when the pups old enough,Id like to try agility with her,but i was a bit taken aback to find a class will cost me over twelve pounds.Is this about average?Im not a skinflint  or anything,just not particularly well off,but thats out of the question for me,every week.I dont know what I was expecting,actually!

Sounds about right if it's a competitive club. The only cheaper agility I've found around here was a fun class and they didn't have full size equipment (or a clue) :-)  The good classes will have long waiting lists and probably only have one or two new intakes a year so it's best to look around now. They'll probably give you a list of commands to start teaching your pup now - like stay, go, left right etc 

It does sound a lot(thats probably about the most you will pay) but I think it depends who the trainer is. Is that for an hour or longer? I pay £5 for an hour's class at my local club but I know someone who charges £10 a class but she is very good and i would certainly go to her if I lived a bit closer.I just wondered-where do you live? The important thing with agility is that the basics are taught correctly(contacts etc) long before you start doing whole courses or it will all fall apart when you start to compete,well that goes without saying really but I went to a pet type agility club with my first agility dog,didn't teach the contacts correctly and lived to regret it!

I pay £30 a month for both of mine that covers an hour each per week.  I go to a good class, we have various trainers all are qualified instructors with varying amounts of experience a couple of who are judges and run dogs in the higher grades. We also have guest trainers in for training days which are included in our monthly fee. Everyone is encouraged to compete, its nice, we have been at a show today and alot of our newbies were out having a go and they had the support of half the club round the rings.  Sounds like we are lucky - I wont be telling the lady that runs our club how much others are paying !!

Our club stopped having a waiting list because we just didnt have the room for more dogs.  We do run a control course when we need an intake which is for puppies/beginners as an introduction, it introduces some of the equipment and concentrates on obedience/commands.

I pay £50 for 8 lessons - If you have found a class ask to go and watch first.  Visit agility competitions - with your dog to get her used to the atmosphere.  Go on to agilitynet to see show schedules.

I just wanted to add that its a good idea to find a good pre-agility class-there's so much you can be doing with her right now such as getting her used to wobble boards and doing flatwork,starting to teach contacts etc etc.There's also good dvds on Pre-agility training if you can't find a good puppy class.

I pay £3 a week for our agility club - paid whether you are able to go or not - and £7 a year for club membership fees. A lesson lasts about 45 minutes and has between 4 and 5 dogs in each class. The majority of members compete in agility competitions but not all.

The one thing I would do with my next pup if I wish to do agility with him/her is have a rethink of the every day commands I use as these can be confusing if the word is similar to one of those I use for agility. For instance I use the word leave if I want one of my dogs to drop something or not touch it in the first place so when I do the weave poles I now have to use the word "poles" instead of "weave" as he thought I was telling him to "leave" and kept coming out of the weave poles. I also taught my dog left and right long before I started going to agility and this has caused me the biggest problem of all. When out walking with him he is often ahead of me and when we get to a divide in the path he stops and turns to  look at me  to see which way I am going to go. With him looking at me I used to point to my right or my left and say the corresponding direction . However at agility the right and left commands are given with Harley working ahead of me and facing in the same direction as myself so my left command was sending him to the right and vice versa. I tried saying the opposite to the way I wanted him to turn which worked for him but I was constantly confused and sending him in the wrong direction so have had to change my left and right commands to this way and that way when we are doing agility. If I had realised I was going to take up agility I would have done things totally different when he was a pup.

So it may well be worth thinking about the commands you use now and those you will be introducing if you start agility with your dog. When you are trying to remember a course and having to try to remember which command you have taught it can be very confusing for your dog let alone for yourself. I have brain fade moments on the best of days so having to teach myself command words that wouldn't be my first choice hasn't helped me at all. My dogs don't care what words I use of course but it does help if you haven't confused yourself to begin with :-)

thanks every one!i live outside nottingham,near kirkby in ashfield,but il have a problem getting anywhere thats not on a bus route.theres obviously a lot more to it than i thought.Id be doing it more for fun,actually,not very competetive,me!thanks again.

