At a typical practice, Liv jogs onto the green turf field inside a Silver Spring industrial park warehouse, finds her starting position and waits for the signal. A moment later she’s off, leaping over hurdles, navigating the weave poles, and crawling through a corrugated tunnel. Liv navigates the obstacles in this fast-paced gambol. All for cheers and treats.
Liv, a rescued street dog from Puerto Rico, competes as a member of the Capital Dog Training Club (CDTC) in dog agility, a team sport gaining participants across Montgomery County. The other half of her team is her owner and handler, Brian Rosen, 58, of Chevy Chase.
Though Liv lacks the pedigree for purebred competitions, such as the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York City, agility contests are open to any canine, including mixed breeds and rescues, as well as spayed or neutered dogs.
“We can’t possibly take all the students who want to do agility,” says Shannon Hall, 50, president of CDTC, which has been based in Montgomery County for decades. “The sport was already growing, then COVID hit. Suddenly, people had a lot more time with their dogs.”
Since 2018, CDTC has doubled the number of weekly agility classes from five to 11 and divided into two tracks: competition and noncompetition, which is more laid-back and playful. Participation climbed from 50 to 140 teams with another 60 to 70 on waitlists, according to CDTC. Classes are small, each with several teachers. CDTC, which is affiliated with the American Kennel Club (AKC), also offers lessons in obedience and other dog sports, such as scent tracking.
For teams that pursue competition, it takes more than a year of training to enter the ring. In addition to mastering at least 14 obstacles, dogs must achieve behaviors such as sitting for long periods, performing off leash and coping with loud environments. Humans have a lot to learn, too.
“The core of agility is partnership and communicating with each other. Both members of the team are essential. You need a dog who is interested in you, not other dogs, and can go to strange places and ignore weird things,” says Jennie Larkin, 59, an agility instructor who lives in Bethesda. With Tali, her Canaan dog, she won the breed championship at AKC’s prestigious Agility Invitational in Orlando in 2022.
The sport challenges dogs both physically and mentally. “Remember what your dog was bred to do. Some dogs need a job to channel their energy,” Hall says. She lives in Olney with her dogs, Michael, a herding mix, and Connor, a border collie, who are both rescues and AKC agility champions.
In addition to AKC, other national organizations host trials, including Canine Performance Events, The North American Dog Agility Council and the United States Dog Agility Association. Each group has its own rules and culture. Teams register with an organization, participate in their qualifying trials, accumulate points and move up in the rankings. Dogs compete by jump height, from 8 to 24 inches. Judges deduct for faults, such as refusing an obstacle. Teams reaching the highest levels can be invited to agility’s most prestigious national events.
Points are tracked in official national databases. As a result, teams can crisscross the region and even the country to progress in their rankings. “Agility is like travel sports. You’re up early, days are long, and you cart around lots of gear, trying to get the best performance out of your loved one,” says Julie Rovner, 65, of North Bethesda, a CDTC board member who competes with her corgis, Aspen and Wallace.
Unlike traditional sports, the goal isn’t necessarily to defeat others—it’s to earn points. “You are competing against yourself. Ultimately, most people are trying to get their qualifying runs to move up. You don’t need someone else to lose to win,” says Janine Castorina, 50, CDTC’s assistant training director for agility and a resident of Northwest D.C. She competes with Horus and Odin, both Great Pyrenees mixes and rescues, about twice a month at events in the area, estimating she spends at least $25,000 a year on the sport.
CDTC’s space in Silver Spring is too small to host a full-length AKC agility course, Rovner says. Instead, the club holds its annual spring trial at a Carroll County sports complex. The club hopes one day to secure a larger venue in Montgomery County where the public can watch competitions.
Agility was created with spectators in mind. It was developed in 1978 at England’s fabled Crufts dog show to entertain audiences between obedience and conformation trials. Inspired by horse show jumping, agility was designed to highlight a dog’s athleticism, and it quickly became a fan favorite, reaching the U.S. in the ’90s.
Stephanie Singer, 56, of Bethesda, and Chester, her French bulldog, discovered agility about two years ago. This spring they joined their first CDTC novice class. “He loves it! When I look at videos, I see him coming over a jump, his head turns and he looks toward me as if to say, ‘Where are we going?’ ” Singer says. “We connect on another level.”
This story appears in the July/August edition of Bethesda Magazine.
