AgiLEOty!
General Agility Information | Training Information | Obstacle Photo Gallery | Agile Leos | Agility Links

Cosmo

Pat Troise has this to say about her Agile Leo, Cosmo:

Cosmo and I have been doing agility together for two years… except for a few months when he did it by himself. A relatively small and very agile dog, Cosmo caught on quickly to the basics, and then went into the "zoomie" phase. This phase is characterized by several perhaps surprising (for a Leo) behaviors. In one, the dog runs in circles around the handler, taking whatever obstacle is handy at top speed and insisting that you told him to do it. Chasing you around the tire jump instead of going through it is an example of a creative zoomie. He will do his best to convince you that you are chasing him. In the second zoomie behavior, the dog leaves the course at a gallop to buzz the perimeter of the show grounds, telling everyone how much fun he’s having and inviting them to join him in a doggie conga line. In this mode, it is imperative that the dog pretend the handler is invisible, or that the handler’s arm waving and bellowing is just a way to cheer him on, and also hope that the grumpy dogs are all on-leash and their handlers are the forgiving kind.

After some remedial recall work, which is not uncommon to the sport, Cosmo has graduated from a zoomie-berger to a real honest to goodness agility dog. He got his first two legs at USDAA back to back in one trial, and has just gotten his first NADAC leg, all in the standard class and with two firsts and a second place. He can still be a rocket man, and well under course time, but also has his slow days, depending on the weather. If it’s hot out, a wading pool on the show site is essential! If it’s cold out, I’d better move or he will leave me in the dust.

The hardest thing about agility with Cosmo has been responding to the different levels of drive he has at different shows. It took the longest to teach him weave poles, and the shortest to teach him the collapsed tunnel ­ which he adores. We are now working on distance control, in which you send the dog away from you rather than run with him. This is, of course, a complete turnaround from where we started, and Cosmo has let it be known that he is sure I don’t really mean it when I say "go," after all those months of saying "come."

Here is a poem Cosmo wrote when he first discovered that he could leave me in the dust