if your dog flunked agility class, melts down in group settings, or just needs a job that doesnt involve other dogs, let me make the case for fastcat, the hundred yard dash sport where my dog reactive cattle dog mix has earned two titles, burned off her chaos, and never once had to be within fifty feet of another dog, full cost breakdown and how to actually enter inside

Juno is our 4 year old cattle dog mix, 41lb, adopted at 1, and she is what the trainers politely call dog selective and what everyone at the dog park would call a problem. we tried the responsible things. group agility foundations class, $185, we lasted three weeks before i accepted that she was spending the entire hour screaming at a border collie instead of learning anything. daycare evaluation, failed in 20 minutes. a herding instinct test two hours away that she actually passed, but the weekly drive plus $60 lessons wasnt sustainable. by age 2 i had a brilliant, athletic, wound up dog with no outlet, because every outlet i could find came packaged with other dogs. if that sentence describes your life, this post is for you.

fastcat is an AKC timed 100 yard dash. your dog chases a plastic bag on a lure line down a fully fenced straight course, one dog on the course at a time, and thats the entire sport. mixed breeds are welcome, you register a canine partners number with AKC for a one time $35 and youre eligible. runs around here cost $25 to $35 each and most trials let you enter two runs a day. you find events on the AKC event calendar, download whats called the premium list, and mail or email your entry. my total startup cost was $35 for the number and $50 for our first two runs, which after the agility money felt like a rounding error.

the part that matters for reactive dog people is the logistics. you wait at your car, not in a crowded staging area. they call your number, you walk up, a volunteer opens the start box, your person catches the dog at the far end, and youre walking back to the car inside of three minutes. Junos first run she went 24.8 mph and i watched a dog who spends her whole life scanning for threats do the single most joyful thing ive ever seen her do. points are your mph times a size handicap, she needed 150 for her BCAT title which took one weekend, 500 for the DCAT which took us 14 months of casual entries, and were chipping at the 1,000 for FCAT now. and the behavioral dividend is real, two runs on a saturday and she is flat and content through monday. i wont oversell the reactivity piece, she is still herself, but two years of dog show parking lots where other dogs exist at a distance while the best ten seconds of her week happens have visibly widened her tolerance. thats counterconditioning i could never have bought in a class.

practical notes learned the hard way. read the premium for fence height, most courses are fine but my friends whippet mix cleared a 4 foot snow fence going 30mph after the bag stopped. teach a catch, meaning your second person holds a tug or food at the far end so the dog has a landing plan, dogs that fixate on the dead lure make everyones day longer. do not run an overweight or unconditioned dog, this is maximal effort sprinting dressed up as a carnival game, walk them out before and after. summer trials run early, ours start at 7am with temperature cutoffs, bring shade and water and a kiddie pool. and if your dog is reactive, email the trial secretary ahead of time, every single club has been accommodating about spacing us in the running order. total cost for a weekend for us is about $70 and it is the best money i spend on this dog. fastcat is full of dogs that flunked something else, its the island of misfit sport dogs, and your misfit is welcome there