Lane County’s quadruped competitors By Aaron Ragan-Fore
Caleb, a black and white border collie, corners and spins on his heels, jumping each of the 17 low, fencelike obstacles in turn, as his owner, Carolyn Hancock, indicates each challenge. A crowd is gathered in the Lane County Fairgrounds livestock pavilion on this Memorial Day for the Emerald Classic Cluster canine agility trials. Virtually all of them dog lovers, the onlookers cheer and applaud for Caleb, as they do for each of the competitors, even those dogs who simply bark and run around, ignoring the obstacles.
Around here, in “Track Town, U.S.A.,” Ducks aren’t the only animals with a competitive streak. Eugene Celebration’s annual pet parade may be the area’s most well-known furry function, but it’s far from the only game in town.
Caleb’s not the fastest dog here at the trials, but Hancock, a petite, blonde woman sporting a pink sweatshirt, doesn’t seem to mind. She looks pleased as Caleb’s brief run concludes, snapping the lead to Caleb’s collar in a satisfied manner before retreating to a nearby folding chair to let the pooch cool down.
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“He didn’t qualify,” she explains, but smiles as she says it. “He’s pretty smart, he’s easy to train. It’s his handler who isn’t easy to train.” Caleb, at 7 years old, has been competing for almost four years. The dog is in the Open class of agility categorizations recognized by the American Kennel Club.
No mistakes allowed
Hancock retired last year from human resources at the Good Samaritan Society, but recently returned to her position on a part-time basis, leaving her enough time to train with Caleb. This team is here to compete, but the trials also represent a chance to meet friends (both two- and four-legged) with a common interest. “It’s a great social event,” Hancock says of the trials. “You’re competing with your dog as a team,” and also fostering professional and personal connections.
One of those connections is Ronwin Ashton, Agility Trial Chairwoman for both the McKenzie Cascade Dog Fanciers and the Eugene Kennel Club, and the coordinator of today’s event. An unaffiliated club, Willamette Agility Group (WAG), also specializes in dog agility, but Ashton invests her energy in Kennel Club–sanctioned events like this one.
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“Novice, Open, and Excellent are the respective levels of increasing difficulty,” explains Ashton. “Each increase in level has additional obstacles to perform, additional challenges, with less time and fewer allowed errors than the previous level. Three qualifying legs must be completed, at all levels, to advance to the next level.” If and when Hancock and Caleb do advance to the Excellent level, no mistakes whatsoever will be allowed in their performance.
Ashton, a graphic designer at a real estate company, has been organizing the trials for two years. Her 7-year-old female Rhodesian Ridgeback, Jorga, has been competing most of her life.
Ashton and Jorga began as a team in the breed ring, competing in traditional dog shows focused primarily on a dog’s physical characteristics. “We both hated it,” says Ashton. The breed shows seemed too staid, too conservative. So the team gave agility a shot. “It’s the first time I saw a smile on her face,” Ashton says, petting Jorga. The practicing has been worth it. Jorga was the Top Rhodesian Ridgeback in the 2008 AKC/Eukanuba Agility Invitational, and the first Ridgeback to achieve the title of Master Agility Champion (MACH).
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Ashton’s own doggie duties keep her quite busy as well, she says. She’s currently lining up judges for a 2011 event. “We must work several years in advance to sign the popular judges,” she says, as well as “keep on top of the ribbon inventory, coordinate with the facility personnel, the amazing load of paperwork, the assigning of various committees, and all the other little details” surrounding the agility trials, which are held twice a year, on Memorial Day and Labor Day.
A German breed Ashton identifies as a Brown Tervuren trots by, off her leash, in violation of handler rules. Ashton’s focus switches to the dog, who, she notes, is followed closely by an owner. “I thought she was loose,” Ashton says of the dog, relaxing. “Another thing I have to worry about!”
Like Hancock, Ashton stresses the cross-species teamwork aspect of her hobby. “Jorga doesn’t know, nor care, of any of our achievements,” she muses, “but to me they acknowledge that we have a very special relationship enjoyed by so few.”
Match of the masks
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Of course, the canine competitors aren’t the only agile animals in Lane County. But the other local species with its own agility trials may take folks by surprise: ferrets. The annual event is sponsored by Lane Area Ferret Lovers, a rescue and shelter combined with a sort of ferret fans’ social club.
Melanee Ellis, a website editor for a local textbook company, is the primary force behind both the organization itself and the annual Ferret Agility Trials. The event used to be called the Ferret Olympics, until a letter from the National Olympic Committee necessitated a name change. The day of contests is open to the public, and has taken place each year since 1996. The 2009 competition was in Eugene’s Emerald Park in August, and featured games, a raffle, and a silent auction.
It’s easy to imagine falling in love with a cat or dog, but how does one become completely devoted to a rail-thin weasel originally bred for hunting rabbits?
“In 1993 my mother died, and I was very depressed,” explains Ellis. “I wanted a pet, because research shows that pets will help you through those sorts of things.” Ellis has a cat allergy, and a dog was out because she lived in an apartment at the time.
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Within a year of adopting Bosely, a male sporting the trademark ferret eye mask, Ellis had developed into a fast ferret friend. She put an ad in the paper for fellow ferret aficionados, and her resulting coffee klatch soon became a shelter and foster program for what Ellis describes as “used ferrets, secondhand ferrets.”
