#agility dog

[fawnduu]

Please enjoy my dog making me eat my words at the agility trial today.

[theadventurek9]

This run had a bunch of rear crosses and it just flowed smooth.

[hadissima]

Good girl at the agility trial! Won first place in grade 3 medium height 🥰

[zeldathesheltie]

Love running with her 😍

[feralhound]

I may not be bringing home any ribbons, but I’m bringing home the biggest prize every time 🥰

She loves this game!

[carasueachterberg]

One Special Dog.

Today is the first day of Stela’s real life. The life in which she will never have puppies again. She will never be thrown away again. Now we can find her a real family—one that will value this special dog. And I mean it when I say special. I keep telling people that she’s really special. And they all say, “But you think every dog is really special.” Which I do. But Stela? Continue reading…

[blueboyluca]

Small dogs are the best!!!!

[cutewebgraphics]

[lloonlloon]

My beautiful dog in my beautiful car with all her beautiful ribbons and she is so soggy and pathetic and wants to go home right now very bad

[pawsitivevibe]

Bree, the 13-year-old superdog, had her last competitive agility run at AAC Nationals recently. Happy Retirement, Bug dog!

Photo by Nancy Miller DVM.

[fayeandknight]

Getting there with distance on the weaves.

[twobigears]

more flying fur appreciation

📷 Happy Kampa Photography

[sidetongue]

I sat them in front of a log and then released them didn't even cue them to jump, and moby ATE that leap!!

[release-the-hound]

as a havanese owner, what would you say their energy levels are like? trainability? grooming needs? looking into getting small dogs in the future and havanese are on the list of possibilities

I think part of the reason Havanese are so wonderful for so many people is that their energy levels are extremely variable. A well bred Havanese should match its energy levels to its owners for the most part. There are days where I have only taken Whim outside to potty, and spent the rest of my time sick in bed, and she has happily cuddled up next to me and slept by my side. But she has also happily galloped alongside me for a 5km run, and been eager for more. Ultimately what Havanese want more than a specific amount of activity, is to be doing activity with their person.

Of course, I always celebrate doing more with your dog. I try to give Whim at least a 20 minute walk daily. Along with minimum 5 minutes dedicated training session and a food puzzle for enrichment. Often I am able to do more than that.

(One if my favorite off-leash adventures with Whim. A 3 hour walk through unusually deep snow. So many sniffs and lots of excellent recalls!)

When my sister died, I was frequently doing less, for weeks. And she didn't devolve into a frustrated barking mess, didn't chew up my apartment, she was a little bored, but she was never miserable. She just lay in my bed, by my side, day after day, until I was ready to face the world again.

(I cannot overstate how good Whim is at cuddling. If there was an international competition for it, she'd win it every year.)

I really think for disabled people, Havanese have the ideal energy level. You can meet their base needs fairly easily, but if you are up for adventure they're always ready to come along for a ride.

(Whim travels frequently on airplanes with me, and is always complimented on her good behavior.)

Grooming needs are the sticking point for many people, unfortunately. While Havanese are genrtically capable of producing a short coat, it's against the breed standard, and so I don't know of anyone intentionally breeding for that.

For me, a non-shedding dog is worth extra grooming, but I know that's not the case for a lot of people. I have Whim shaved about every 4 to 6 months. This means that I go over her coat to comb out any mats about once a week, and I trim the fur out of her eyes on occassion. But other than that, I dont worry about grooming. I bathe her when she's stinky and trim her nails when they get long, which you need to do with every dog. I know @girlhorse keeps Enzo in a much fuller coat. If you want to keep a fuller coat, she might be willing to talk about the grooming experience.

It's also worth noting that due to their small size, combing Whim's fur is like, a 20 minute process.

(I often miss Whim's coat from when I kept her long. She was so unbelievably adorable.)

Havanese are my FAVOURITE dogs to train bar none. I'm not a professional trainer in any sense of the word, but between group classes and my job I have seen how a lot of dogs learn. @thelittlespanielthatcould and I often compare Havs to a CKCS with a little more spunk. They are very clever and very eager to work with you, but when they have an opinion they make it clear.

