Clean Run - February 2014 - 19

Trainer: Nicola Giraudi
Base: Montana Lucino, Italy
Years competing in agility: 20
Dogs: Twister, 9-year-old Parsons
Russell Terrier; Lupin, 4-year-old
Shetland Sheepdog; Border Collies
8-year-old Glen, 6-year-old Penny
(Time's mother), 5-year-old Don,
3-year-old Time, 1-year-old Eira,
and 10-month-old Wikipedia.
Favorite treat: Meat or sausage.
Piece of technology that has
benefited his training: "I like to
videotape. That makes it easier for me
to figure things out. And I will watch
my competition videos. It helps me to
understand what is going wrong."
If he wasn't doing agility he'd:
be working sheep with the Border
Collies.
If he wasn't working with dogs
he'd: maybe work with websites.
Agility moment he's most proud
of: The 2011 FCI Agility World
Championships, where he brought
home the gold medal with Twister. "I
had made mistakes a couple of years
before and I knew she could do it!"
Best advice received: "If you have
fun, you will always get results.
You will be able to train your dog
to his best-maybe not the world
championship, but the best that he
can be."
Wisdom to share: "At a competition,
everything can be destroyed in a tenth
of a second. But if you have fun, you still
have that. You are with your dog and
your friends. This is the important part."
February 14

| Clean Run

Training
with the Stars
Nicola Giraudi

By Sally Silverman, photos by Lynne Brubaker

First have fun, then the results will come. It is advice that was given
to Nicola Giraudi early on, and it's still the mantra he passes on to his
students. He has been having lots of fun in agility for 20 years, and
still believes the advice holds true. It has helped him to medal in the
2011 FCI Agility World Championship, where he earned an individual gold medal with his terrier, Twister, and at the 2012 World Agility Open (WAO), where he won a silver medal and three gold medals.

How It All Started
Nicola started his dog training journey
when he was 11 years old and assumed
the task of training the family German
Shepherd, taking him to a local training
class. "They used the old-fashioned system and it was horrible," he says. But not
enough to turn him off of dog training.
It was watching an agility trial at the
training club that prompted him to try
the new sport. "It was really just performing obstacles. Agility was young in
the world then and even younger in Italy. But it was the relationship with my
dog that made me enjoy it." Agility mo-

tivated Nicola to develop an even stronger relationship with his dog, and that
meant cultivating in the dog a greater
interest in him than in other dogs. "He
spent a lot of time in the garden by himself so I had to use toys to try to motivate him to have fun with me. We had a
good result in training, but it wasn't the
same in competition."
A few years later, his parents bought
him a "really great dog," a Border Collie
named Shep. "We made a lot of mistakes
because the training systems weren't as
good as they are now. It took three and a
19

Clean Run - February 2014

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - February 2014