The 'official' video
Produced by: MediaStudio-GD
Commentary by: Mary Ann Nester
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Description:
The Best of Agility
is the 'official' video of the 2003 Agility World Championships, held in Lievin France. It is
more for agility enthusiasts who want to see different handling skills, course strategies etc/
as demonstrated by representatives from different countries. Who else would sit and watch
dog after dog running a course hoping for a trophy?
Contents:
- Venue
- Opening ceremony
- Closing ceremonies
- Runs of GB competitors
- Top ten small, medium and large individuals
- Top three small, medium and large teams
- Split screen comparisons of selected runs
- Interviews with the champions
- Dancing supporters
- Commentary by Mary Ann Nester
Best features:
Having only
ever seen some very poor filming of agility at Crufts on TV, I
bought this with some trepidation and then found myself transfixed,
completely hooked. With four hours of viewing of some of the best agility in the world, it is
incredibly good value. Mary Ann’s commentary is very good, pretty laid back, informative, yet
not too intrusive. It’s possible you might want more if you were fairly new to the sport, but I
think most handlers would find it pitched right. If you’re maniacal about pedigree dog breeds
you might find Mary Ann a little challenging in that department (note references to little
white fluffy things and Pyrenean Mountain Dogs!!), but I don’t think that really matters.
Something like 95% is strictly agility, with only a
little of the dancing and celebrating shown just to give us atmosphere. It’s great to see the
award ceremony with Great Britain up there on the rostrum.
I found it best to download and print out all the
courses, work out how I might run them first and then watch carefully to see what worked well,
and what variations were possible. This is what made the viewing so compulsive, causing me to
rewind endlessly just to take another look.
One of the best sequences for this was Individual Large
Agility where the sequence from 15 through to the finish line was entirely fascinating.
Individual Large Jumping had some good lessons in it too, especially watching dogs that went
for the tunnel instead of the weaves, and working out why. There is just so much here and it
works like a training video if you want it to. I got the impression there were more mistakes
from the large dogs, which in a way made watching them more useful: watching errors made by top
handlers always seems to be very much more informative that watching the mistakes made by most
of us!
The medium and small dogs were a joy to watch, and the
standard seemed incredibly high, almost making the sport look easy! It was good to be reminded
how well our medium dog team had done. Having seen just how difficult some of those courses
were, I couldn’t quite buy the argument that it is our fiddly courses here that slow our small
dogs down either. Individual Small agility has to have been one of the trappiest courses I have
ever seen!
There was some useful footage, showing two runs side by
side, to see where each dog gained time over the other, and the first run on each new course
was shown in slow motion to help you get your head round it.
Could be improved:
The
only thing I would like to have seen more of was comparisons of handling techniques in slow
motion, so that you didn't have to rerun the interesting bits quite so many times!
Filming, format and production:
The filming is excellent.
The English
language version, specifically made for Europe, is four hours in length as compared to the
American version which is only three hours long. The extra time includes runs by the GB team
and other highlights. The French language version has been done by Christine Charpentier while
the German language version has been done by H.G. Hertrich, judge of the 1999 World
Championships in Dortmund. VHS PAL format.
Price:
£15.00 including postage and packing. Hand delivered whenever possible!
Value for money:
I’ll give it 10/10 for value for money,
and 9/10 on everything else. I have to deduct something for those mountain dogs!
Overall
Rating: I won’t be stuffing this video at
the back of the cupboard, there is just too much to learn from it.
Distributed in Britain by Mary Ann Nester
For more information or to order visit:
http://www.aslanagility.co.uk
 About
the producers
Media Studio-GD produce the videos for the FCI
President of Agility Commission, Mr. Jean Paul Petitdidier. The German company has covered the
Worlds since 1995.
Gerhard at Media Studios does the videos as a hobby. His
day job is as police dog handler instructor in Germany. He is married and has two Malinois
dogs.
Copies of the official videos for past years are
available from their web site. http://www.dogvideos.de)
 About
The Reviewer
Jane Tatam took up agility about four years ago, starting out with her over-sized Papillion
Mr. Bumble. She then got herself an under-sized Papillon Mr. Pickwick before graduating to
poodles, Sergeant Buzz Fuzz, now aged two and Mister Jaggers, now fourteen months old.
She trains at Buckland Agility under Carol Smith whose considerable help has assisted in making
Buzz an advanced dog. She also trains at Cannington ATS, just outside Bridgwater, where she
does her level best to give a few lessons, too.
In 'real life' she runs her own business as a publishing consultant.
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