[QUOTE=wendy;7449602]
One thing is, no one does 60 minutes of agility training per day. The dog would break down. Even if you did competitive agility training it’s hard to imagine you’d manage to occupy the dog for more than a few minutes per day plus one hour-long class a week (during which the dog would probably be moving for less than ten minutes total, probably less). Which is why when people happily post they are going to get a very high drive breed and “occupy it” by doing agility you get eye-rolling disbelieving comments. [/QUOTE]
Ummmm… so while I can’t speak for the OP or anyone else, I can tell you that I practice agility 5-6 times a week. Saying you can’t practice every day without breaking your dog down is like saying you can’t ride your hunter 5 or 6 days a week without him breaking down. Sure, if you’re doing 3’6" courses daily he won’t last long, but limited jumping 1-2 days per week and doing flatwork the remaining days of the week is a fine recipe for the typical horse to have a long career. I have absolutely zero reason to believe dogs are different. In fact, I’d argue a dog that is carefully conditioned on a near-daily basis is far less likely to sustain an injury than a weekend warrior dog is. My trainer is literally a veterinarian who treats sports injuries, and she has never once suggested I am overtraining my dogs.
What does my practice look like? I have back-to-back semi private lessons with the two dogs on Mondays, and the remaining days I do my own independent practice sessions (60 minutes total per session for the two dogs together, alternating who I work with so that the puppy is out for 5-7 minutes at a time and the older dog is out closer to 10 minutes). During these sessions we aren’t doing a ton of high impact stuff, but they are definitely working either physically or mentally. To an extent, even sitting in the crate watching the other dog train seems to wear their little brains out.
We do lots of fetch and tug, and depending on the day we do some combination of hind end awareness exercises, crate games, target work, core building exercises on a bosu or exercise ball, heel work, stay proofing, recall-to-heel exercises in motion and standing, low height table proofing, playing with tunnel sends, a few turns on the flat, etc. Maybe twice a week I do a few low height jump drills or contact proofing with my adult dog. Full courses and weaves are in class or trials only. The puppy isn’t jumping, weaving, doing tight turns or any raised contacts, or even sequencing yet… but we still have more than enough to fill the time even without those things. To say that you don’t see how anyone could possibly practice for more than a few minutes a day suggests you may not understand the tremendous intricacies of training a dog that is competing at a national level.
At any rate, I can say that I absolutely practice for more than a few minutes per dog, per day, and our practices definitely wipe my dogs out for at least half the day.
At least for the folks I train with, this sort of schedule is very typical (and I have three friends who have finished MACHs the past two weekends alone, including one MACH2 on a Groenendael). Of course not all agility enthusiasts practice this much, but many serious competitors do.
I may even be wrong in my assumption that this is the sort of work Bicoastal is planning on doing, but since she’s tossing around terms like Invitationals, Nationals, MACH, etc., I suspect she’s thinking the same sort of training program I use. But either way, please know that people who do actual daily agility training that is actual exercise, do exist. Further, I firmly believe near-daily agility training can be done in a sensible fashion that doesn’t break the dog down.
I don’t know who these “average” Belgian owners you know are, but practically all of the Belgian owners I know either do actual work with their dog (SAR for the most part), or do heavy daily exercise and compete in multiple sports with their dog (usually including a protection sport), or have a “wash out” dog that isn’t typical for the breed, or have one of the “show line” turvs that are sometimes described as “golden retrievers in a Belgian suit”. Note the original OP was told by the turv breeders to look for one of these dogs- the show-line turvs might suit her admirably.
The Belgian folks I know are split about equally between doing just agility, and doing multiple dog sports (herding and agility being the most common combination). As far as I know none of them do any protection or SAR work. Several do compete in the breed ring. I could not speak to whether all of these dogs are bench dogs by breeding that happen to moonlight as performance dogs. Perhaps this group of 10 or 12 people would have all failed miserably and been overwhelmed with “real” Belgian dogs. I cannot eliminate this as a possibility.
If I were looking for a dog to hit the top in both obedience/agility, I wouldn’t look at the Belgians for a number of reasons. I’d look at shelties, corgis, poodles, golden retrievers instead.
I personally don’t care much for Belgians either, and I think they’re far from a good pet for the vast majority of people. However, I know enough people (even some who are 60+ years old or very overweight) with well-balanced and successful Belgian performance dogs to make me believe that with a dedicated owner that many can be great sport dogs.
At least to me, Bicoastal sounds like she knows what she’d be getting into, and from what I can tell she would be smart and capable enough to successfully own one (especially since she’s seeking out one from the lower-drive end of the spectrum for the breed). Even if it meant adjusting her training or exercise schedule to accommodate its specific needs.
- ask my two after their morning walk/play session)- but a Greyhound might very well suit you. I have had several retired greyhounds in my CGC classes and they are quick learners once you know their primary and secondary drives. I would go for one
- apparently didnt take them long either.
