I love my Whippet. I think she's loving, beautiful, funny, gentle, unassuming, and brilliant. And she loves me to pieces, which I like as well. But I love dog agility, and I swear, competing with this dog is going to be the death of me!

For the uninitiated, dog agility is a sport in which dogs run an obstacle course off lead. Handlers see the always-different courses first on the day of a trial (which is a single or multiple day event) and get to walk it without their dog so they know where to go and how to best communicate the course to the dog. Dogs get to weave through poles, climb "walls," walk "balance beams," jump, and run through tunnels. It's a fun but complicated sport, where both speed and accuracy are required for success.

Because it's complicated, dogs often feel somewhat stressed while competing. There are two major ways dogs show stress in the competition ring: they can stress up or down. Dogs that stress "up" run laps around the ring seemingly ignoring the handler, do the obstacles very quickly, and show a high level of exuberance in the ring which translates to a sloppy performance. These are the dogs that knock down bars, take some obstacles three times, and come out of the ring panting but happy. People often say things like, "Well, at least he had a good time..."

Dogs that stress "down" move slowly, freeze, sniff, and show other avoidance behaviors. People never mistake this kind of stress for the dog having a good time. It's much more difficult to work with a dog that stresses down (in my opinion - I've trained and competed with both kinds of dogs).

Whippets, which appear to be half-sized Greyhounds, probably stress down somewhat more often than up. Whippets are very, very sensitive dogs and are known for showing stress behavior of some kind or another in competitive dog sports. These dogs often turn in amazing, fast, accurate performances in training only to appear to be untrained and miserable when it "counts." Therefore they have a reputation for being hard to train or even dumb. In my experience, they are not hard to train at all, but it is often hard to get them to show what they've learned in a competitive environment. And they certainly aren't dumb.

For years I have tried very hard to make this sport that I eat, sleep, and make my living writing about more fun for my dog. I've made great strides, but she will never be perfect (or even close). Sadly, she'll probably never be as much fun to compete with as my other dogs who loved the game almost as much as they loved me. But, we have a nice time giving it a try, and on those few days when she is "on," well, there is nothing like that feeling.

However, I have an interesting training problem with my dear Payton. I say interesting because, well, that's the most positive thing I can say about it. Payton will take something that she already knows how to do, something that we've been working particularly hard on, and change it for no apparent reason. She is most fond of doing this on the weave poles.

Weave poles (or "weaves" for short) are twelve poles spaced approximately 22 inches apart in a straight line. They are usually mounted on a flat base and staked into the ground (if outdoors). Dogs must enter on the right side of the first pole (so the pole is on the dog's left), and he or she must weave through the poles quickly to the end.

Payton has always had trouble with the weaves. She did them slowly at first, so I worked with a different method to speed her up. Then she decided that she didn't understand the concept at all and just ran right past them. So I retrained again, and since then we've had on and off weave problems, and she often weaves so slowly in trials that it seems that she is going backwards. It's frustrating to own a dog that can run 35 miles per hour and watch her walk painfully slowly through a set of weaves.

In the spring trials, I had a fair bit of success with this obstacle. She had been accurate for months, and she was starting to show in trials some of the speed she gives me in practice. Then it started to get hot and she slowed down a bit.

We've limited our practices to just a few weaves and some other obstacles here and there, mostly, because it's been hot, plus Payton doesn't like to go out in the yard much in the summer - the ground is often wet and she hates walking on certain weeds and grasses. She's weird that way. But her weaves have been pretty good - until maybe last week.

Then she started skipping a pole. At first it started happening in the yard, and I really didn't pay much attention to it, because I figured she was trying to avoid certain plant life. I ignored it, but didn't reward, and tried to help her get it right so that she could get a treat. But then we went to a practice field (which was dry, but full of weeds) and she skipped poles quite liberally. I started to panic.

You see, Payton waited until a few days before my state's team agility tournament to decide to start skipping poles. The competition is this weekend, and I am representing my club at the most difficult level. Four runs - four sets of weaves. Thank goodness I'm on the "fun" team, so there's less pressure, but still - of all times for my dog to get creative!

I was still hopeful that the problem was "weed specific," but tonight's indoor practice proved otherwise. She skipped poles only when off my right side, so you better believe that I'm going to get on the other side if at all possible at the tournament.

Never in my life have I had a dog that just decided to change the way she did an obstacle every once in a while. My other two competition dogs (a Vizsla and a Doberman) learned a behavior and stuck with it. I think Payton has taken a page from my two-year-old son's book and has decided to test the rules every once in a while and see if they still apply. But why, WHY would she have to do this on the eve of an important event?

I swear, this dog is going to be the death of me.

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