Dog Breeds for Agility / Border Collies

Bedava Online Çeviri

Savvy, Dash and I all had a great time at the Zsofi Biro agility seminar yesterday. Thanks to Zsofi for teaching, Ersel for organizing and bringing some jumps/weaves, and Tugba for providing most of the equipment, including great contacts. (Contacts are something I only have the privilege of seeing once a year or so!)

The only bad news is that I noticed a worrying trend. Practically everybody in Turkey that has attended a 1-day agility seminar is running out to get a Border Collie. 6 out of 14 dogs present were Border Collies, with one (a very sweet girl) imported just a day before the seminar. More Border Collies were waiting in Izmir for their turn at the Friday seminar.

Border Collies have the potential to do approximately 10% better in sports than other breeds (not 100% better, which many assume) But ONLY if their trainers have years of competition experience. In the hands of a new competitor, the Border Collie is one of the most difficult and unsuccessful breeds in competition.

As it turns out, much of the Thursday seminar was spent trying to chase after dogs that were running away to visit or attack other dogs. (It is difficult to impress anyone if your dog is the “world’s smartest breed” but won’t stay or come on command!)

Getting a Border Collie as your first agility dog is like buying this tractor to mow this garden:

That’s because BCs are also one of the most hyperactive, aggressive, reactive and obsessive-compulsive breeds. Many are dog-aggressive, people-aggressive, or both. They are often unpredictable in competition (knocking bars, spinning, chasing light beams, etc.) Other breeds get a qualifying agility score 20-40% of the time. Border Collies qualify only 5-10% of the time. (Advanced competitors accept this because when the dog does qualify, it often wins a lot of AKC “MACH points”).

I would like to offer the following suggestions for alternatives to the Border Collie:

Sharon's RECOMMENDED breeds for a first competition dog (that can also win the World Championship):

Most gun-dog breeds (not Labs or Chessies), Border Terriers, Shelties, Mini Poodles, Papillons.

Shelties have won as many FCI world championships as Border Collies! The USA and Canadian agility teams usually have 8 Shelties (S, M) and 4 Border Collies (L).

NOT RECOMMENDED:

Labs, Chessies, most terriers, hounds, herding breeds, guard-dog breeds, brachycephalic breeds.

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This table shows the group at the agility seminar yesterday. Red shows it is from my “not recommended for inexperienced competitors” list, green from my “recommended” list:

Ignoring Savvy & Atom--who have competition-experienced owners-- two-thirds of the remaining dogs were from the not-recommended list.

Another thing to consider is that there are three height classes at the World Championships, and Turkey right now has:

1 - S (Dash)

0 - M

20 - L

Therefore, everybody will be competing together for 4 spots on the Turkish "team large" while we have no small or medium team. Since there are only a few people in Turkey doing agility, isn't it better for us to train 4 small, 4 medium and 4 large dogs... and then we can ALL go to the World Championship someday? Let's see some Paps, Border Terriers and Shelties join Turkey's agility community!