Can A Greyhound Safely Do Agility?
October 26, 2009 by admin
Filed under Care & Training Q&As
Agility is something I really enjoy doing with my dogs, and I’m adopting a GH in the near future (should be between two and five years), and want to know if its safe to have them trained in Agility?
I’m aware of the elbow and spinal issues they have, and I don’t want to push the dog I adopt into injuring itself. I’ll have the dog tested prior to training.
But can a GH safely run an agility course at an acceptable speed without risking injury?
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I compete in agility. My dog is a rat terrier (which has greyhound bred into it). I see greyhounds competing in ability.
1. Greyhounds can safely compete in agility.
2. There will be some individual questions with your specific dog. Some rescues (I’m assuming that’s what you’re “adopting”) are retired because they aren’t good racers or their best years as a racer are up. But some are retired with physical issues. So see a good performance vet to get your “grey” checked out.
3. There are some breed issues. None of which means a greyhound won’t be good at the sport or enjoy it, only that you’ll need to adapt a bit.
–greyhounds are big dogs. They need to squat down or even crawl a bit in the tunnel. Most dogs gain speed in a tunnel. But really big dogs sometimes find tunnels unpleasant (and that can affect their agility experience).
–racing greyhounds often have not been exposed to other breeds of dogs. So an agility trial can sometimes be a bewildering experience to an unsocialized greyhound. So you’ll need to do a good job of exposing your grey to the agility environment.
–they’re sighthounds. And there’s tremendous distraction at trials (both all the sights plus often the smells). So you’ll need to adapt your handing style to this: minimal or no leadouts, quick starts, recognizing when your dog is losing it, working on focus and recalls.
None of this means a greyhound isn’t suited for agility, only that you’ll need to pay special attention to those issues.
As for the elbow and spinal issues, all dogs can have problems with these things in agility. So you do stuff like think about running contacts rather than 2o2o. Also, for the poster about jumping, in agility, once a dog reaches a maximum height (depends upon the organization), the jumps don’t get any higher. I assure you, your greyhound (unless it’s gimpy due to injury or pain) ain’t going to have problems jumping. It will probably end up jumping 20 or 26 inches and most greyhounds can almost walk over a jump that height.
As for the post about “not opening up” at full speed, that’s just silly. NADAC courses are very spred out. And Greyhounds are extremely agile dogs–people assume they’re just speed demons but actually they’ve got a fast start and tremendous agility. If you cue appropriately, there should be no problem with a greyhound at speed handling a course. The larger issue is your ability as a novice to plan a handling strategy so your greyhound doesn’t outpace you.
And the comment about off-leash nazi’s is also just plain silly. Every agility ring/trial I’ve ever attended is enclosed and many are indoors. And all agility events, your dog competes naked.
Wow. I’ve never thought of a Greyhound doing agility. They’d be fast, that’s for sure
. I’ve never thought of a Greyhound jumping but I guess there’s no reason they can’t jump. I guess the key would be in the Obedience training before hand so that the dog stays with you and listens to your instructions. That would prevent the dog going too fast and risking injury. As you probably know, while speed is important in Agility, a dog that follows instructions and is controllable is far more important.
You go for it, and let us know how you get on. Good luck with it.
Careful some adoption groups are real natzis about the never off leash bit to the point that they won’t LET you do agility with one of their rescues. Now I admit I don’t have greyhounds – but the smaller whippet and have compeated without serious injury – and I know several others who have done so to the MACH level ….
PS you don’t HAVE a dog trained in agility – you go to a class & train yourself – even more importantly YOU learn the handling (the really hard part)
PPs one big problem is your gonna have to work & teach the dog to hold BACK slow down & not give it their all most agility courses are tight & close from a shighhounds point of view (at wide open the smaller whippet can go with a 15 ft stride lenght the grey is gonna be bigger….)
The one person who could answer this question for you without any bull **** is david wolf at ngap. http://www.ngap.org He’s very knowledgeable about Greyhound- runs a wonderful rescue program
OF COURSE! They are build for things like agility!