Well, it's that time again. The try-outs for the USA World Team are underway in Minnesota in May and team members are being selected. An exciting time that makes us look forward to the Big Event in Finland this fall.

Click here or the above banner to check it out.

Agility fan Eric Larson has put together some fabulous fund raising items for the team, and will be again offering his great video coverage of the tryouts as well as the main event.

Support the USA/AKC World Team as they go for the gold in Finland by purchasing a World Team Tryout Total Access Pass & DVD. Approximately half of the price of every purchase goes directly to the AKC Agility World Team.

The coverage will be similar to what he did with FCI 2007, but even better with a host of new features. Including favorites, playlists, comments, and zipped up downloads of each class. And since it is a much smaller event he plans on providing more extras beyond just the video of every run.

Eric's website offers great updates as the competitions unfold, and its a great way to support Agility Team USA!

When I was still in the corporate life, bored with my job and wishing that I had SOMETHING of interest going on in my life, I happened to adopt a rescue dog. He was a 3 year old Cocker Spaniel, red & white in color. I had lost my old boy Cocker six months earlier, and my girl-dog Jeannie and I still missed Zuki terribly.

I got a call from one of the Cocker rescue folks (these people are for sure guaranteed a ticket into heaven!). She said she'd just gotten in this young male, named Caesar. To make a long story short, he moved in with us.

After a few days, I knew why his previous owners had given him up. While he had the sweetest temperament and was well house-trained, he was the most hyper dog I'd ever encountered. EVERYTHING set him off into a tizzy. His energy never wavered. He had only one speed: fast. After living for years with much mellower pups, this was a shock.

This dog needed a job. I first worked with him in basic obedience, and got a little better handle on him. But this wasn't the right outlet for him - he wanted MORE out of life, and frankly so did I. About the time when I was about to kill him (figuratively speaking!) I stumbled on an article about a new sport that was just starting to take off in the US: Dog Agility.

The description sounded like a lot of fun - your dog runs around around an obstacle course with you, and does jumps, runs through tunnels, weaves back and forth between poles in the ground, climbs up and over a big wooden A-frame... it sounded like a lot of fun. There was a introductory workshop being held in my area in a few weeks' time, so I signed us up.

As the workshop day grew closer, I got more and more excited. At last, I thought, something fun and competitive for both of us. The workshop was scheduled to last 4 hours starting at 9am on a Saturday. We arrived in plenty of time to set up a chair in the arena, get the thermos out (it was outdoors in a covered arena, in the winter), and sit back and soak it all in.

I noticed a large number of women relative to men in the class, but didn't think much of it at the time. The instructor was in her 30s, and I was to find out later than she had more energy than my dog... I was in serious trouble.

We started with some basic kinds of things, walking with our dogs on-leash, not heeling as in obedience, but attentively. Most of the other dogs had had much more obedience training than Caesar did, and I had my hands full just trying to keep his attention. The fun thing about the sport of agility is that its based on positive reinforcement training techniques, which means LOTS OF TREATS! My boy would jump off a tall building for a treat, and he quickly made the connection between paying attention to me and getting the goodies.

Five and a half hours later, we were exhausted...and totally hooked. We learned enough to manage to do a couple of obstacles in a row, and that was enough to put us into the ranks of the addicted. It is a game of physical skill and ability, but more importantly a game of strategy. In competitions, the judge designs a course consisting of jumps, tunnels, a teeter-totter, weave poles and other obstacles in a pattern that must be followed. Challenging spots are built into the design, and you and your team-mate have to figure out the challenges, master them, and do it with no mistakes AND be faster than other teams in order to win the blue ribbon.

It all sounds pretty easy doesn't it? Well, it isn't when you've passed 40, never liked exercising, and carried more weight than was good for you. It took me 3 days after that workshop before I could walk normally again. I couldn't wait for the next class!

I'll be posting some pictures and videos of this wonderful sport and some of the funny and fun moments that we've had and seen. Caesar and I did well, although he didn't like the pressure as we rose in levels. We achieved a great deal in the years that we competed, and he retired at the age of 10 having completed his AKC Excellent Standard and Jumpers titles. He's now 16 and a half years old, healthy, still energetic but mellower. He loves to travel, although with me starting a business our dog show days have been put on hold.

Our dog family grew, because the addiction of dog agility resulted in my falling in love with a little tiny dog with huge ears and long fluffy fur - the Papillon flew into our lives, and things have never been the same since! More on that later...

Dog agility has grown HUGELY in the years since we started. As I mentioned, it is a sport that seems to be dominated by middle-aged women - fit ones, fat ones, in between ones. There is a good representation of senior citizens as well. While we would never be competitive against the youngsters in most sports, the brainwork and teamwork required does help level the playing field so that those with more wisdom and experience often triumph over physical skills. Just as it should!

My fur-kids have always been near and dear to my heart, better than the two-legged variety IMO! I would do anything for them, and most of the time they would do stuff for me.

My Papillon Emmett is the love of my life. He is my first Papillon. I got him in August 1999, when he was just 3 months old. I got him from the best Papillon breeder in the world, Lou Ann King, of Loteki Papillons in Iowa. Lou Ann drove all the way from Iowa to Chicago O'Hare airport, where I was staying on my way back to Seattle, to deliver him to me because she refuses to "pack & ship" her puppies.

