Agility is a fast-growing and popular sport that has taken the dog world by storm! Popular with both pet owners and competitive dog trainers', agility is an inclusive sport open to all dogs and handlers of different shapes, sizes, and abilities. Agility first appeared as a filler spectator sport at the Crufts Dog show in the United Kingdom in 1978. The sport has its origins in horse show jumping and was officially recognized by the kennel club in 1980. National agility clubs like the Agility Association of Canada (AAC) and United States Dog Agility Association (USDAA) began to appear in the early to mid-1980s. Since then, agility has become the fastest growing dog sport in North American and around the world.
In this sport breakdown, we will take a look at the sport of agility! There is so much to cover for this fast and fun sport that for the first time ever we’re splitting our sport breakdown into FOUR parts! In the first instalment of our agility series, we’re taking a deeper look into what the sport of agility is and the physical demands it places on our dogs. Then, in Part Two, we’ll review the potential injuries that can occur and a few common signs and symptoms that owners should watch out for. Part Three will highlight what YOU can do from an injury prevention standpoint to help keep your agility dog off the sidelines. Finally, in Part Four, we’ll look at the role of canine conditioning for our agility dogs, why we should be conditioning our dogs, and what we should be including in a conditioning program tailored to the agility sport dog.
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Have you ever wished you could go back and tell your past self all the things you learned about a new activity? As the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20 and sometimes the best way to learn is to try, fail, and grow from the experience. However, there is a workaround to this and that’s to ask for guidance from people who have already walked the same path!
That’s why I took some time to ask the trainers and pro-canine conditioners in my Facebook group the Canine Athlete Pack for their number one piece of advice they wished they knew when they first started out. We got some excellent feedback! So much in fact that we had to write TWO blogs on all the great advice. In our first blog we reviewed the first 5 top tips (you can read more about those here). In this week’s blog we’ll review 5 more common pieces of advice that will help you on your conditioning journey. When we first start out in conditioning, we can easily become overwhelmed at where to start, which exercises to complete, how to best train them and what we can do as handlers to set our dogs up for success. It’s easy to fall victim to “information paralysis” and become confused and frustrated with all the information available at our finger tips. That’s why I took some time to ask the trainers and pro-canine conditioners in my Facebook group the Canine Athlete Pack for their number one piece of advice they wished they knew when they first started out. We got some excellent feedback and I wanted to share with you the most common pieces of advice they gave us and some tips that I have also found to be incredibly helpful over the years.
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AuthorCarolyn McIntyre Archives
March 2024
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