When I turned up with Clara for our first agility class, the sniggering could be heard from the car park.
A Basset Hound? Doing agility?

Well, let’s face it, agility is a form of obedience and none of us are under any illusion that our stubborn and selectively deaf hounds will always choose to follow direction.

I’m not saying they can’t learn. On the contrary, they are very clever dogs, but they possess a level of free will missing in breeds such as, say, the collie.

Clara is my second Basset. She came to me through Sally Money of Basset Hound Welfare.

It became clear very early in our relationship that Clara, who is tiny, loves nothing more than to run and jump and twist and turn. She is also very determined and totally fearless.

It still puzzles me that a family who clearly welcomed her into their beds, cradled her like a baby and let her choose her own menu, could decide she was no longer wanted.

Clara, however, took her change of circumstances well. She was delighted to find she had another Basset to share her life with, and quite sure I would continue to treat her like a princess.

If I failed to meet her expectations, she would let me know.

The first night with me, she hopped straight up on my bed. I told her to get off and she did. Ten minutes later she got back up. This went on for an hour or so. She was clearly not lacking determination!

So, I figured, agility, with all its jumping and running, and one-to-one time with me, was likely to appeal to her. And it did.

The first couple of weeks she did as asked, but seemed to say, ‘Well, OK, I’m doing it, but why?’

Suddenly on week three she just took off. She realised that all the kit was just there for her to fool around on. And she did it at such a speed one of the other handlers labelled her ‘The Rocket’

All those sniggers vanished as fearless Clara hurtled up A-frames and flew across raised planks, while other dogs had to be coaxed and dragged.

She now has a row of rosettes to mark her progress and I have a few red-faced memories of the times her ‘Bassetude’ came out, and she shot off to do the equipment she fancied, rather than following the course that was set and I was asking her to complete.

It’s rather like our first night together, when she demonstrated her determination.

When I woke the following morning, I found myself looking straight into a pair of melting brown eyes. And it was clear as we looked at each other, we shared one thought: ‘This one is going to need some training’.

Agility Hounds