I started seriously dog training in 1990 with a German Shepherd named Flow.  Doing obedience, we quickly came to the point were the dog was able to do the routine alone and we were looking for more activity to do with the dog.  After some research and seeing a report on Agility from England, I got interested in that new sport to do with dogs.  That is where I got involved in Agility in 1992.

 

In those years, we found only one book (from France) talking about Agility.  There was no internet and books on Agility were almost non existent... So we started with that book, building equipment and starting training.  Those were the years that doing Agility was only running with your dog on the left.  In 1993 we meet some friends coming from west and from the Maritimes that were aware of the AAC, the new Canadian thing on Agility.  In Québec there was only one club doing Agility.

 

I got involved in creating a couple of new clubs in the Montréal region and a bit later got involved helping others in starting new clubs across the province.  Now we have over 15 clubs across Québec and have a trial almost every weekend and even smaller trials on week nights.

 

I got involved in Judging in 1998.  Since then I have been Judging across Canada from Halifax to Vancouver.  Now Agility is available with hundreds of books and you can find almost everything on the internet....  Still involved in training and Judging Agility became almost a religion in our house, my wife Lucie Dessureault got hooked with all dogs sports in 1994, and I might say, she is doing a lot better than me in training and handling dogs.

 

Now in 2008, the house, the cars, vacation, spare time and everything in our life is in relation with dogs sports.  We have at home 4 dogs, 1 Belgian Gronendael (Twister), 1 Belgian Tervuren (C-4) and 2 Shelties (Nitro and Scud).  I am trying to limit Lucie to 4 dogs !!!!

 

Our life now is Agility and any dog sports, Obedience, Skijoring, Sledding, Rally-O, Water Jumping, anything that involves our dogs.

 

Roger-Pierre