Understanding Agility Scoring

By Cheng Bernhardt


Dog agility is a highly popular sport and is fun for the dog, the handler and the spectators. There are quite a few different organizations around the country that host dog agility contests. While each group has their own course designs and scoring guidelines, here is some general information that might help you learn what to expect if you compete.

Generally, you will encounter the same basic obstacles everywhere. Your dog will be expect to navigate several different kinds of jumps, run through weave poles, sit and stay on the pause table, shuffle through tunnels and handle several contact obstacles. These contact apparatus include the a-frame, the dog walk and the teeter totter or see-saw. Practice makes perfect, so set up a dog agility course in your backyard to make it easy to practice every day. All of the dog agility equipment you need can be purchased at Carlson Agility, which sells pause tables, a-frames, tunnels, dog agility jumps, teeters and everything else you would ever need.

Each dog agility group separates dogs into different categories or competition classes, which are based on the size of the dogs, as well as the experience level or the age of the dogs. For each class, there is a specific amount of time allowed for completing the course, and each obstacle must be completed correctly in a certain order. The dog must complete the course without earning a fault. There are time faults given when a dog takes too long to complete the course, as well as many other faults.

You also must navigate all of the obstacles correctly, or other types of faults are given. The contact obstacles must be completed correctly, or your team (a dog and handler form the team) will earn a missed contact fault. If a dog completes the course in the wrong order, this is called an off-course fault. Turning away from an obstacle or pausing for too long in front of an obstacle is a refusal fault. If the dog passes an obstacle, this is called a runout fault. You also will earn faults if you knock down a jump or don't make it in and out of the weave poles correctly.

However, it's not just the dog that has to do his best; the handler also must be following the rules. If the handler appears to be training the dog rather than guiding, sometimes this is consider a training-in-the-ring fault. This is a very subjective type of fault and not applicable for every organization. Bringing a treat or a special toy into the ring also can be penalized. If you touch an obstacle or touch your dog, even if it was by mistake, this is called a handling mistake and a fault is given.

These are just a few typical faults that you might see when you compete. Sometimes you must run a completely clean run with no faults in order to progress in a contest. In other cases, a certain amount of faults might be allowed. Learning about the various faults and obstacles for your specific organization is an important key to success in the world of dog agility.




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