I went to my first agility trial, yesterday. I had seen them on TV before, but never in person. It was a lot of fun watching the amazing things that dogs are able to do, but it was more challenging to shoot than I expected it to be, because they move so fast, because the handlers, obstacles, and ring attendants are often in the way, because the dogs aren't usually facing the right way, because of contrasty conditions in the outdoors, with no shade, and because you pretty much have to stay in one spot to shoot, at least, during an individual run.
My usual technique for capturing moving objects is to focus on them while they quite a distance away and then pan with them until they move into range before I start shooting. That technique pretty much didn't work here, though, because the approaches to the obstacles were so short. The method that more or less worked for me, in this case, was to focus on the tire and wait until the dog left the ground to press and hold the shutter release. Shooting them as they came out of the tunnels was a little trickier, though, because if you waited until you saw them, they'd be out of the frame before you could fire a shot. I found that it was better to guess when they would appear and to start shooting a second or two before I thought I would see them.
Besides being an area search dog in K9 SAR, Gunner is an experienced agility dog. I think it's a good thing to have interests outside of SAR, to keep us well-rounded and to keep our perspective. I started working Roso in agility, a few months ago, because it looked like a fun thing to do, and in order to try to channel some of his boundless energy. It's going to take a long time and tons of training before we will be competing at this level, though.
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