Clean Run Magazine - May 2009 - 72

the rear. Sparkie will do anything if she thinks it will get her food, and she naturally loves to run and jump. So training her was pretty easy. LB: What were your challenges in agility training? MM: Contacts were difficult. The training facility we went to taught two-on/two-off. Sparkie seemed to know agility was a race. With her love for jumping, she figured why run when you can fly! She was always jumping the contacts. Finally, after a Sharon Nelson seminar, I gave up teaching two-on/two-off and trained running contacts. My aim was for Sparkie to make the association: See wood? Run! Luckily, her natural stride at speed hits the yellow so to be honest, I didn’t have to put a lot of time into training. I just have to keep her speed up when she approaches the A-frame. On the dogwalk, I ease her up a bit on the down ramp, and she usually gets the contact. I estimate she hits the contact 9 out of 10 times, and that’s good enough for me. The hardest part was to get her to be calm at a trial. We took her to many events where we had to stay outside the building to get her to calm down. After about six months, we were finally able to go inside; but it was another six months before we could enter her in a trial since she was such a nut! In the ring, Sparkie was a wild child. She would bark at me and leap into the air whenever she was impatient. She would run around doing obstacles at speed; she didn’t understand that Dad was part of the team, let alone that Dad was the leader. I took her to lots of classes. As long as there were obstacles and cheese, Sparkie wanted to go. We finally found an instructor who taught us to run together. DM: Distance was a big problem for us (see “Training Notes”). Because of surgery on a broken foot and other serious health 72 problems, I didn’t run Wazzu for two years. During those two years Wazzu was my service dog, a job she took very seriously. She was always by my side, and she helped me get up when I fell. When we got back into agility, she would not leave my side. In NADAC, the dog has to be able to work away from you. Many people told us to quit agility because Wazzu would never leave my side. But I couldn’t give up on her as I knew she’d never give up on me. When I began competing with Wazzu after the layoff, we ran in Open for a long time to get her speed and enthusiasm back. She was so earnest about being right that I began giving her high praise for off-courses. If either of us made a mistake, I said Good Dog! Eventually, she began running with exuberance. LB: What is your favorite agility moment? DM: When we got our first Q at our first trial, I felt as if we had won a national championship! I screamed so loud I think I scared Wazzu. MM: It’s really hard to think of just one favorite moment, as Sparkie has fun every time she gets to do agility. She barks the entire time. I think the spectators have the most fun when Sparkie runs since she’s always doing something funny. She’s very creative. Like the time she started up the teeter at full speed, and just as it started to tip, her nose was pulled completely sideways by the smell of a hot chocolate sitting right at the ringside. She flew off the side of the teeter, ran and knocked over the hot chocolate, and came back and finished the course. We’ve had a great time at the NADAC Championships. We made it to the finals of the 20"+ division our first four years, the only mixed-breed rescue to make it to the finals. LB: When did you realize your dogs could be champions? MM: We thought Sparkie could be a champion the very first day we met her. Her road was easy really. She just plain loves agility! Clean Run | May 09

Clean Run Magazine - May 2009

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run Magazine - May 2009