She had Emmett's mother Shelly with her. Shelly is the sweetest most loving dog I've ever met. She instantly acts like you're her lifelong best friend. Her son Emmett was a little more reserved, but soon started winding those little Papillon tendrils around my heart, and I was done for! We flew back to Seattle in first class (hey, I used my upgrades!!), and my little boy won the hearts of our fellow travelers. And the flight attendents. They insisted I take him out of his under-seat carrier, and he graciously held audience until it was time to land.

At the time, I had two Cocker Spaniels, Caesar and Jeannie. Jeannie was then an old lady, 12 years old, and seemed to have lost interest in life. I had met a Papillon at an agility event, and decided that my next dog would be a Pap. As Jeannie seemed to fade, I decided to get my Pap before she passed, since Caesar was so attached to her. Enter little Emmett.

Immediately, Jeannie perked up. Whether it was because she wasn't about to be shoved aside by a little whipper-pupper, or whatever, she was her normal self for the next four and a half years before she passed on. Another reason to bring a youngster into the house!

Agility is something that you are always teaching and learning. With a young dog who hasn't matured physically or mentally yet, it starts with basic obedience work in a fun setting. Come to me, and get treats! Sit, and we'll play a game! Walk by my side, and get lots of treats! Low pressure and no physical stressing. As you both mature, the challenge of learning the obstacles starts. I always start my little guys with poles, teeters, tables just laying on the ground so they can just walk right over them.

Emmett absolutely loved learning. Basic obedience was fairly easy, but he hated being still. Learning the Stay was very hard for him. He adored the obstacles though, and learned them very quickly. He even mastered the weave poles in a very short time. I was so excited, and couldn't wait until our first competition!

He was one year and two weeks old when he ran his first competition. He did very well for a beginner, and we continued to make rapid progress. The only thing that clouded things was that he HATED the pause table - which usually comes up part-way through a course after the dog is totally revved up. It's hard for dogs to go from full-bore running to stop and do a Sit or Down while a judge counts to 5. Emmett was VERY unhappy with this, and being a spoiled young man started to let me know about it.

At first he was just slow to respond to the command to get on the table. But he wasn't satisfied with that. So he started to act deaf and blind, and would run right past it. When I countered his move and made him get on, he'd stand but not Sit or Down. Or he would Sit, but then scoot backwards until his butt was hanging over the edge of the table. He's even scooted himself completely off the table onto the ground!

Since he was starting to realize that he was entertaining the spectators, he added vocals to his performance. YAP! YAP! YAP! said Emmett in his piping little-dog voice. His beady little eyes were fixed on me, since he KNEW there was nothing I could do to him. You're not allowed to touch your dog at all, or do any kind of training in the ring. So I grit my teeth and hoped he'd finally cooperate even though we'd lost MANY precious seconds while he screwed around.

The rest of the time he was an angel. He fairly quickly made it to the Excellent classes, and we got our Jumpers With Weaves (JWW) title quickly. That's because JWW doesn't have a table in it!! The Standard class, where the table lived, was another matter. We trained harder and harder, and Emmett just got worse at thumbing his little nose at me. I was very discouraged. I thought it couldn't get any worse.

Another weekend, another trial. We started our Standard run bright and early (it's usually the first class run), and we were cookin'! I was starting to get excited as we approached the table. Maybe he won't pull his table stunt! I thought. He jumped onto the table like a pro, and started to go into a Down. Yes! I thought.

Then the unthinkable happened. His sweet dark raisin eyes started to glow a fiery red. I could see something happening on his head - there were little red eruptions and I thought he was having a massive allergic reaction to something. The bumps kept growing, and his eyes got redder. He slid backwards as two bright red HORNS sprouted on his head! YIKES!! He opened his mouth, and his tongue was bright red too. Very evil CURSES started coming out of his mouth, and a tiny devil was dancing on the table beside him!!



I knew we were lost. I just stared at him in disbelief and horror. How could my sweet loving little angel turn on me so?? How could I get those demons out of him? He yapped and yapped.

Eventually, the horrible image subsided and he seemed to be his old self. But I know better. Behind that angelic all-white face lurks the heart of a little devil...

So I have made it a personal crusade to get the agility table banned. It should be burned - all of them should. Sprinkle them in Holy Water and torch the whole lot. The table is more prone to demonic possession than any other obstacle, and to prevent evil from infesting all of the other agility dogs, we need to get rid of them. Now.

Please AKC. No more lost souls.

;-) I'm going to set up a poll here so you all can vote. I can't be the only one concerned about the evil possession of our canine partners. Let all our voices be heard!!

I saw this article while browsing and thought it was one of the most useful and non-annoying (they're not selling anything!) article I'd seen in a long time. It's about killing fleas without killing your dog.

You can read the entire article here: Sucks to be a flea: Vacuums destroy itchy bugs

But the bottom line is this: "Experiments conducted by Ohio State University researchers on the cat flea (Ctenocephalides felis)-the most common type of flea plaguing companion animals, such as dogs and cats, and humans-showed that vacuuming killed fleas in all stages of life."

That's right. That flea-sucking, dust and dirt collecting machine that my dog always attacks when I get it out is one of your best allies in the war against fleas. According the the research study, the dust and dirt that collects along with the hapless fleas has sharp edges that scrape off the hard shell that protects these critters and they dry to death. It's the same principle that causes diotomaceous earth to work against pests in the garden. Neat, huh?

So before you douse your house with flea bombs loaded with toxic chemicals, get the vacuum out and start suckin' those buggers up. You'll still need to use other measures for your pet and yard, but this will go a long way in living a flea-free life. :-)

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