Agility is a sport designed to demonstrate a dog’s willingness to work with its handler in a variety of situations. It is an athletic event that requires conditioning, concentration, training and teamwork.

Brooks – Sue Fregien

Dogs and handlers negotiate an obstacle course racing against the clock. Obstacles include the A-frame, dog walk, and teeter (all of which are called Contact Obstacles), weave poles, tunnels, and various style jumps. These obstacles are spread out in the agility ring as a course, designed by the judge, which the dog must perform in the proper order and with less than the allowed number of faults (errors) to earn a qualifying score (“Q”). These Qs are accumulated to earn titles which allow the dog/handler team to progress to the next higher level of competition, with the difficulty of the courses increasing as the levels progress.

Jet – Shirley & Roger LaBarge

One of the challenges of agility is that the courses are never the same from one trial to another, and the handlers must walk through the course to determine their handling strategy for just a few minutes before the dogs begin to run. This means the handlers must take the experiences of their training runs and adapt them to the trial course, while attempting to give the dog clear information for them to successfully negotiate the course – all while the dog is running up to 6 yards per second! Learning to handle well is a lifelong challenge for the agility handler. Being able to give timely commands, and move to give the dog the best information on where to go, is the goal of the agility handler.

Belgian Tervuren excel in agility, as they generally are quick to learn, fast, and agile. They are very responsive to the body language of the handler and, in fact, can be quite opinionated when the direction isn’t quite up to speed for them. Tervs generally LOVE running agility and are often nearly vibrating when waiting on the start line. Their energy and desire to run make running agility incredibly fun and rewarding for their handlers.