Sport of Choice

ManyMuddyPaws recently wrote about and challenged others to write about the dog sports they have tried and what they prefer, etc.

I've gotta say agility is my favorite. When Oreo was younger I really wanted to agility when I found out about it. He was an energetic, athletic dog and I loved running around with him. But the prerequisite class for agility was basic obedience. So we signed up for obedience and Oreo did great. The agility classes didn't fit into my schedule at the time so I signed up for another obedience class. Oreo stressed about stays across the room from me and improvement was slow-then life happened and I went away to school.

Fast forward a few years and I had Oreo at school with me. I was still interested in getting a CD and maybe trying some agility and so I enrolled in Ann Gafke's Teachers Pet school. Oreo ultimately finished his CD, and then his CDX but was afraid of a lot the agility equipment. Finally after lots of training he started doing agility trials at age 7. So I guess I got into obedience by accident. I still enjoy it but I don't have the patience to train for super high scores and OTCH points. I just want to have a decent score and pass. I love the training and the competition of agility though. It's active, exciting and requires great teamwork and connection with your dog-close up and at a distance. The dogs seem to like it more too but maybe that's just a flaw in my obedience training!

I got into Rally because Zodiac was in between open and utility and I wanted to show in some kind of obedience at the BC specialty. So I did Rally-and Zodiac was great at it. So we have continued on with it-it's nice to have a low stress obedience environment for the dogs to work in. I even got an RN on Oreo-he came out of retirement to dabble in it and finished his title around age 12.

Herding is the one I would like for Zodiac to do but don't really have the time. He loves to herd though and he may even be good at it. At least he would have fun. But, we can't do it all.

So, what sport do you love?