Bailey had a successful agility weekend in Decatur, Alabama. Out of four runs he qualified in three of them so only lacks one qualifying run for his jumpers title. He pulled 3rd place in two of those runs and 4th place in one of them. In one of his third place runs, he missed 2nd place by 2/10ths of a second (amazing how they can calculate that!!!). I pulled him out of yesterday’s events because he had an accident on the a-frame on Saturday…

On Saturday during his standard run, he flew up the a-frame and when he neared the crest he slipped and his face smashed into the board and tore his chin up pretty bad. It stunned him and of course, I couldn’t reach him and am not allowed to touch him anyway. If I had … he would have been disqualified. However, let it be known right now that disqualification or not… had I thought he was injured to the point where we needed to stop… we would stop! I stood there freaked out as Bailey attempted to regain his composure, and in fact… he did go down the other side of the a-frame (SLOWLY)… and took the ending jump for a beautiful, perfect qualifying run. However, we lost time and only pulled in 4th place. But out of 49 dogs in his class… I’m not complaining! He came off  the course bleeding and I couldn’t tell how badly he was hurt. The vet and the judge came running over… the fear in a situation such as that is not necessarily the skin damage (because that will heal nicely)… but he took such a dive he could have very easily broken a tooth (or teeth).. or knocked one or more loose. Luckily, after examination by the vet… it was determined that did not happen, and I was grateful. The judge (a very nice woman) hugged me (I was crying) and said… “your little dog has heart…you should be very proud of him”. I WAS proud of him, but I left the course crying and holding on to him for dear life. It scared him (and me)… and I didn’t feel I needed to push him to run on Sunday. So he stayed in his crate or in my arms most of the day yesterday while we watched our other friends do their things.

We both came home exhausted. It was our first out of town trial… and the dogs simply don’t rest as they do at home. It’s stressful. So I’m very pleased with my little guy… brought home three pretty colorful ribbons (not blue ones though.. haha), and three qualifying ribbons.

He's fine... but I imagine this week we'll be spending a little extra time on the a-frame. Sometimes when something like this happens, a dog will shy away from the obstacle for awhile. Thanks, everyone.. for your inquires concerning how we did this past weekend!

awwww, poor bailey.... give him hugs and kisses for me.....  

 Poor Baby! What a true athlete finishing his job.

Not true!!  Your dog doesn't have to be totally obedience trained before entering the world of agility.  There are some commands that are helpful.... such as recall.  It would be hard to do agility with your dog if he has no recall.   But for the most part, much of the obedience can be learned through the agility process. 

I missed this post!! Congrats to Bailey for coming in 4th even with his injury! I hope he is okay now, he needs some TLC!! 

Having come from several years of obedience work, I agree with you on this.  A prime example is that when I entered the world of agility, Bailey was totally trained to heel on the left side (which is how it's trained in obedience).  When I got into agility, I quickly learned that whatever the dog does well on one side... he/she has to do equally as well on the other side.  This has been really hard for me to learn, because of my years of having trained most things on the left in the "obedience world".   Having Bailey trained so well to heel on the left was not necessary, and in fact.. made it more difficult for me to train him to do it on the right. 

But I do believe... and the agility trainers I've talked with concur... that THE single most important thing you can have when starting agility is a solid recall command. Although initially you'll generally learn each obstacle on-lead, very quickly you'll be working your dog off-lead. When your pup gets that "wild hair" thing going on... you'll want to be able to get him/her back without having to run all over creation. You'll actually want two flavors of recall for agility: the obedience recall (come and sit at my feet), and the "casual" recall (move in my general direction until I give you something else to do).  I use two different words - in my house, "come" is the obedience recall, and "here" is the agility recall.

Regardless of whether it's agility or obedience... IMO.... recall is THE most important thing you can teach your dog.  It matters not if your dog can sit... lay down or roll over... or any other thing... if your dog won't come to you, right?