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| Catch Me If You Can !!! |
This is Holly (Linda's Diamond in the Ruff BN RE AX AXJ NAP OJP). She is also a Canine Good Citizen and therapy dog. Her proud owner is Linda Harrington.
What is Agility?
- Agility is the fastest growing dog sport in the U.S.
- All AKC registered breeds may compete – whether a tiny Yorkshire Terrier or a giant Irish Wolfhound.
- Dogs of all sizes run the same course with adjustments in the expected time and jump height.
- Originating in England in 1978, agility was designed to be halftime entertainment at the Crufts Dog Show.
- AKC held its first agility trials in 1994, staging 23 trials with 2,000 entries.
- In 2008, AKC sanctioned 2,147 agility trials with approximately 839,000 entries.
- The three types of AKC agility classes – The Standard Class and The Jumpers with Weaves Class and the Fifteen and Send Time (FAST) Class – offer increasing levels of difficulty to earn Novice, Open, Excellent and Master titles.
- The Standard Class includes contact objects such as an A-frame and a seesaw. Each contact obstacle has a “safety zone” in which the dog must place at least one paw to complete the obstacle.
- The Jumpers with Weaves Class has only jumps, tunnels and weave poles with no contact objects to slow the pace.
- The FAST Class is a class of strategy and speed to beat the clock and gain as many points as possible over a variety of agility obstacles.
- The highest honor an agility dog can receive is to achieve a Master Agility Championship title (MACH).
- MACH titles are awarded based on achieving 750 speed points (by running faster than Standard Course Time) and 20 Double Qualifying Points (by qualifying in the Standard Class and the Jumpers with Weaves Class on the same day).
- In 2000, the first Junior Handler to obtain a MACH was Katie Moureaux and “Heisey,” a Shetland Sheepdog.
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