A League of Our Own
Agility League has been an idea, a dream of mine, for a long time. This year that dream becomes a reality.
Nova, my now retired agility dog is reactive; While she could run in a class setting, she could never trial. I loved running with her, but I am competitive and since there were no opportunities for us to title in Agility, I pursued other sports that did provide title programs for dogs like her. Even with all of our other achievements, I never stopped thinking about what we were missing in the Agility ring.
Agility training is great for reactive dogs, improving confidence and resilience. I train many reactive dogs that excel in the sport and for those handlers that would like to compete, it can be disappointing. While dogs don't care about ribbons, humans are competitive and while Agility is a social sport, handling a reactive dog can feel isolating.
We do have students that trial, but we have many that are unable to due to fearfulness or reactivity. These challenges don't make them any less successful when it comes to the course, but it is a barrier to entry for trialing. Seeing my students experience the same disappointment of not being able to compete, I wanted to find a way to create something for them, making agility competition accessible and inclusive.
An idea was born, League would be an opportunity for all agility teams to compete and showcase their skills in the ring. With similar games and rules to standard trial organizations, League teams would have the opportunity to test their skills against very specific criteria, the same way you would in a trial. Where League really differs is the venue and management of the dogs. Making these changes would allow us to offer something to reactive dog owners that would otherwise not be a possibility.
Since expanding into our own space at the start of 2024, we now had every opportunity to make this idea a reality. Planning began in summer of 2024 and by fall we were ready to open registration for our first season. With so many details to work out and a tight timeframe, we decided to kick things off with a Beta season, giving a limited number of teams a chance to help us test our ideas out. If you build it they will come, and they did!
On January 22nd, 2025 we hosted our first ever League event and it was a huge success. Everyone really impressed us, not only on the course, but off the course as well. They were all respectful, friendly, supportive, and ready to have a good time. The best part, you never would have known that any of the dogs attending were reactive, even with some dogs crated in the building, there wasn’t any barking!
To all of the teams that attended, give yourselves a round of applause, you all deserve it. Whether you took home a ribbon this time around or not, you have so many successes to celebrate. We can’t wait to see all of you on the course again!
The future looks bright for League and I can’t wait to see how far we can take it. The SUPERNOVA community has once again provided their support for something that I am so passionate about and I cannot thank you all enough for making this a possibility!
