Clean Run Magazine - April 2007 - 79

Trials OF Agility MR. OLIVER’S By Elizabeth M. Jarrell Illustration by Catherine Fischer While I am happy for anyone who enjoys agility, I, however, do not. I am more an obedience sort of girl. Much to the amazement of my obedience friends, Mr. Oliver, my Australian Shepherd, and I recently ventured over to the Dark Side. Let us just say that I did not adjust well to all the differences between obedience and agility trials. It was all too confusing! Agility Trials—the Layout on the Dark Side I do not understand the layout of an agility trial overall. Outdoor trials resemble tent cities. The gear required to participate in an outdoor trial rivals that necessary to mount an expedition to Mt. Everest. Mr. Oliver and I went to one outdoor agility trial equipped with his crate, my chair, and a small cooler. The temperature was pushing 80° with full sun and no wind. At the end of the day I resembled a broiled lobster. I declined to return the next day. I then turned our focus to indoor agility trials. Most competitors had already set up the night before. Many competitors enter multiple dogs. Consequently, there was precious little crate space available the morning of the trial even though I had gotten up before the crack of dawn. I had been warned to arrive at the show site early both to stake out crate space and to find a parking spot. At the end of the day, Mr. Oliver and I had been at the show approximately 10 hours for 2 runs, each lasting about 30 to 45 seconds. This does not even include travel time. Feeding the Masses—and Mr. Oliver Obedience trials offer coffee and donuts. Agility trials provide birthday cakes large enough to feed 300 people. Eating birthday cakes, decorated to celebrate the latest MACH, is the thing to do the morning of an agility trial. No one starves at agility trials. Indeed, agility trials are the ultimate social events; they are the tailgate parties of the dog world. I have enough trouble keeping Mr. Oliver out of a box or two of donuts. It was almost impossible to keep Mr. Oliver from launching himself feet first into the enormous birthday cake. Once Mr. Oliver realized that he was not getting any birthday cake, he quickly focused on the food vendor. Eventually I bought him some ice cream. He reluctantly shared his ice cream with me. Course Maps and Knee Braces—a Dangerous Sport While everyone was mulling about making polite conversation and eating birthday cake, I was very busy. Specifically, I was very busy obsessing over a course map, which, I later found out, bore no resemblance whatsoever to the actual course. The course map posed other problems for me as well. Aside from the obvious problem that I did not understand the symbols for each obstacle, April 07 | Clean Run I could barely read the miniscule writing even with my reading glasses. Worse still, I am directionally impaired. I routinely call family members from adjacent states needing directions home in the middle of the night. I cannot even read a road map. So basically the only point of my obsessing over the course map was that I did not gain unnecessary calories by eating birthday cake first thing in the morning. I eventually managed to lift my nose out of the course map. I noticed an alarming number of knee braces. Some competitors had matching knee braces, one on each knee. A few even had full leg braces. More than a few moved with the stiffness of a chronic back pain sufferer. These knee and back injuries were not limited to the people; the dogs appeared to have them as well. I overheard snippets of various conversations discussing how the dog had just returned to competition after a year off due to cruciate ligament or back surgery. I stopped listening. I began to get very worried. I have enough trouble with relatively tame sports like obedience. No one had told me that agility was a dangerous sport. My agility instructor later explained the abundance of human knee and back injuries. According to her, the culprit is all those front crosses where a person runs and then quickly stops and twists the knee, back, or both. I actually saw one or two people fall over jumps. As for canine injuries, I saw more than a few dogs fall off the dogwalk or leap off the A-frame, torquing their bodies on their way down. Chaos, Noise, and Desperation The overall atmosphere was one of overriding chaos. It is no accident that a majority of agility dogs sport names such as Chaos, Ro g u e , a n d even Madness. Most competitors rev up their dogs to be as excited as possible before their run. Thanks to all the sugar in the birthday 79

Clean Run Magazine - April 2007

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run Magazine - April 2007