only over winter

The noise is even worse indoors!

Yeah and how! I dabbled in Agility for about a year and got several placings, but it is not for me............. flyball I would not touch as I do not believe my dogs are physically suited to it.

not with agility.imo thats a silly comment!!

re flyball...been there done that..soz,it is not a skilled sport dont see why that is so offensive to peeps..months to train? wtf? :

not with agility.imo thats a silly comment!! until u have competed i dont think u can say that

Not silly at all, ANYONE can PARTICIPATE in agility with little or no training.

And I have actually competed (and won) with two dogs

There is a vast difference between PARTICIPATING in sports and actually COMPETING.

So my statement still stands! Been there, done that.

SKILLED dogs and handlers are FANTASTIC to watch and I was a member of a ring party at a Champ show and I was amazed at the handling and the dogs.

However, that is the top of a very, very large pyramid.

I stood to the side of a box during a competition once and was horrified at the way the dogs were hitting the box so would never contemplate taking part.

I know agility has it's risks which is why my dogs regularly see a chiropractor, have the best food I can afford and are kept fit for purpose. Ironically, a shoulder injury that has kept one of my dogs on the lead for the past few months was not incurred doing agility but running around the exercise area! In twelve years, I can't remember any of my dogs injuring themselves actually taking part.

ok you can train a dog to do flyball in very little time, but its very rare for a dog to have a natural turn without training, this is what takes the time, i start training my pups at 10 months, i do not beleive they are finished with their training till they are 18 months, when they can run in open, so yes, months!

It is interesting isn't it (perhaps we should not be hijacking this thread) but the perception v reality of injury during sports is always coming up, especially in one of my sports, eg Working Trials, where novices are always worried about the 6ft scale.

In 20 years of competing I have never known a dog injured on the jumps, most do themselves in at exercise as you say!

When it first started I trained one of my Obedience/sheep trained dogs to do it in one session of less than an hour & he was fast. However the risk of injury with a hyped up dog hitting the lever/box(as it was then)& continuing to run due to the high level of adrenalin was too great for me & IMHO it is actually worse now than then as the speed of the dog is faster & the dogs hit the box far harder

Hey ho each to their own.

Still wouldn't recommend the collar, far too much damage can be done with collars high on a dogs neck under the ears-especially if used by a novice owner

Melin was competing at agility and getting places 4 mths after I had him----he was a rescue collie x retriever. George learnt even faster but had steering problems in strange places---she steered towards the food stands

I did a working trial at about the same time with Merlin and was stupid enough to try the stays---which I knew we hadn't got. He was at the time very worried at being left anywhere so actually mega stupid thing to do! However he did do the rest adequately---although the send away was a complete fluke and luckily was done from one cone to another so I sort of practised on the way out to the first one!

I have always thought it would make an interesting challenge programme on TV to let trainers choose a rescue dog and get it to competition level at various sports.

rune