A History of Dog Agility

Photo courtesy of Mark Solinger and The American Kennel Club

Dog agility is a very popular K9 sport. Today, there are many national competitions in the US, one of the most respected being the Westminster Masters competition, as well as international competitions, mainly one you may have seen online recently, the World Agility Open (WAO). The WAO is a competition with many different events, in which the dogs and their handlers compete while representing their team, similar to the World Cup or the Olympics. This year, the WAO took place September 17-21. In the team overall scores, Germany took gold, silver went to the Czech Republic team, and England won bronze. 

While people have been training their dogs to navigate obstacles forever, dog agility as we know it today started at the world-renowned Crufts Dog Show in 1978. John Varley was tasked with creating something to entertain the audience at that year's show. Like many dog trainers of the time, Varley also worked with horses. He drew some inspiration from horse shows. In fact, the two are still quite intertwined today, as many agility events take place in horse arenas because the surface is designed to be safe for jumping animals.

While Crufts has had some form of agility since the show in 1978, due to the showcase's massive success, there wasn't an American Kennel Club (AKC) sanctioned competition until 1994. However, we can see that word of the sport had already spread from the fact that in that very first competition held by the AKC, 192 dogs competed. 

Overall, there are a lot of high-stakes competitions and very intricate strategic parts to canine agility, but the important thing is still the dog and handler relationship.

If you would like to learn more about how dog agility works, here is a good overview: https://www.akc.org/expert-advice/sports/agility-competition-101/