Our First Fast CAT Experience

I knew immediately I wanted to get involved in dog sports with Mumen. We’re currently training for agility, but given that can take one to two years to master, we wanted to try dipping our toes in another sporting event. Thus, when our local kennel club announced they were hosting a Fast CAT event, we immediately signed up.

What is Fast CAT, you ask?

Fast CAT® – which stands for Coursing Ability Test – is a timed 100-yard dash where dogs run one at a time, chasing a lure. It's over before you know it — and it's nothing short of awe-inspiring to watch your dog run at top speed, ears back, eyes focused, legs strong. -AKC.org

It’s no secret I have rather aggressive anxiety. Compounded by the fact that we’d never done this before, I had no idea what to expect.

You’re allowed to do fun runs, but I knew we wanted to go for ribbons. Fortunately, Mumen was already signed up with AKC Canine Partners for his trick titles and his Canine Good Citizen title, so that ultimately saved us a step, but if you’d like to experience Fast CAT before committing to registration through the AKC, it seems most kennel clubs offer the fun runs for a small fee. (Ours charged $5.00 for a fun run, $25.00 for an early registration run, and $30.00 for a day-of registration run, permitted there was room).

There is a ‘releaser’ and a ‘catcher’. I decided to ‘catch’ Mumen at the end of the course since his recall is still iffy in high distraction environments (and this is definitely a high distraction environment!) My husband was Mumen’s ‘releaser’, which eased my mind since I knew Mumen would be more comfortable with him, but there are typically releasers available if you do not have one.

We entered the course, a straight shot flanked by snow fencing to prevent the pups from dashing off …
The lure, a little white bag, zipped up to the starting line …
I waited down at the finish.
One of the organizers yelled, “Tally ho!”
Off went the lure—
and off went Mumen!

For having never done it before, I thought his first try went incredibly well. He ran 17.29 MPH on his first run, but by the time he had his footing and realized what was going on, his final run came in at 19.302 MPH.

And as you can see by this photo captured by CIMA Photography, he loved. Every. Minute.

Photo by CIMA Photography at Packerland Kennel Club Fast CAT event

Each dog that completes the run gets a qualifying ribbon, and at the end of the weekend, Mumen had four qualifying ribbons and approximately 111 points to his title. Points are awarded by multiplying the dogs MPH by their handicap. Mumen, being a stubby little fella, has a handicap of 1.5, but you can check what your dog’s handicap would be by measuring them at the withers and referring to the AKC website to see which category they fall into.

The Packerland Kennel Club announced another Fast CAT event in June, and we’ll definitely be signing up to go for our BCAT ribbon (for those who earn 150 points).

Overall, my nerves were on high alert all day Saturday, but by the time Sunday rolled around and we did our third and fourth runs, any anxiety turned into fun. I highly recommend it as an exciting way to bond with your dog and earn some ribbons along the way.

In my next blog post, I’ll be addressing Mumen’s communication board, how he’s stringing together longer sentences, and how the layout of the buttons made a huge difference in the way he communicates with it.

Thanks, and hopefully you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!