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The 21st century hunt for treasure

One taste of the wild, competitive sport of flyball and you’re hooked. Dogs utterly fascinated with balls race off-leash over a 51-foot course, along the way hurdling four jumps that are 10 feet apart. The size of the shortest dog on the team determines the jump height for that entire team. At the end of the course, the dog uses his or her feet to hit “the box”—a device that fires a tennis ball—then catches the ball and flies back over the jumps to the finish line. As the first runner crosses the line, the second dog in the four-dog team takes off. To make it even more exciting, these dogs are racing alongside another team of ball-hungry athletic canines.

As with so many ground-breaking ideas, necessity proved the mother of invention. As a new mom, Ottosson suddenly found herself with less time to interact meaningfully with her dogs. She knew that consistently challenging her dogs was integral to their development, not to mention her relationship with them, so she created Ottosson's Zoo Active Products, a line of games that ask your dog to combine wits, motor skills, and memory to get a treat. Forget mindless chewing and squeaking‚ these are toys that require your dog to think.

Owners bring their dogs here to test the dogs' instinctual behaviour on scent trails and in underground tunnels leading to quarry. They want to see if little Angus and Heidi can still do what their doggie ancestors were bred to do as early as 55 B.C.: go to ground and get rid of fox, badger, river otters, and other vermin that were wreaking havoc on their owners' land. Dogs that do well here can go on to participate in Earthdog Tests, Canadian Kennel Club (CKC)-sanctioned, non-competitive events leading to the titles Junior Earthdog, Senior Earthdog, and Master Earthdog. British Columbia held the first Canadian Earthdog Tests in 2002 and the Sea to Sky Earthdog Club now sponsors two sets of testing events each year.

Many of the uninitiated scoff at the thought of dancing with dogs and yes, there is undeniably an element of the ridiculous to the sport, what with the inter-species dance team, tux-and-tailstype matching outfits and song choices like "Putting on the Ritz," but, as any attendee will attest, there is something both compelling and strangely moving about the performances-not to mention supremely entertaining.

Brio is currently one of Canada's top dogs in agility, a wildly popular canine sport that requires dogs to run a course of jumps, ramps, tunnels, and other special obstacles like the weave poles and the teetertotter. The United States Dog Agility Association, just one of several bodies that organize agility events, represents more than 100 affiliated groups and reports more than 20,000 registered competitors throughout North America, Puerto Rico, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Bermuda, and places as far-flung as Spain and Japan. Agility competitors are timed and those with the least "faults" such as knockdowns or other errors, combined with the fastest time win "legs" toward agility titles as well as placement ribbons in their class.