AGILITY
When agility was created, the only sport activity in Italy involving man and dog (except hunting which is not a sport) was utility and defence: therefore it was natural for some pioneers to go from this discipline to the new born agility. In the slow conversion to agility they carried along the traditional obedience conduction, that is with the dog on the handler’s left-hand side, and also the spirit with which working with the dog was carried out, what ever it was. You could see dog facing hurdles only if lead on the left by the handler, because of the rigid training received, and without being fast. That approach also led them to face the areas only by obedience, where the dog had to slow down and go down to "ground" at the hurdle, often slowing down before necessary in order to please the owner. Slalom was carried out on the left as well, with the dog moving between poles under commands "go" and "come" (literal translation), according to whether it had go move outward or towards the handler’s side. The "eldest" Italian agility fanciers would certainly remember the Norwegians in European contests, when agility had already undergone a certain development, facing the paths only running with the dog on the left-hand side, and therefore going a longer way than their dogs! An Italian example was a man called Totò "the Marathon man" who used to lead that way. The dog approaching this discipline were mainly those historically used in utility trials, so German shepherds, Dobermans and so on. After a few years the training and leading techniques changed, together with the new generations of dogs among which the remarkable border collies, today perhaps the most popular ones because of their speed and docility qualities. We have moved from a vision where the handler was physically indicating to the dog where to go to the idea by which the dog has to know the obstacles and to be able to go on its own. The "sending" command was taught, that is the ability of the dog to carry out path sequences without the handler on its side, but only under vocal indications and partially gesticulation. Running was decreasing until, in some cases, leading at a distance, where the handler was in the path and with little movements sent the dog on to the whole path. That type of conduction was very much spectacular and thought it was good for a certain period of time, until it was realized that with the increasing path difficulties, mistakes increased too. Moreover the dog was slowed down, because it had to face difficult areas correctly without direct help by the handler. The conduction was becoming more static and "from behind". What changed again the conduction was once more the comparison with foreign people, mainly French, at the world championships. In those competitions, indeed, we could see winners being the pairs with handlers running a lot, who would always be ahead of the dog in critical moments, and having therefore an advantage in facing difficulties because able to close the wrong way physically and automatically sending the dog to the right one. In that way the dog was always led without losing speed. That conduction required more work on jumps to avoid the dogs, by too much eagerness, pushing down the poles and getting penalties. In recent years this working method spread out in our country, without eliminating the conduction with the so-called "back cuts", which is still effective if well interpreted and sometimes more appropriate in certain paths. From the comparison with other countries another teaching was received: whereas in Italy we always looked for higher speed, meaning pure speed, we have realized that often the fastest dog is not the one with best spurt, rather the dog that loses less time, that is the dog that turns with shorter trajectories and that is more rapid in contact areas. It is mainly in the latter ones that much work has been carried out, following the French model represented by Ms. Christine Charpentier with her border collie, Loch Mac Leod. They are a myth in the agility world for the run areas, and in particular for the catwalks that Mac faces in acceleration from beginning to end, thanks to which they won two consecutive editions of the World Championship, in 1999 and 2000. Having good areas is indeed fundamental for being in the first places of agility paths, in that the preparation and the technique is in relentlessly evolving since the agility was first practiced. One more note on paths: once obstacles were arranged on the field making 90° or 180° angles, or angles that left an easy trajectory for the dog, whereas now very often we find areas with "twisting" obstacles: there the handler has to work much on his position and on his leading indications not to waist precious seconds of time. Finally, in twenty years of agility we have slightly gone back to where we started…and god knows where we will be in the future!
Nicola Giraudi
By concession of:
Your Cart is currently empty.
