Northern Virginia has a lot of talented dogs. At least 16 peppy pooches, to be exact, will travel with their proud owners and trainers to the American Kennel Club National Agility Championships this weekend in Tampa, Fla., to compete among 750 of the quickest, fleet-of-foot furry companions in the country.
“Agility is essentially an obstacle course the dog and handler run through together,” said Barbara Bicksler of McLean, who will be making the trip to Tampa with her 7-year-old Shetland Sheepdog, Sydney.
“The dog takes its cues from the handler and the course is usually made up of jumps and tunnels,” she said.
In competition, the dogs run two courses: a standard course that includes various obstacles, like ramps, jumps, tunnels, poles to weave through and other items; and a jump course that consists of jumps, tunnels and the weave poles, she said.
In order to win a position at the national championship, Bicksler said the dogs have to obtain four double queues in the course of a year.
“A double queue is when a dog is qualified in the standard and jumper course in the same day, which is difficult to do because the dogs only run a certain number of times,” she said. “Plus, they need to win a total of 150 speed points during the year, and those are won by beating the average time on the course. Every second under the time is a point.”
The dogs are classified into five divisions, based on the height of the jumps on each course.
“My dog competes in the 12-inch class and typically runs a course at a speed of about four yards per second,” Bicksler said. “That’s really fast. We compete every weekend, or maybe about 40 weekends out of the year, so it was easy for us to earn our qualifying credits.”
This won’t be the first major competition for Sydney, who was a member of the AKC World Agility Team last year, and competed at the AKC Nationals last year as well.
“She really likes competing in this sport,” Bicksler said. “She gets it when we’re at a big event and she enjoys it. If she didn’t, we wouldn’t be doing this.”
BICKSLER IS HOPING FOR a better performance from Sydney at this year’s competition. “We were awful last year, we didn’t place at all,” she said. “There’s a mental game for the handler as well, and I wasn’t in the game at all last time. We had some nice runs but we also had some faulted ones.”
Another of her dogs, Max, a poodle, was the first dog Bicksler trained and competed with, but won’t be participating in this competition.
“He qualified for Nationals last year but didn’t go because he’s 11 years old,” she said.
Another Sheltie, Abby, still competes but enjoys playing Flyball more than running a course. “Flyball is a team sport with four dogs on a team. Each dog has to go over four jumps onto springboard bases, and the last one releases a tennis ball that the dog has to catch and run back to the starting point,” Bicksler said.
RICH BRADLEY, A VETERINARIAN from Fairfax, will be taking his dog Abraham to the competition this weekend, which will be the first time the 3 1/2-year old Golden Retriever.
“We started competing when he was 12 or 13 months old. You can’t start competing until you have the ability to go around a course without too much fumbling,” Bradley said.
Bradley and Abraham enrolled in several courses to get the basic training accomplished, as all dogs that participate in this competition need to be in the “Excellent B” grade. “The dogs have to compete and be qualified three times in the open category before they can go into the Excellent A category, and they have to continue to compete and win to achieve the Excellent B category,” he said.
Luckily, Abraham is “very attentive” to Bradley when they run the courses. “He doesn’t tend to stray off course because he’s focuses on what I’m wanting him to do.”
Even the most minor variation of running a course can cause a dog to be disqualified or lose points, he said. “If a dog is running so far ahead of its handler that it stops to look back to find him, that can ruin a course. The good thing about Goldens is they don’t like to be on their own, they like to be with you.”
Of course, that means any wrong step by Bradley could cause a mistake for Abraham too.
“Once he gets on the equipment, he rarely makes a mistake … if he does, it’s usually my mistake,” he said.
At the Golden Retriever National competition in California this year, Abraham won first place in the 20-inch division in the jumper and weavers course. “He was probably third or fourth overall for the two days,” Bradley said. “He has a great time doing this because once we take off, he’s ready to go.”
Bradley will be joined by his wife, Leslie, whom he lovingly refers to as his “leash caddie. Sometimes she videotapes the competition for us,” he said.
ONE LOCAL WOMAN WILL have her hands full, taking not only two of her own dogs to the competition, but a friend’s dog as well. Laura Ruben of Potomac, Md., is sending her Shetland Sheepdog, Jason, with Michelle Beardsley of Leesburg, because Ruben is in Ohio welcoming her grandchild.
“I’m a professional trainer, so I was aware of agility and did a little with a mixed breed dog I adopted from an animal shelter,” Beardsley said. Her two Australian Sheepdogs, a 2 1/2-year-old named Chai and a 7-year-old named Willow, will be going to the competition as well.
“The courses are always different although the obstacles are the same,” she said. “We enjoy the challenge and the spontaneity of running with the dogs as well as the social camaraderie.”
Willow has been competing for five years and was ranked as the number one Australian Shepherd in the AKC world for three years, Beardsley said, as well as being ranked in the top five in the country in 2004. “Even with her accomplishments, she’s always training and refining her abilities,” she said.
The fun isn’t just for the owners and handlers, she said: the dogs enjoy it as much as their people.
“The dogs wouldn’t do it if they didn’t enjoy it,” she said. “They’re off the leash and you’re guiding them, but Willow can run a typical obstacle course in 42 seconds and a jump course in between 26 and 28 seconds. There’s no way she’d run that fast if she didn’t enjoy it.”
For Jason and Chai, this will be their first national competition and the fourth for Willow, she said. “Willow runs in the 12-inch class, Jason runs in the 16-inch class and Chai runs in the 20-inch class,” she said.
The main focus is not only to run the course quickly, but cleanly as well.
“In order to make it to the finals, you have to have three clean runs, and the dogs only run each course three times,” Beardsley said. “I think our chances are good if they run fast. Willow’s my best bet.”
The competition takes place Jan. 15 and 16, at the Tampa Convention Center and will be taped to be aired on the Animal Planet network on Feb. 13, at 8 p.m. The network will also air the AKC/Eukanuba National Championships both nights of the competition in February.