I do agility with my aussie mix, Graham. He's not real fast but he's very in-tune with me. He's very accurate. He hits the "target zones" on the teeter, dog walk and aframe every time! I have to be careful with my body movements because he gives me his full attention at all times. If I so much look at the wrong obsticle he heads towards the obsticle that I look at!

I have Graham's first "match" next Sunday. We will compete for ribons, but it's still considered a "fun match" and not the real thing. Practice I guess. Graham will be trying for his USDAA novice title soon I think. He's ready but I still have some trouble with my handleing, especially crossing in front and changing sides. We are in competitive level class now.

We do it for fun, and because Graham is getting older (he's around 8 years old) and I have already done quite a bit of formal training with him and I wanted to try something fun to keep him happy and mentally stimulated. I recomend it for aging dogs (as long as they are reasonably fit and sound and their weight is not too high) because it's so much fun. It's not formal and that's what makes it so fun...the dog could do the teeter instead of the dogwalk and the weaves instead of the shoot and it's still fun!

I have never mentioned this before but there is this group in Michigan called "Rock & Roll K9" that is a performance group which does all sorts of performance shows at festivals & carnivals throughout MI. They do fun things like high jump competitions, speed course competitions, flyball, musical rugs (just like musical chairs except with small rugs instead of chairs and the owners have to walk their dogs around several rugs, when the music stops, the dogs have to rush to a rug and do a down. The dogs who don't make it to a rug in time lose, and the last dog remaining wins). It's all done for the audience. It's just a fun group, and all of the shows/games are done to really cool old music (oldies) hence the name "Rock & Roll K9. Anyway, they need dogs to join the group and so Graham and I have an audition this coming Wednesday! I am really excited but nervous, the shows we do will be infont of large crouds and I have stagefright