Whim can be entirely focused on me for an hour long lesson. But she won't do work she's not fairly compensated for. Personally, I like a dog that won't let me push them around. If it's a hot day and I haven't given Whim enough water breaks, she'll march herself over to her bowl whenever she damn well pleases. If I'm not using a high enough value treat, she will take it from my hand and spit it on the ground. I like these things because I like dogs that set their own boundaries. I want my dog to tell me when she is tired or thirsty, when I'm not rewarding enough, when she's frightened. Because I get clear feedback from her on what I'm doing wrong, I can alter my methods very quickly to keep us in sync. I like that my dog can tell me something so clearly and I can say back to her "ok, I'm listening."

Whim does very well in Rally when I can afford the classes. She loved agility. Havanese also make great trick dogs. They have amazing handler focus (once they mature). They love spending time with you, so they love training. You just have to be fair to them. I guess I'd describe them as eager to engage, but not eager to please. She wants to spend time with me, she wants to play my games, but she isn't afraid to stand her ground if she's not having fun. Training her brings me so much fucking joy. Even writing about it now has put a smile on my face.

(Whim and I had so much fun in agility. She loved the tunnels so much she used to go off course just to run them a second or third time. Until I started bringing out the big guns (cheese) and suddenly she was an angel again lol.)

Realistically, no breed is ever going to be ideal for every person on the planet. But 2 words come to mind when I think of Havanese. Fexible: they thrive in many different living situations, energy levels, and activities. And Communicative, about their needs, their desires, their fears, their pain. They make it easy for dog owners to figure out what to do. For these reasons, I think Havanese match well with a lot more people than the average dog breed.

Whim has been my best friend for more than a decade. I have never second-guessed my decision to bring her into my life. I wake up every day knowing that I am profoundly loved. In my brightest moments I picture a future of adventure unfurling before us. In my darkest, her joy reminds me how to find my own.

TL,DR: Get a Havanese.

[blueboyluca]

This dog is in pain. It is not happy at the startline despite the commentary, it looks extremely uncomfortable. Its movement is not healthy and it avoids obstacles. This handler should not have run this dog and they eliminated because it was not able to do the course.

It’s important to not let our desires about the sport trump our dogs’ comfort and safety.

[coffee-mage-sans-caffeine]

This is Benton. Benton is taking a shrimp nap after a hard day of totally breaking his agility teacher. But wait, you say, how did he break his teacher?

Benton has struggled with hind end awareness, which is dangerous for obstacles like the dog walk, a high, narrow bridge. If a dog on the dog walk turns wrong on it or forgets they have a hind end, they can have a nasty fall and get hurt. Fortunately, we have an excellent agility teacher who teaches backing up onto a platform to teach them to be aware of their feet.

First you teach them to back up. For 6-8 months, Benton and I worked almost daily on teaching him to go backwards on command. No matter what I did, for months, he sat down and visibly fretted, didn't try to back up, even though I've watched him climb stairs backwards. Finally he started reversing!

Next, you introduce a board or other contrasting texture so that they learn to target the object backwards with their hind feet. You repeat this until you see them searching for the board with their little leggies. Once he could reverse, he started looking for the board quite quickly and graduated to platforms.

Sounds successful, right? Why would this break his teacher? Sure, he went slow, but he can do it, right?

Well, there's one more piece to the puzzle. Eventually you have to get them onto a narrower platform because they need to aim. They need to be able to find the platform with their feet and steer towards them.

Benton goes backwards in circles. He cannot go straight at all. He just turns like a baffled Roomba until he finds the platform by accident or I call him off, reset him, and start again.

Today his teacher admitted defeat. He knows he needs to have his feet on the platform. He knows to look for it. He cannot go straight, even after a year. After thirty years of training agility, having her students be the best in the state at contact obstacles like the dog walk, she has admitted that he will not progress further so we're going to stop this exercise and move on to the next steps of agility.

He has broken her and I love him.