[Michael Romanos]

Last Wednesday evening the local dog training centre had a special game organised for the top agility dogs in the club. The game is called agility pool (as in snooker/billiards) and it required dogs to go over a red (hurdle) before 'sinking' a coloured which had different points depending on where they were sited and the degree of difficulty. All three reds were together at one end of the ground. So it was red -coloured- red-coloured -red-coloured and then doing a circuit of all the coloureds. Time was a factor as was completing all the obstacles perfectly and not being disqualified for your dog doing the wrong obstacle.

OUr club has world class agility dogs and handlers, but little Taylor and rookie me finished second. We scored 43 points out of a possible 51, didn't make one error and did the course in a tick over 60 seconds. For each red-coloured sequence, I chose Taylor to go over the big dogs A-frame twice and the cross over once. The trick is in getting your dog to return with you as fast as possible to a red hurdle from a distance without taking on ay other obstacle on the way to it or back.
We finished with a real quick 12-pole weave.

So here is a game which Taylor can excell at. Wish it was an official competition event. The Agility Pool is going to be repeated by our club in September in front of a large crowd at a fair as a demonstration of agility. So last Wednesday was a a kind of dress rehearsal.