Di Rose's Taylor, who competed with Jack at our very first trials and stayed in the sport almost until the day he died. There were lots of others, and I think about all of them from time to time, looking at rare photos or even rarer video clips. It wasn't that long ago, even though it sometimes feels like another planet in memory, but the shadows of those dogs still fall on the agility field for me.


Photo- WestOz Agility


Photo- WestOz Agility

And then there's Val Meyn and Guinea, who are both hugely missed from WA agility even today- although sometimes when I'm watching a really great run I'm sure I can hear a familiar "WhooHoo!" from somewhere not too far away...
They really deserve their own article, but sometimes there just aren't the right words.

That's a rather long-winded prelude to me posting a bunch of video clips from agility- not featuring many of those dogs, unfortunately, because I didn't get a camera until 2005. But if I ever get around to editting some of the videos I have on tape, then you'll all be for it!