Most people, when asked, when is it a good time to start doing agility with a puppy,

would say, well, it depends on when the puppy's growth plates are closed. I personally have

never cared when my puppy's growth plates are closed because that is not a deciding

factor for me. I think more importantly than growth plates is how physically strong, the soft

tissues, the things that support those bones, the muscles, the ligaments, the tendons.

You know, there's a lot of small dogs whose growth plates could be closed

by six or seven months, but the puppy doesn't have the supporting musculature to do anything that

is taxing on that body. So then what is it? Is it the breed of dog? Yeah, that could have an impact

because bigger dogs grow a lot longer and they mature a lot slower. Mental maturity,

physical maturity, all of those things are important for things that are very stressful on a dog's

body. Things like teaching them weave poles, having them running across a full height dog walk,

teaching them how to go over an a frame because so many dogs

when they hit an a frame with speed, that has a lot of impact on the dog. So, those skills,

I don't believe anybody should introduce their puppy to those types of skills before they're

14 to 16 months of age or older. But let's talk about handling. Having a dog go over a few

jumps. Surely that can't matter, right? When can we do that? Now, let me preface this by saying

in the 90s, I started doing flyball competing in the sport of flyball with my puppies when they were nine months old.

Now, as crazy and outlandish as that sounds, I'm going to tell you that all of those dogs

lived a very long life well into their teens. They didn't have limps and gims.

They weren't horribly arthritic. and they were playing a sport where they

sprinted and smashed into a box, not with the level of grace we have with dogs now,

but had to tight turn in the small surface of a fly ball box and speed back to the handler.

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