Agility
Dog History
Dog
agility is a fairly new sport, created as merely
a demonstration in the late 1970s in the United
Kingdom. It has since spread rapidly around the
world, with major competitions held worldwide.
Its
first documented appearance was as entertainment
at the Crufts dog show in 1978. John Varley,
a committee member from the 1977 show, was tasked
with coming up with entertainment for the audience
between the obedience and conformation competitions.
Varley, who was more familiar with horse sports,
asked dog trainer Peter Meanwell for assistance,
and they adapted jumps and obstacles from horse
steeplechase races to come up with a demonstration
of dogs' natural speed and agility. (By some
oral accounts, there was an earlier demo with
similar intent using playground articles such
as a teeter-totter and a tunnel, although this
has not been documented.)
At
the 1978 Crufts, the demonstration immediately
intrigued dog owners because of its speed and
challenge and the dexterity displayed by the
dogs. People wanted to see more, and indeed wanted
their own dogs to be able to participate. The
demonstration was so popular that it grew into
local, then national, and eventually international,
competitions with standardized equipment. In
1980, The Kennel Club became the first organization
to recognize agility as an official sport with
a sanctioned set of rules. By this time, agility
equipment included some additional elements modified
from the training of police dogs and Schutzhund
competitions, such as the A-frame and the dogwalk.
In
the United States, several people experimented
with dog agility based generally on the KC rules.
In 1985, Kenneth Tatsch founded the United States
Dog Agility Association (USDAA) in Texas and
incorporated a year later. To promote the sport,
USDAA teamed with Pedigree pet food as a sponsor,
and the first Grand Prix of Dog Agility took
place in 1988 at the Astro World Series of Dog
Shows in Houston, Texas.
The
AKC, which for decades had sanctioned dog shows,
obedience trials, and other dog sports was slow
in joining the agility world. In 1994, however,
the AKC belatedly entered the field with its
own very limited range of agility competitions;
at first, each competition had only one standard
numbered course, so each dog had exactly one
run and then was done for the day.
The
United Kennel Club (UKC) introduced its own rules
at about the same time; UKC agility has evolved
into a different kind of sport than that provided
by AKC, USDAA, and international agility organizations,
involving more control of the dog over complicated
obstacles rather than speed and accuracy over
basic obstacles.
In
1995, Canine Performance Events (CPE) was founded
by Linda Eikholt, who preferred an environment
that was less intense and with less rigorous
requirements than those preferred by the USDAA,
yet retained the variety of events and the invitation
for able-bodied dogs of any ancestry to compete.
CPE agility continues to grow in the United States. |