If you're not in it for the competition there may be some obedience type classes that do agility as well - as part of making learning fun for both you and your dog.  I've been to 2/3 over the years that have done this - not anywhere near you I'm afraid.  I've also bought and/or made bits of agility equipment to 'play' with my dogs in the garden.  Do go to agility.net[?] as suggested above and also check out general training clubs to see what they do.

http://www.nadtc.co.uk/

Don't know whether this is near to you. I pay £3.00 per week (8.30pm - 10.00pm). We have a guest trainer once a month, this costs an extra £2.50. Very good value for money, nice crowd of people, we run a big show & also have 'fun' days.

> use the word "poles" instead of "weave

Harley it is the way you say it!  I say leave in a firm low voice.  Weave is high and more prolonged - weee-ave!  I found that I had to reteach spin and turn for right and left (to start with a tight turn) but find it much easier to say here firmly to get her to turn.  (I always say right when I mean left and vice versa)  I could be saying cabbage or any old word really because I am only calling attention to my body movements.  The one command that is difficult is if you do a stop on the bottom of the contacts and then say good stop followed by the command go!  I am still working on that one because g... and she has gone.

£22 a month after the initial beginners course which is from memory £45 for 8 lessons.  Many of our club are competitive, well I think everyone gets the bug eventually even if it's just a fun show once a year like me.

>I say leave in a firm low voice.  Weave is high and more prolonged - weee-ave! 

this is how I do it, definitely how you say it, the higher my voice the more excited he gets.  Ive given up on left and right, im useless at remembering but Fagan is great at following body language so I could probably do a course in silence and he would know what I wanted him to do.

Mine are competitive agility clubs and I pay £3 a night for two hours with two dogs at one club, and £6 for the 2 hours with both dogs at another.   But I've heard that pet classes charge more. Mostly pet classes are in more central city locations and so will have really high rents.

I think £12 is very expensive. 

But what you need to look at isn't the price of the classes but what the classes will do for you and your dog. What's on offer varies enormously and you can't underestimate the advantage in having good calm clear dog/people friendly instruction/environment. It really is worth spending some time checking out clases before you begin. Avoid harsh methods and atmospheres of general chaos. Find a class tht teaches foundation skills rather then leaping straight into working on obstacles and running agility courses.

Ive given up on left and right, im useless at remembering but Fagan is great at following body language so I could probably do a course in silence and he would know what I wanted him to do.

We sometimes have to work our dogs without saying a word - it is really good at making you think about your body position and how you are conveying information to your dogs.

I used to say "weave" in a really excited voice as opposed to the lower toned sterner word "Leave" but it still had the same effect so I found it easier to change the word to poles instead. I also had trouble with a word for the contact points - some use pause but Harley will give you his paw for the word paw so that was out, I tried wait but I usually use this at the start of a course, stop was the final command I chose so all those different words ( and in the heat of the moment I still sometimes forget which one I decided to use ) confused us both to begin with :-)

I have also done a novice starter course with my terrier X and use different words for him as well because he has never got the hang of most of the everyday commands  so could use the most obvious commands for me to remember with him :-) but he has an awesome wait command now courtesy of agility training and is so fast I can't keep up with him. Once my older dog has progressed to the next class I will run both dogs but at the moment the two classes run concurrently so it's not feasible.

thankyou!i will check it out!thankyou everybody!

Dose anyone know of a good club near Wickford Essex

I could recommend South Weald, if it's not too far for you.  (http://www.agilitynet.co.uk/activepages/clubsPopup.asp?key=827);  otherwise go on the Agilitynet website and see if there's any close enough for you. http://www.agilitynet.co.uk/clutch/clubs.htm

If I can't find a club that does working trials could someone recommend an agility or obedience club near Derby please ?    My bitch has done her KC gold but I'd like to keep progressing onto something competitive - not sure what but she likes training and I want to keep learning.  Thanks.