Agility ribbons

For those who don't know, agility is a dog sport for crazy people who have nothing better to do with their time than train their dogs to run obstacle courses. Actually it's a really fun thing to do with a dog, especially a Border Collie like Maggie who loves to have a job. The agility course consists of jumps, tunnels, weave poles, teeter, A-frame and other equipment that you and your dog negotiate at top speed.

I've been doing agility with Maggie for about eight years now, on an off. Although in the past few years it's been more off than on since we kind of got stalled at the "advanced" level in AAC (Agility Association of Canada) and weren't making much progress. Maggie is such a fast dog that I wasn't able to keep up with her on the course, so we were making mistakes and not doing too well.

But today we made a breakthrough in a new type of agility under a different flag--NADAC (North American Dog Agility Council). The courses are run slightly differently and it seems that Maggie can excel at this game. Today was our first NADAC trial and out of six events, Maggie qualified in five, came 1st in three, and 2nd in two. We had a fantastic day! It was so much fun to win some ribbons. I'm very proud of her and can't wait to enter the next big event that will take place here in August.

Here's a photo of Maggie with her proud "owner" and all her ribbons.

This evening we celebrated our success with Thai food at a restaurant in Sidney (by the Sea)... a sweet little town at the north end of the peninsula, then walked down by the harbour and watched the sun set. All in all a great day.