The agility dog obstacles are many and varied and even in the race their number varies between 15 and 22. This is a particular sport for dogs that requires the animal to follow a path passing in a precise order a series of obstacles with various athletic gestures from jumping to running balanced on catwalks to stand still in a certain position for a certain amount of time.
Types of obstacles
In every self-respecting competition the only agility dog obstacle that can never be missing are hedges, walls or panels, in short, all those obstacles that must be overcome from above with a leap similar to what horses do in show jumping. In reality these are different tests: in the single jump for example we have two supports that hold three horizontal bars over which the dog must jump avoiding hitting them. If they dropped one or more of them, they would receive a penalty at the end of the course. In the wall jump the regulation mechanism is the same but we have tiles on the wall that must not be dropped.
Footbridge and palisade are similar to each other since the dog has to walk along some 30 wide planks which lead them first to go up and then to go down. The footbridge is composed of 3 elements and makes a sort of trapezium while the palisade is composed of only two elements in the shape of a triangle. For the dog’s safety and to prevent them from slipping on the sloping parts, transversal anti-slip elements are applied.
Similar to the agility dog obstacles mentioned just above is the bascule, a sort of swinging seesaw that the dog has to run from one end to the other leaving it only when the board will have reached the ground.
The tunnels and the slalom are also very characteristic. The tunnels can be rigid or soft and as it is easy to guess they foresee that the dog slips into them and goes through them to the other end coming out. As far as the slalom is concerned, it is done by fixing to the ground a series of rigid posts arranged in a row at a fixed distance one from the other. The dog will have to ‘slalom’ passing once to the left and once to the right of the post.
The agility dog obstacles are perhaps the most scenic and spectacular. The long jump in which you have to overcome a series of obstacles arranged so as to occupy an area that can reach up to one and a half meters while the tire provides the classic jump through a circle in the central hole.