There are three levels with in each class; novice, open and excellent. The courses get progressively harder going from novice to open to excellent, the time allowed to complete the course gets shorter and you get to make fewer mistakes. To move from one level to another, you have to get three qualifying runs (called legs in trial lingo). When you complete novice you get your NA title for standard and your NAJ title for Jumpers with Weaves (frequently called Jumpers). When you get your third legs in open, you get your OA (Standard) and OAJ (Jumpers). After your first three legs in Excellent, you get your AX (Standard) and AXJ (Jumpers). The you move to Excellent B classes and work for your MX which requires 10 qualifying legs in Standard and your AXJ which requires 10 qualifying runs in Jumpers. If you still have any money or your dog has any energy left you can try for your MACH (the agility championship). To get a MACH you and your dog need to qualify in both excellent standard and jumpers at the same trial twenty times. Qualifying in both classes on the same day is called a "double Q" or a "QQ." You also need to earn 700 points, which is done by running under time in a qualifying run.

Selli and I are not planning on a MACH, but we hope to get a MX and a MXJ (we hope, we hope). It is early days yet, heck we don't have any excellent legs yet so talk about a MX or MXJ is quite premature.

In this blog, I plan to recount our tales of agility, obedience (which we are also attempting) and dogs in general. I hope you enjoy our journey.

Last weekend Selli and I earned our final leg in Open Jumpers with Weaves and so will move up to excellent at our next agility trial. We moved into Excellent Standard in November. We are not really ready for excellent, but hopefully we will get some qualifying runs this spring. However, we are prepared to do alot of non-qualifying runs in the process.

For any sane person reading this (read non-agility person), I will briefly try to explain the last paragraph. Agility is a dog-sport where the dog and its handler negotiates a course designed by a judge, trying to have a clean run (a run with out any points taken away) in as short a time as possible. There are many different organizations like the AKC, CPE, NADAC and USDAA that hold agility trials. Each has its own rules, obstacles, classes and titles.

Selli and I have chosen to compete in AKC trials only due to time constraints, that is I should be working on weekends but sneak off about one weekend a month to play agility. AKC has three classes for agility. the "Standard" class includes jumps, tunnels, weave poles, and contact obstacles (A-Frame, Dog Walk, Teeter and the table). The "Jumpers with Weaves" or JWW class just has jumps, tunnels and weave poles. These two classes have a designated course designed by the judge and your performance is judged by how well you do that course. The third class is called "FAST" or "Fifteen and Send Time." In this class there are point values assigned to different jumps, tunnels and contact obstacles and a "Send challenge" which is a series of obstacles which the dog must perform in the correct sequence at a specified distance from its handler. All agility trials have Standard and JWW classes and some have all three classes.