• 24Jun

    Today is bring your dog to work day! Hershey is always with us at work – today she’s helping in packaging to get everyone’s orders out to the UPS man when he comes! (he brings her biscuits!)  Share your pictures of your dog at work (or at home) with us on Facebook, or email them to me at brittany @ affordableagility. com – I’ll add the emailed ones to this post as I get them! (You can send them ‘late’ if you like, I’ll get them up on Monday!)

    Everyone enjoy their day at work, at play, and at home!

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  • 01Sep

    Last months’ contests was one of the best ones ever- so many great stories!  Read through the comments here, it’s a great read!

    This month is Responsible Dog Ownership month, and our contest is about agility dog ownership!

    1. What breed(s) of dog do you have?
    2. Where’d you get them? A breeder, a rescue, they found you?
    3. How much time do you spend training them?
    4. If you could only have one obstacle to work with, what would it be?

    You could win a treat and ball bag, perfect for walks, agility, or working inside. Keep your treats secure, and your pockets clean!

    The winner will be chosen via random number generator on or around October 1st, and announced/emailed on or around the same.

    How to enter this contest:

    If you have never done so before, you must first register your email address on this blog.  We will then notify you if you are a winner of this contest.  You only need to do this once, and you will be good for all future monthly contests (and get priority notification of when they occur)!

    Scroll to the bottom of this page and enter your comment/answer.  Or, if there is no box, click on the “comments” in the upper right corner.

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  • 06Apr

    My dog and I have been in an Agility class since February. Jenna, a rescue saved from euthanasia, ended up being Great Dane/American Foxhound according to a couple DNA tests, so you can imagine she is a tall girl. She has always been the class clown and would rather play with the other dogs or visit with their human moms and dads. However, as she gets closer to age 2, she seems to be focusing more. In fact, amazingly, our instructor said that two dogs in our class are actually very close to being ready for competition – a gorgeous, purebred black standard poodle named Sadie and amazingly, my Jenna, the only mutt in class. (Their human Moms however aren’t quite as ready!)

    We really just joined agility to give high energy Jenna a “job” and to give me some exercise. But she is turning out to be quite a jumper and can successfully handle all the obstacles including the weave poles. (The big problem now is what happens “between” the obstacles. Many of the dogs, including Jenna, are still wanting at times to run their own courses and aren’t following their handler’s lead too reliably yet. Lots of class time is spent dealing with that right now.)

    But, according to our instructor, it looks like Jenna and I may have to start thinking seriously about someday competing. We have both made progress especially in the past couple of months.

    Except when the instructors put out orange cones to mark the obstacles. Jenna thinks these are toys put out just for her and she will grab each one and run with it and forget about doing any agility. She is also a serious chewer and just grabbing the soft plastic cone in her teeth can do damage to the cone.

    How can we keep her from grabbing the cones without affecting her enthusiasm for performing the obstacle? Is there a positive way to teach her to leave the cones alone?

    Thanks for any thoughts!

    Karen (aka FoxyDane)

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  • 02Apr

    Congratulations Melisse! you won the March Madness contest, and the Course Source Book!  Thank you all for your entries.  There’ll be a new contest very soon! ;)

    We have a great sale going on at Affordable Agility, running through Tuesday.  Head over there for all your agility spring needs!

    Sale’s over, but we still have great prices!

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  • 12Feb

    orangetunJack Russels in Agility

    They are fun to run. When it is perfect, it is like flying a little radio controlled airplane or running with a feather on a silken thread. Those are the wonderful fun runs with the Jack Russell Terrier. They are worth all their quirky ways. They love to work and love to play. In fact if they don’t have a job they can be bored as unemployed dogs. They have been used for work for over a hundred years and kept with packs of foxhounds. Everything in the Jack Russell’s profile is life applied to work.Take this compact athletic dog and give it agility and you have one laser beam of a dog to play agility with. They have the capacity to be a true teammate. It is important to know that they were bred to have courage to face a fox below ground. They have the intelligence and the athletic form to be able to follow the fox to ground and dislodge it by barking at it so it would bolt. Their job was to eject the fox by its invasive presence or they would lunge at the fox and hold it at bay until the handler dug to the dog. The other technique to hunt the dog and the hardest, is for the dog to stay with the fox until the handler calls the dog out. Often they are not eager to come out, the fox having the dog’s undivided attention.

    Jack Russell’s name was given to define the dog apart from the popular show ring terrier the Fox Terrier. At one time the Fox Terrier and the Jack Russell Terrier were exactly the same dog. Soon the conformation of the show ring Fox Terrier changed. Russell’s known strain and others breeding working terriers worked their dogs and did not go in the show ring. Russell’s dogs were hunters. Russell himself said the dog should never be a murderer of foxes. He said the intelligence of the dog should prevent him from doing such a crime. Jack Russell was a popular figure in England and was a fox hunting man and a Parson. The dog has not changed in appearance over the years. It is never to be questioned this little dog has courage and needs to meet lots of other dogs early on and be protected from itself. They must be well socialized with lots of people in lots of places. Oddly they have very strong likes and dislikes when it comes to other dogs. Many have been known to go hunting alone because they are hard wired to explore. They will obsess over a caged bird or gerbil. To harness their compulsion and aim their boundless energy to agility can be a lot of fun.

    Continue reading »

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