Pino the poodle was always facing long odds for a win at Dunedin’s Forrester Park on Saturday.
His neatly clipped coat offered a streamlined suit to race in.But the feisty little canine faced another challenge no amount of clipping could compensate for — short legs.
Not that he didn’t try, mind you, ripping around obstacles and soaring over jumps before flashing over the finish line to clock a time measured in seconds.
Chasing along behind was breathless owner Rieko Ogawa, of Christchurch, who said her little dog had found his competitive streak after a slow start.
"At the beginning he didn’t want to do anything ... but something happened inside him," she said.
Pino was competing in the novice section of the Otago Canine Training Club’s January agility championship show, held over the weekend in Dunedin.
The show pitted dog owners and their pets against each other, and the clock, in quick-fire time trials that tested accuracy and obedience, show manager Mary-Rose Scoular said.
About 110 dogs of all shapes and sizes took on the course, guided around each obstacle in turn by their owners, sometimes with mixed success.
Reece Smith (33), of Dunedin, was all smiles after watching his border collie, Risk, weave through the course like a furry fighter pilot.
Mr Smith said he and his dogs had been competing for about 10 years and now travelled around the South Island each weekend and to the North Island at least once a year for shows.
"My dogs love it. They absolutely love it.
"I think it gives them something to do and they are out there with us."
But another owner, Lyn Hayde, could only shake her head and smile after watching her standard schnauzer, Ella, take a cheeky shortcut that skipped most of the course.
Ella was just getting started when she abandoned the weave poles, skipped the A-frame and scoffed at the tunnel, instead racing to bury her head in a bucket of dog treats waiting at the finish line.
"She’s probably the worst dog here," Ms Hayde said, laughing, and explaining her youngest dog was still learning the ropes.
"It didn’t go ideally at all [today]."
