MinPinMoments

Aspen began competing in agility trials shortly after Malibu. Aspen, my fearless Min Pin, who shows no hesitation on any obstacles and flies over jumps with ease, had potential to do very well in this sport.  Aspen was not stressed at trials like Malibu, but she was very distracted. I soon learned that all she wanted to do was explore the course rather than run it as we were there to do.

As in class, Aspen seemed to prefer to go off and sniff. So now I had two dogs who would rather be off doing other things.  I didn’t want to force either of them to compete if they weren’t happy while doing it.  They both enjoyed “playing” agility and running courses in the backyard. Maybe that was enough for them, but I wasn’t ready to throw in the towel after only a few months. I decided to give them time to acclimate and hopefully adapt to the trial environment. (Malibu’s initial agility experiences are detailed in Going for the Q).  

It got to a point in which I realized that although Aspen was better at agility than Malibu, she had less interest. Finally, I just stopped entering Aspen in trials. All she wanted to do was go and explore these novel environments. This was not avoidance or displacement behavior. Aspen just seemed to prefer investigating the area rather than run the obstacles.

It was difficult to end Aspen’s agility “career” before it even got started because she truly showed potential to go very far in this sport. Could I have tried a bit longer, found a new instructor, researched different strategies?  Perhaps, but agility isn’t the only game in town.  At our last trial a friend observed Aspen opting to sniff around the course and commented that we should look into nosework. I had heard of this dog sport before, but did not really know much about it.  Within a week we were attending our first nosework class and Aspen never competed in agility again.