Our Blog - Friendly Agility day @ Canidélite, Toulouse, France

Most of you have read about Lucy and her "puppy school", which is called Canidélite. She started with individual obedience lessons just after we adopted her, moved to collective courses (obedience training with the added distraction of other dogs) and puppy recess, and now we do a variety of sporting activities (mostly agility). Her agility coach had a special event the other day: a "Friendly" competition. We were able to pick our own teams of 3 dogs, and we went with friends of Lucy ... specifically Maiko the Pomeranian and Redson the Sheltie. There was a little potluck lunch and then a set of competitions. Here is Lucy and her teammates.

The first competition was an individual one, and Tom took Lucy through the course. She was really doing well, and placed 3rd out of 15 dogs (first and second place went to Australian Shepherds, who are crazy-fast!). She almost went into the tunnel after the teeter-totter but Tom was able to get her back on the right path quickly. Then you can hear my little cry of joy when she went through the weave poles PERFECTLY! Near the end, she did miss one jump that she had to go back to ... may have been the difference between 2nd and 3rd place. But overall, we were SO proud of her!

Then a little team competition ... a relay race with water. The team got 3 minutes to run down with a glass, fill the glass, then run back. After emptying the glass of water into a big bottle, hand off to the next dog and repeat. Here are a couple pictures from that little event, and then a video of our team. You can see how fast Lucy goes through the straight-line course ... I can't keep up with her. Of course, every time at the end, she is supposed to just sit up on the table but she jumps directly into the pool instead.

Then another team relay competition, this time the course was split into 3 sections. We decided to have Lucy go first since she would run the fastest through the first 7 obstacles. Then Redson went for the middle part, since he tends be more consistent on the weave poles. Last section was done by Maiko, who is less autonomous and therefore, a bit better in tight sections with lots of turns. It is quite funny if you have the sound on, since Lucy doesn't bark much during her agility course, but Maiko and Redson bark almost constantly.

Some action shots of her run. I really love this first one, since it was timed perfectly to get her fully extended over the jump! This was the final run, which was just for fun. Lucy only missed one jump at the back, although we quickly got her back to go over it, and then she decided to run down the black tunnel, which is not part of the course and actually is a dead end. But back out she came and finished the rest of the course perfectly.

Finally, there was a professional photographer there who was taking pictures and we selected a few to purchase that we thought were the best ones of lucy.