My name is little Sumo and I love agility

I started training my first dog in agility less than 2 years ago and started competing with him about 14 months ago. Even though I've had incredible success in a short time I still consider myself very inexperienced and a beginner in the sport. In this blog I hope to share some of the challenges I faced right at the start and how I overcame them and how agility transformed my thinking not only about dog training but about life in general. I will not stay a beginner forever, but while I still am one, I hope to leave some breadcrumbs along the path to give you the direction I felt I didn't have. I hope to continue sharing the challenges, frustrations, aha moments and joys I encounter on my journey and encourage you to do the same, because we learn so much more by sharing information with others. Before I get to the juicy agility training bits, I have to first give you some background on how it all started for me.

Almost 3 years ago my son Juan, was 4 years old and we wanted to buy him a puppy. One tends to gravitate to what you know and since I had a Staffordshire Terrier when I grew up I convinced my wife that this is a breed that is very child and people friendly, sometimes too friendly.

We had no aspirations of showing a dog in the breed ring and didn't really know anything about dog sports so pedigree and papers were not in the least important to us. My wife, Madeleine, went onto Gumtree, a local on-line ad website, and saw the cutest puppy that was supposedly a pure bred Staffie.

A couple of days later we had the puppy delivered to us, and then a transforming journey started. We decided to call him Sumo, the name of one Madeleine's previous dogs, because we expected him to have typical stocky Staffie wrestler-like features.

 

At that point in time, we knew very little about dog training and the most prominent dog trainer on TV was Cesar Milan, whom we watched quite regularly. I'll revisit my views on his training methods later, but it is important to note that what was true for me is probably true for millions of pet owners spanning the globe - we have a very limited exposure to good dog trainers in mainstream media, and this is surely affecting how we treat dogs.

I took Sumo to a local puppy class presented by Gill Painter at Zimzala, a local dog training facility. I will always be thankful to Gill for helping me make that connection between fun and relationship building with Sumo. She was such a relaxed trainer and emphasized playing way more than obedience and there was nothing that I looked forward to more than driving to puppy class on a weekly basis and watching how Sumo interacted with all the other dogs.

I also remember Gill making a comment about his looks not being very typically Staffie. As he grew older I realised that he wasn't a pure-bred Staffie and I was deeply disappointed at the time. As a result of this I had his DNA tested by MuttMix and the results confirmed that he is a cross with over 75% (Level 1) of his DNA being Staffordshire Terrie (suggesting that he had one pure-bred parent) and 10-19% (Level 4) of his DNA being Jack Russel Terrier. Judging by the picture of his father, he was probably the pure-bred Staffie. But, whatever mix he is, he is the most handsome boy imaginable, and if you add all his other special abilities one really wishes he was a breed!

Sumo was a highly sociable and energetic little puppy. In one or two classes, Gill put out some agility equipment. Sumo loved it and where other dogs ran around jumps and avoided tunnels, Sumo naturally jumped over them and run into tunnels. At that point Gill suggested I do agility with Sumo and then I asked her, "What is agility?". Knowing how obsessed and addicted I am to the sport know, this is probably funny to hear but we all got to start somewhere.

After puppy class, I completed an obedience class with Sumo and in August 2012 when he was 8 months old, I started an agility class with Mariann Wilson at Zimzala. I remember how impressed she was with his speed and she emphatically told me I must compete with him. I replied with reluctance, not yet willing to commit to something serious and preferring to have a nice social training class every week. This was probably the only time Mariann was emphatic and she never put any pressure on me to train more or harder, she gave me the kindest and most gentle introduction to agility any beginner could hope for. She supported me in the beginning and let me experience the process for myself and she also let me struggle to find some of the answers myself, which was very frustrating but also rewarding. Thank you Mariann!

It didn't take many agility lessons to realise an amazing journey was lying ahead of us, and as with puppy classes I was looking forward to my weekly agility trainіng more than anything else. Something life changing was about to happen, I just had to let it happen.