Hi everyone,
I am toying around with the idea of trying a season of the AKC Agility League. The league program works much like a softball or bowling league for agility competitors. Teams come from all over the country, running on their home field.
Teams are comprised of three to eight dogs, with the smallest allowed being three dogs with two handlers. Teams compete on their home fields, and judging is on the honor system, no video is submitted. Captains submit scores via an online scoring submission program.
Each season lasts twelve weeks, and each team runs six courses over the season, with a new course released every two weeks. Captains submit their scores online at the end of each round, and AKC calculates the rankings for both teams and individual dogs. At the end of each season, the champions are named in each division. There are also breed rankings to honor the top dogs of each breed in each division.
There is an annual handler fee to each handler of $32 for a year, regardless of the number of dogs run, and there is a $30 fee per dog per season. These are AKC charges to participate.
If there is enough interest I would like to give league play a try. We would be doing the Ph.D level which is ISC style courses. This is what I am interested in running and training on, and I would not have the time to build multiple courses during the week. Obviously this is meant for more advanced level teams or teams that are invested in training and running these types of courses. If this experiment goes well then we can look at the possibility of adding another level (there is everything from “pre-competition level – no teeter/weaves through Masters).
I would build the course at the beginning of the week and use it for classes/lessons. There would be a set time, probably one morning hour and one evening hour (depending on the size of the team) each week where team members would be responsible for coming over and having their run judged. There is a new course every two weeks, with a total of six courses per “session”.
There would be the two charges per person/dog from the AKC. Aside from that the only charge would be team members splitting the hour ring rental for their shared course running time.
Registration for the fall 25 league opens on August 14th with the league starting September 15th. Depending on when I have the field back up and running we may need to play a little bit of catch up (running two courses instead of one in a two week period), but I’ve already asked and it is ok.
If this is something you are interested in participating in please let me know ASAP so I can get an idea of whether we can make this happen or not. Preference will go to my current DogStar students. Yes, this is a competition but I’m hoping it will be more about training on some challenging courses and another way of having fun with our dogs and our friends. Participating in a season of the league would also make us eligible for the “AKC Agility League Nationals” which sounds like a fun event and has been held in the southeast region the last couple of years.
If you have any questions please feel free to reach out to me. I’ll do my best to find out the answer. 😉
Here are a number of helpful links with information on the program:
AKC Agility League landing page: https://www.akc.org/akc-agility-league/
Getting Started: https://www.akc.org/akc-agility-league/get-started-akc-agility-league/