“We’re a ferret Greenhill,” she says. “We are a no-kill shelter.” And that can add up to a lot of ferrets, especially in an economic downturn in which pet owners sometimes can’t afford the care and feeding of their little darlings. “Right now we have my three personal ferrets,” Oy!, Jake, and Brody, and 56 others scattered among several club members’ homes, part of a foster system for adoptable ferrets.
OK, so Ellis and her organization are ferret boosters. But does that mean her pets are agile enough to compete? Surely the Ferret Agility Trials are really just a sort of a joke?
“No, no,” Ellis laughs. “Actually, it’s our main fundraising event!” Ferrets are quite trainable, Ellis says, “as smart as a cat, and probably smarter than dogs.” And besides, she adds, “the events are things they would normally do.”
The lithe, furry critters compete in contests such as the “tube run”—a timed ramble down a 25-foot clear dryer hose—and feats of strength such as pulling a cart filled with weights. The winner of the “dirt dig” is the contestant who displaces the most dirt in 60 seconds. But Ellis’ favorite competition is the yawning contest. Ferrets tend to yawn when held like kittens by the scruff of the neck. “They have a minute to yawn as many times as they can,” explains Ellis. “You have to be able to see the back of the teeth to count as a yawn.”
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In 2008, in fact, after weeks of planning for the agility trials, and yawning her way through the event all day, Ellis’ compatriots voted her the winner of the yawning contest!
Pampered postulants
Of course, not all house pets possess the motivation for agility trials. Take Persian cats, for example, a breed with a marked reputation for a rather sedentary lifestyle. While cat agility has a found a place in Portland cat shows, it hasn’t quite caught on here in Lane County. But kitty-cat owners can be every bit as competitive when it comes to critter contests.
“I always knew when I was a little girl that when I grew up I wanted a house full of cats,” says Patty Stewart of Springfield. It’s a wish that came true; today Stewart owns and operates Panei (pronounced like Pawnee) Persian & Exotic, a breeding cattery. The choice to devote her time, energy, and budget to showing and breeding Persians seems a reasonable one: she has always liked lovable, longhaired characters. “My favorite character from The Addams Family was Cousin It,” the head-to-toe hairball, she comments. “My favorite Star Trek episode was ‘The Trouble with Tribbles,’” featuring furry puffball aliens.
Stewart started showing cats in 1974, and joined McKenzie River Cat Club five years later. In the decades since, Stewart has held multiple club offices, including president, and is currently the club historian. It’s a fitting avocation for a woman who not only traces her own family’s genealogy, but also feline family trees for kitties with impressive names that follow a standard convention, like Stewart’s award-winning GC (Grand Champion) Panei’s Whispurr Sweet Nothings. In fact, it’s cat genealogy that got her interested in the human type. “I realized one day I knew all my cats’ ancestors,” she says, “but I didn't know much about my own family history.”
Stewart would practically need to call upon the power of her ancestors to keep up in the ultra-competitive world of showing cats, a world she rarely chooses to enter, preferring usually to stay on the breeding side of things. “I don't actually like campaigning cats myself,” Stewart explains. “Gone from home too much and highly expensive. I do show a lot, but not every weekend like some folks.”
Stewart’s opinion is shared by Julie Grundstrom, owner of Brenneve Cattery in Lorane, a friend and fellow McKenzie River Cat Club member. “It can be quite costly,” she says, to show a cat such as her CH (Champion) GP (Grand Premier) Brenneve’s Lady Gwennivere, known familiarly as “Baby.” Some cat daddies and mommies spend up to $50,000 a year, Grundstrom says, on entry fees and travel arrangements. “We may sell a cat for $1,500 or $2,000,” she says, but the cattery still operates at a loss. “You’ve got to do it for the love of the cat, and showing.”
And the cat competition rules are taken as seriously, and can be as opaque to outsiders, as the animals’ complicated names. “To achieve the title of Grand Champion, first of all a cat must achieve Champion title by earning minimum of six winners’ ribbons in Open class,” explains Patty Stewart. “The next show after confirming championship, the cat is entered as a champion.”
“They go on to compete by defeating at least 200 other champions,” she continues, “by earning finals and placements in the Finals rings, where the judges award their Top 10 and their top champion placements. Once the cat earns those 200 points, CFA”—that’s the Cat Fancier’s Association—“will automatically issue a grand champion certificate.”
And Persian cats themselves are as high-maintenance as the rules for advancement. Grundstrom tries to make sure prospective buyers understand what they’re in for: “I’m going to let you know their eyes run,” and that “they’re prone to upper respiratory problems” due to the breeding that has shaped the snub-nosed felines’ aesthetically desirable moon-shaped faces. “Back 25, 30 years ago, the Persian faces weren’t as extreme,” says Grundstrom. “It’s the breeders who have done this. I won’t breed cats that have very tiny little nostrils.”
But for Grundstrom, Stewart, and other Persian breeders, their pets’ disposition and temperament are a fair trade-off for the headaches. “I love all the grooming and the pampering,” says Grundstrom. “It’s very therapeutic for me, and some of my standoffish cats just melt in my lap.” Ah, purrrr-fection.
FURR-OCIOUS FUN
Brenneve Persians
541/767-0285
brenneve.net
Eugene Kennel Club
eugenekennelclub.org
Lane Area Ferret Lovers
541/484-1090
laneferrets.org
