A winning dog handler explains Westminster’s agility competition

NEW YORK (AP) — A crowd is waiting to see you run a labyrinthine obstacle course you’ve never done before. You have to complete it with enough focus to avoid wrong turns, enough precision to ensure your foot touches certain spots and enough speed to beat dozens of rivals.

Also: You are a dog.

Specifically, you’re one of the canine aces in Saturday’s Westminster Kennel Club agility competition, a recent addition that kicks off the storied club’s milestone 150th dog show.

So how do you do it?

“The teamwork of the dog and the handler,” says Emily Klarman, a professional agility trainer who guided her border collie Vanish to a win last year. “Agility is a big conversation that we’re having with our dogs.”

The conversation is partly verbal. Handlers yell commands, such as “tunnel!” “jump!” “left!” “right!” Dogs sometimes answer with barks of enthusiasm.

But it’s also about body language: Handlers, running alongside their unleashed dogs, place themselves purposefully and watch the animals’ eyes to keep them on target.

“If they’re looking at something, that’s probably what they’re thinking about,” Klarman said before a recent practice session with another border collie, Swish, at the UDog training center in Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania.

Like a furry rocket, the lean, mottled, 5-year-old navigated jumps, close-set poles, tight turns, narrow ramps, a seesaw and other equipment as though it was in her DNA. To some extent, it is — border collies are renowned for their intelligence, intensity and nimbleness, and they have taken Westminster’s agility title in nine of its 12 years so far. (Three of those winning runs were piloted by UDog’s founders, Jessica Ajoux and Perry DeWitt.)

But regardless of breed, becoming an agility champion takes a lot of training, technique and strategy.

For example, the canines get penalty points if they bound off seesaws and ramps too soon. They have to set foot in the end section. To instill that habit, a handler might get the dog accustomed to walking onto a pad on the ground, then put that pad on the end of the obstacle and eventually remove the pad.

Dogs also must master different approaches to jumps, depending on whether they need to turn tightly after landing.

“Easy,” Klarman cued Swish while practicing one such jump, and Swish — who generally prefers to go full-tilt — slowed down a touch. It’s a delicate balance: Scores are based on both accuracy and time.

Agility trials don’t allow for treats or toys on the course, so dogs need to be motivated by the fun of the game and their relationship with their handlers.

While dogs learn signals, handlers need to memorize complex pathways through 20 obstacles. At Westminster, they don’t get maps until the morning of the competition, then have a few minutes to walk the course and ponder, for instance, whether to cross ahead of or behind the dog on various turns.

Besides the mental and physical work, “a lot of it is really emotional,” said Klarman, 33. The animals “can definitely tell whether we’re really excited and pumped up, or we’re disappointed,” she explained.

For instance, when Vanish didn’t excel on a seesaw obstacle in the Westminster finals last year, Klarman told herself to make sure the dog didn’t sense discouragement: “If my heart’s not in it, obviously, her heart’s not going to be in it.”

Westminster, considered the United States’ most illustrious dog show, added an agility competition in 2014. The popular canine sport introduced a faster-paced, more athletic and more all-embracing flavor to the traditional, buttoned-up parading of purebred dogs around rings. Agility is open to mixed-breed dogs, and a mix won in 2024.

A dog fan since she was a toddler, Klarman got into canine sports as a preteen, then got a nursing degree before realizing that she wanted to work with dogs as a career. Last year’s Westminster win was a capstone.

“To share that moment with a dog that has meant so much to me — it really meant so much to showcase her and let the world know how special she is,” recalls Klarman.

This year, she’ll be cheering for her boyfriend, Peter Wirth, and his Pembroke Welsh corgi, named Welly.

Like a number of agility handlers, Wirth, 34, took up the sport simply because he had a very energetic dog that needed more stimulating activity than walks and fetch. Five years later, he and Welly are returning to New York’s Javits Center on Saturday for the Westminster contest.

Klarman and Vanish are staying home, for a good reason. The dog’s first litter of puppies is due any minute.