Canine Athletes Unleash Their Energy at Show

With 20 seconds left on the clock and his best friend panting at his side, Joe Winslow decided to take a gamble: He would go for the 50 extra bonus points.

Shadow Fax, his 5-year-old Shetland sheep dog, seconded the idea.

As an audience of hundreds watched from the stands at the Ventura County Fairgrounds, the sheep dog bounded over hurdles, weaved through closely planted poles and rushed along a 10-inch plank suspended nearly five feet off the ground in an all-out sprint to the finish.

But time was against the man and dog team. Instead of winning the bonus points, they were penalized 10 points for finishing 0.14 seconds late.

Far from being disappointed, Winslow said Friday that he welcomed the chance to rev up for the real competition--the ninth annual Pedigree Grand Prix of Dog Agility championship, to be held for the first time in Ventura through Sunday.

The competition, one of three national dog agility championships this year, is expected to draw more than 200 dog owners from throughout country who, with their canine athletes, have joined a growing number of dog lovers abandoning obedience competition for the more free-form and adventurous art of running their dogs through a complicated obstacle course of hurdles, hoops, ramps, planks, tunnels and see-saws.

Nearly 6,000 additional animals are expected to participate in the third annual Summerfest, a series of three all-breed dog shows for Southern California, which are also being held at the fairgrounds this weekend amid booths hawking everything from personalized doggie mugs to pooch portraits.

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But while prize poodles were being preened by their owners with coiffures that for any human would have been a bad hair day of horrific proportions, the dogs vying for the title of most agile were flexing their muscles, feeling their strides and, their owners say, having a blast doing it.

“They absolutely love it,” said Karen Dembrowski, an accountant from Tarzana as she checked out the competition with her dog, a Belgian Tervuren. “She can’t wait to get into the ring.”

Surrounded by a blur of wagging tails, the dog owners seemed to be equally excited.

“Compared to the general public, people at work think I am crazy,” said Bill Tobin, a 44-year-old insurance agent from Albuquerque, N.M. “But this is my hobby. It is like golf or tennis.”

Tobin and his wife, Kathleen, became hooked on their sport after watching a competition in Paris. Dog agility competitions started in England and didn’t catch on in the United States until the late 1980s.

“I was enthralled,” he said. “We saw the [Eiffel Tower] and the French stuff but the most fun was the dogs.”

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The couple now devote a sizable chunk of their income--at least $5,000 a year--to the sport in travel, entry fees and memberships to training clubs.

But the self-proclaimed dog fanatics were in good company Friday.

A screen printer by trade, Darlene Woz of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., said she started selling T-shirts with dog agility themes to support her habit. And Lisa Dewey of Glendale said she has devoted her life to the sport.

“This is it,” she said. “I have no social life. I have no clothes. I drive an old truck. This is my whole life.”

Like many of the participants, Dewey first learned of agility training while her dog was taking obedience lessons, a more structured and less physically challenging practice in which the dog learns to obey a set of commands.

“It is like taking your dog to the playground,” she said as she escorted her dog, Alley, off the obstacle course. “It is supervised play, just like taking kids to swings or the teeter-totter.”

Winslow, whose dog was disqualified for taking a fraction of a second too long, said the sport is his main form of “entertainment.”

Just off the course, sweaty and out of breath, he likened the exercise for the dogs’ human handlers to a 150-yard sprint.

“I think you have to be a little nuts,” he said. “[But] this is my vacation.”

When not running their dogs, some owners took them to the beach or browsed among a plethora of booths hawking pet products.

Nearby, Leslie Sinis from Temple City frantically fluffed two standard poodles about to compete in one of the Summerfest dog shows.

From beneath a cloud of hair spray, Sinis said her spirited pups would love the obstacle courses, but couldn’t have a go at them until their careers as show dogs were over.

“It would be blast,” she said. “But it would ruin their hair.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

FYI

The ninth annual Pedigree Grand Prix of Dog Agility championship will continue today and Sunday at the Ventura County Fairgrounds. The second round of semifinals will start today at 12:45 p.m. The finals will be held at 3:15 p.m. Sunday. Other agility competitions will be held both days starting at 8 a.m. The Summerfest shows continue at the fairgrounds with the Santa Maria Kennel Club Inc. All-Breed Dog Show and Obedience Trial today at 8 a.m. On Sunday, the Ventura County Dog Fanciers Assn.’s dog show will start at 8 a.m. All three events are free and open to the public.