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Dog agility is a sport in which a handler directs a dog through an obstacle course in a race for both time and accuracy. Dogs must run off-leash with no food or toys as incentives. The handler can touch neither dog nor obstacles, except accidentally. more...

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Consequently, the handler's controls are limited to voice, movement, and various body signals, requiring exceptional training of the animal, and the human. The courses are complicated enough that a dog could not complete it correctly without human direction. In competition, the handler must assess the course, decide on handling strategies and direct the dog through the course, with precision and speed equally important. Many strategies exist, to compensate for the inherent difference in human and dog speeds, and strengths and weaknesses of the range of dog and handlers. The handler tends to run a path much different from the dog's path. So for the handler, there can be extreme amounts of mental planning, for what turns out to be a quick run. Many things can go wrong though, and for any course, it is rare to be able to predict which team will perform best on a given day.

In its simplest form, an agility course consists of a set of standard obstacles, laid out by an agility judge in a design of his own choosing on a roughly 100 by 100 foot (30 by 30 m) area, with numbers indicating the order in which the dog must complete the obstacles.

Competition basics

Because each course is different, handlers are allowed a short"run-through before the competition starts. During this time, all handlers competing in a particular class can walk or run around the course without their dogs, determining how they can best position themselves and guide their dogs to get the most accurate and rapid path around the numbered obstacles.

The run-through is critical for success because the course's path takes various turns, even U-turns or 270 degree turns, can cross back and on itself, can use the same obstacle more than once, can have two obstacles so close to each other that the dog and handler must be able to clearly discriminate which to take, and can be arranged so that the handler must work with obstacles between himself and the dog, called layering, or at a great distance from the dog.

www.catagility.com Course map showing the layout of the course in the preceding photos. Maps like this are commonly used by handlers to help design their strategies. This is a fairly simple, flowing course, probably used for novice dogs.]] Handlers often use printed copies of the course map to help plan their course strategy. There is standard format used for course maps, with obstacles having standard icons, measurements and grid having fairly standard dimensions (in the U.S., the grid is drawn in ten-foot squares), and numbers indicating the order in which the obstacles are to be taken.

Each dog and handler team gets one opportunity together to attempt to complete the course successfully. The dog begins behind a starting line and, when instructed by his handler, proceeds around the course. The handler typically runs near the dog, directing the dog with spoken commands and with body language (the position of arms, shoulders, and feet).

Read more at Wikipedia.org