Hello world!

Hi there. Thank you for joining me in our quest for the holy grail of dog agility. I started this journey in the fall of 2017 and along the way I met a bunch of new people and learned a lot of interesting things about the dog agility world. I’m writing this blog as a diary of sorts but also as a journal so I can see our progression as we work toward attaining the highest dog agility title. Originally, I thought it was a Master Agility Championship, or MACH, but I’m finding out there are many different goals to attain.

Here’s how we got here. I lost my beloved Elvis, an 18 1/2-year-old Jack Russell Terrier in January of 2017. I swore I was never going to get another dog. The end is so sad and heartbreaking. Then, in the summer of 2017, Ann Perkins came into my life. She was a street dog, scrawny and flea-ridden. She trusted nobody, people or animals. She barked incessantly and would pull at her collar/harness as hard as she could. She didn’t know how to go on walks or the feel of grass under her feet. She was a flight risk, as she could wiggle out of her collar or any harness I could find. For her safety, I decided to take obedience classes.

This is when I met Julie Benoit, owner of Einstein’s Canine College. She still talks about the first lesson we had and how we all had to take Tylenol after the class because Ann barked non-stop for the duration of the class. She was 10 pounds of crazy and I was having a hard time controlling her. She didn’t trust me as far as she could throw me. However, as I would find out, Ann is HIGHLY motivated by food. So in no time at all, she learned to sit, down, stay, and come. We achieved our AKC Star Puppy and Canine Good Citizen titles in a short time.

Ann still had so much extra energy that I felt I needed to harness and control. This is when Julie suggested I try dog agility. I had seen dog agility events on TV and thought it might be fun. The only place to train was Azalea Dog Training Club. In January of 2018, we took our first class.

Janet Doxey and Kathy Bloden were my first teachers. I have a funny story about that first class. I was already nervous about class because I didn’t have a fancy purebred dog like everyone else. I was in there with my scrawny little All-American (AKC’s description of mutt) dog who could barely sit still. Janet asked me what my dog’s name was and I told her it was Ann Perkins. She immediately told me that I couldn’t use that name and that I had to use a one-syllable name. I thought it was funny because Janet’s dog’s name is Levi – two syllables. I told Janet she could call her Ann if she wanted. (Janet: if you read this, I hope you’re not mad. It is a funny story, after all!) After learning our foundations in agility in about 3 rounds of classes with Janet, we moved up to the intermediate agility class.

Our next teacher was Captain Dave. Captain Dave is a very strict teacher. He forced us to not use treats while running the course. At first, I thought this was not going to work at all because Ann really likes her treats. But little by little, she got better and better at running the courses WITHOUT TREATS. Just treating her at the end of a run was good enough for her. This was good because when you’re in competition, they don’t let you take ANY treats into the ring.

Eventually, I became a member of the Azalea Dog Training Club and started training Ann on the side outside of classes. By the summer of 2019, I felt almost ready to trial and at the urging of my friend, Judith Hawk, we signed up for our first trial in Sanford, NC. To be honest, if Judith hadn’t just about FORCED me to sign up for this first trial, we probably would still be just practicing at home. So thanks, Judith, for putting us on this dog agility trial path. Yahoo.