BERNERS AND AGILITY
Can you, should you, why would you.... do agility with your berner?
You CAN do agility with your berner after your dog's growth plates are closed. It's important to not stress the growing bones of any dog with activities like jumping, weaving and going over the A frame. While there are some parts of agility that you can work on earlier these are less active parts of the sport like teaching the "touch" command and teaching the dog left and right turns.
Once you decide to start agility it is recommended that you find a highly qualified trainer. Look for a trained that has many titles with his/her dogs and not just someone that likes agility. Your dogs health depends on it. You'll need to have your dog in good shape and at a very fit weight. For agility it's best to have your dog underweight and exercised regularly, not just on class night.
 You SHOULD at least consider agility as a fun sport that your dog will probably love and there's no better way to build up your dog's self confidence. Dogs that are afraid of things that move are SO proud of themselves when they can confidently go on the teeter and as they build up their confidence you'll have to run to keep up with them on the dog walk. Even if you never compete, your dog will tell you when it's time for class, they love it so much they look forward to that day or night of the week.
You WOULD be surprised at how fun it is to run your dog in agility! After a while you'll forget who's the student and who's the handler. You'll see handlers out there who are more overweight, more out of shape and who knew less then you did when they started, but they are having a blast running their dogs. This is a sport for anyone with a dog and if your dog needs to jump at a lower height then that's OK, it's just for fun and whatever is best for the dog is what you should do. The dog doesn't know the "correct height" for him/her and only knows that this is fun!!!
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