DABAD: Internationalisation

Yep, I get to say “internationalisation” with an s instead of a z, since I think I’m one of the few blogging on this from outside North America.

I think there are lots of ways to approach this topic, and I wrote and re-wrote this post several times!

For a long time, agility was self-contained within each country. Even the internet didn’t really stretch things. We made changes and developments, but we had very little influence given or taken between countries. But then with the pet passport scheme, and changes to quarantine and import regulations, and all kinds of other things which are interconnected but not immediately relevant*, suddenly we weren’t so self-contained anymore.

The influx of ideas and the possibility for change is really exciting. I love learning new training methods and handling techniques, although I have to admit the biggest thing I’ve learnt was simply reaffirming what I already knew; consistency is key. I also love that we now compete primarily on rubber contacts (although would really like the KC to make it mandatory, and yet I despair at the cost of upgrading our current equipment), and I love our new weave spacings. I really love travelling to Europe, and the fact I can now combine that with doing some agility (or flyball) is also pretty awesome.

There are also downsides to not being self-contained. I think we have a tendency to be quite cautious here, and we seem to like to fully investigate an idea before embracing or rejecting it. That can be a good thing! But it means that in the past, we would debate and discuss ideas and eventually (sometimes years later) implement them. That method doesn’t really work any more, because agility is changing so quickly, and as a result we are sometimes being left behind.

However, there is also a “grass is greener on the other side” mentality and all that. As an individual I can make changes to how I train and how I handle my dogs (even the kind of dogs I have!) but I’m still part of the UK agility infrastructure. It’s easy to forget that some of our agility here is determined by things which aren’t flexible. We are a small island, and densely populated, and that means our shows are easily accessible to anyone who wants to go. It means our shows are big and unwieldy, and some things we literally cannot afford to change. I’m thinking of the fourth jump height here in particular. I wonder if putting the fourth jump height into place will actually make agility more exclusive, in terms of show entries? That’s a debate for another day.

Which brings me to a final thought. I’m talking about internationalisation, but I’m really talking about the UK-America-Europe collective. What about South Africa? Or Japan? Or Australia? I still don’t know much about how agility works in those countries, and whether we could be learning from them.

That was a boring conclusion, wasn’t it?

You can read more on this topic at http://dogagilityblogevents.wordpress.com/internationalization/!

*Like affordable video cameras/software/etc, the rise of smartphones, the supply and demand of travelling dog trainers (and the understanding of how to market that), and the accessibility of travel, amongst 100 other things.

Edited to Add …

It’s been really cool reading other people’s views on this topic. What I didn’t consider at all when thinking about internationalisation, is how much it is considered “seperate” and “different” in America. My experience within the British agility community has been that people have taken and adapted and incorporated things from different countries, and we don’t really get “European” or “American” (or “International”) courses. We just have courses, and there are different challenges.

Again though, I think this is partly down to our agility infrastructure, where judges are given free rein to design whatever courses they choose, and there is just one stream of progression (through either agility or jumping classes only).