I have three dogs. The oldest is Bounder, a seven-year-old Blue Merle Sheltie.  She’s been to FCI Worlds for the last three years. She has won her class at the AAC Nationals four years in a row. She is quiet in the house, but she’s the alpha — she bosses the other two around. She has obedience and flyball titles, but now she just does agility. Chase is a five-year-old Sable Sheltie. He has run the last two years at Worlds. He would have gone two years ago but he got a sliver stuck in his pad at the practice just before we left. He has come in third in his class at the Canadian Nationals. He usually places well in Standard and Jumpers but he’s not a great gambling dog yet. He’s a couch potato at home but at agility, he goes crazy.  The youngest, Riot, is another Sable Sheltie. She is just two years old. She just started trialing. Her first trial was the Steeplechase run at the Canadian Nationals and she qualified for the finals! She’s been my first dog that had trouble learning the weave poles, but she’s much better now.
How did you get into agility?

When I was 10, I saw a Superdogs show and signed up for classes with our famly pet, a mixed breed named Boswell. I took him to classes for almost a year. The instructor, Seanna O’Neill, saw that I worked hard and wanted to do well, but Boswell was a hard dog for a young person to train. Just before my birthday, she told my Mom about an eight-month old Sheltie that needed a home. So I got Bounder for my 11th birthday. It was a real surprise! At our first trial, we had eight clean runs. She’s a good dog — she’s very consistent and she loves to please.

The biggest challenge with Bounder was confidence. She had been attacked by a terrier and was afraid of people and other dogs so we had to work hard at socializing her.  Bounder also had a really hard time with contacts.  I accidentally taught her to creep all the way to the bottom, so eventually I switched to running contacts. I used stride regulators and muscle memory over about three or four months. She hasn’t missed an A-frame contact and she’s only missed the dogwalk once or twice.  To win at the world championship level, most dogs have running contacts or extremely fast stopped contacts. As agility gets faster, most dogs will need to have running contacts.

It was so exciting to get out on the floor, even just to walk the courses, with so many people cheering in the stands. My best moment was when Chase won his individual standard round.  I also liked how the Medium team worked well together. We walked the course together and pulled together as a team. When we came in fourth we were really happy.  Watching the other Canadians run and cheering for my teammates was almost as exciting as running myself.  One neat thing about this year’s Championship was that they had a huge video scoreboard where they’d replay the first-place dog’s run overlaid with the second-place dog.  The crowd was even bigger this year because the location was so close to the border of several other countries.
How did you prepare for world competition?

Our team captain sent out some training exercises for us to do. We were to video ourselves and send the video to other team members. We also practiced courses from the FCI judges (see page 10). For instance, one judge puts a lot of pullthroughs and serpentines in her courses so we had an idea of what the challenges would be.  In Europe, agility is so intense — everyone’s so fit and athletic and they run really fast. You can tell that the people take it seriously as a real sport. Also, their courses are a lot bigger and longer and you have to run from one end of the arena to the other. So, after being there, I’ve started to take my own physical preparation for agility more seriously. This year I had a personal trainer to teach me sprinting so I was faster and I could keep up with my dog. It did work — at Worlds there were a few spots where you had to be ahead of your dog and I was able to get there. To prepare the dogs, I did agility three or four times a week and other days I would run them or take them to the park to throw a ball. I usually give the dogs a full week off before big events to avoid injuries and keep them fresh and more excited to run. Most of us had individual coaches, although the Ontario and Quebec people did get together for a few practices. I mostly trained on my own this year, although I went to a Greg Derrett seminar and did private lessons by email with Susan Garrett. I sent videos to her for her feedback.

I’d like to go back to Worlds and end up on the podium with Chase.

Consistency. Many people let their dogs get away with a lot. When you tell your dogs to stay, they need to stay. I also encourage people to work hard at drive, speed and toy motivation. I wish I’d done that with Bounder. Before Worlds I just wanted to run clean to get the Q. Now I push for speed.
========================================================================================================================================