The little red dog has a new set of letters to add behind his name: PKD-N, which designates him as a Novice Parkour Dog!  His full title is now:

ARCHX AKC/UKC Ch Equinox Jump For Joy RE RL3 CGC PKD-N  

Don't let those fancy letters fool you though. . . he's still loves goofing off and playing in the dirt as much as the next dog.  You can see a few pictures of his love affair with getting dirty here.

Roo and I have been LOVING training parkour together.  We have enjoyed doing a lot of competitive dog sports together over the years, but at this point in our adventures together, parkour has been a great outlet for a few specific reasons:

  1. The dog parkour parent organization, International Dog Parkour Association, promotes positive reinforcement and dog safety always comes first.  No aversive training tools or corrections are permitted, and lots of emphasis is placed on proper spotting techniques and age-appropriate progression of skills to keep both dogs and handlers safe. 
     
  2.  It is comparatively inexpensive to complete titles.  While a Rally title might cost upwards of $100 per title (if you Q at your first three trials and don't include any travel costs), submitting for a Novice, Intermediate or Excellent parkour title costs $25.  
     
  3. You can do it anywhere.  The whole point of parkour is having fun with your dog in different environments.  Whether it is finding ways to play on objects you pass by all the time, or seeking out new scenery and environments to train in, parkour encourages you to get out and do fun things with your dog.  Since moving to Colorado, it has been hard to bring myself to give up beautiful weekends hiking in the mountains in order to attend agility and rally trials with the same regularity that I did previously.  But with parkour, we can take our training and fun to the mountains with us!

If you live in Fort Collins, some of our favorite locations to play parkour have been City Park, Radiant Park, and, of course, old town Fort Collins.

Here are some of our favorite clips from our Novice title submission.  If you want to see the full collection, you can check out our Summit Dog Training YouTube channel here.