Hello and welcome to little decisions interviews! I have something very special for you today!
I met Sandy Bird one bright and beautiful morning recently at Lucky Dog Agility, a dog sports training facility off Arnoldsville Rd in Winterville, Ga! She was accompanied by her training dog and companion, Asta. Asta is a Pyrenean sheepdog. She looks like a typical sheepdog: grey, long haired with short but not stubby legs. I basically walked right in and immediately began asking questions of Sandra(and petting Asta of course)! Wikipedia divides dog sports into the following sports groups: “herding, obedience, protection, pulling, racing, tracking & hunting, or water sports.” Dog sports are a way to build confidence in both handler and dog, as well as team work and communication.
Agility is a niche sport all on it’s own, it’s a speed sport. So what is agility exactly? According to Wikipedia, “Dog agility is a dog sport in which a handler directs a dog through an obstacle course in a race for both time and accuracy. Dogs run off leash with no food or toys as incentives, and the handler can touch neither dog nor obstacles. The handler’s controls are limited to voice, movement, and various body signals, requiring exceptional training of the animal and coordination of the handler.”
And what about the course the dog runs for agility? Continuing from Wikipedia,quote “An agility course consists of a set of standard obstacles laid out by a judge in a design of his or her own choosing in an area of a specified size. The surface may be of grass, dirt, rubber, or special matting. Depending on the type of competition, the obstacles may be marked with numbers indicating the order in which they must be completed.
Courses are complicated enough that a dog could not complete them correctly without human direction. In competition, the handler must assess the course, decide on handling strategies, and direct the dog through the course, with precision and speed equally important. Many strategies exist to compensate for the inherent difference in human and dog speeds and the strengths and weaknesses of the various dogs and handlers.”
Agility is best trained through positive reinforcement, through methods like shaping which is when a handler must patiently wait for the dog to perform a certain task and will then immediately reward the behavior. Thus trying to shape the way the animal behaves!
Sandra has a passion for dogs and dogs sports that is quietly contagious. Being semi-retired, she now has the opportunity to take classes as well as teach them!
Lucky dog agility is the embodiment of kindness in practice! The use of positive reinforcement for training gets the dogs and handlers excited about doing agility! Such exercises build better connections between the dog and it’s owner and all of these things create a community of kindness around dog sports!!! Please enjoy my interview with owner and operator of Lucky Dog Agility in Winterville, Sandra Bird.
Listen to the interview here: https://www.buzzsprout.com/1806900/9088706
Or watch it on Youtube: