Episode 346: Interview with Senior Open World Champion Dudley Shumate

Speaker 1: Welcome to Bad Dog Agility, a podcast helping you reach all of your dog agility goals, whether it's competing under the bright lights of the televised finals at Westminster, or successfully navigating a homemade course in your own backyard. We'll bring you training, tips, interviews and news about the great sport of dog agility. Are you ready? I'm ready. I'm ready. I'm ready. The show starts with your hosts, Jennifer, Esteban and Sarah.

Jenn: I'm Jennifer.

Esteban: I'm Esteban.

Sarah: And I'm Sarah. And this is episode 346. Today's podcast is brought to you by hititboard.com and the new Teeter "Teach It!" an easy to use tool that controls the amount of tip on your teeter so you can introduce motion to your dog in a gradual way. Go to hititboard.com for the new Teeter "Teach It!" and other training tools and toys. Use discount code BDA10 to get 10% off your order. That's hititboard.com. Today we're going to be talking about the Senior Open Agility World Championship. This event happened just this past weekend and it is the very first of its kind. We are joined on the podcast today by Dudley Shumate. Welcome to the podcast, Dudley.

Dudley: Thanks for having me.

Sarah: We are so excited to talk about this event. It is such an interesting addition to the international competition landscape. And what this event entailed was classes for seniors, and by seniors we mean older competitors. There's a 55 and over and a 65 and over division, and this event was combined with the junior open event that's been going on for many years that also has their own age range brackets for the juniors. So we kind of bring the full spectrum of agility competitors together for an event that crowns both team winners and individual winners. And we have asked Dudley to join us today because in this very first event, Dudley was crowned world champion in the intermediate height class in the 55 and over division for individual and for team. So you won two gold medals at this event. Congratulations, Dudley.

Jenn: What an accomplishment. Way to go.

Dudley: I pretty much didn't need the plane to get home, I'll be honest.

Sarah: That's right. Just on cloud nine. So we wanted to talk with you about the event in general and of course your experience there. Let's talk a little bit, let's start with the structure of this event. So can you kind of explain to us the structure of the event? How many runs and how the champion and the gold, silver and bronze were determined?

Dudley: Yeah, so the way that it's set up, this being the first time in all, they wanted to see how popular it would be, which I think it far surpassed their expectation given the number of entries. They modeled it on how they do the juniors. So you have an agility, which is what we think of as a standard run, the ring with the contacts. You have a standard run and you have an jumpers run both as an individual and as a four member team.

Sarah: Awesome. It is very much set up after the Agility World Championship that has the same type of format. With the team event, do you get to drop one?

Jenn: That was going to be my question too. That's what I was just getting ready to ask. Of the four, do they score all four or do they drop the low one like AWC does?

Dudley: You are allowed to drop the low one. Yes.

Sarah: Okay. Okay, great. So it basically is the exact same format as the Agility World Championship. So the big difference here is just that we have these different divisions for different ages of handler, starting with the junior handlers having multiple age ranges and then now adding the seniors with their age ranges. And I'm looking here at some of the numbers that they published and it turns out that there were even more seniors than juniors at this event. So there were 489 total juniors, there were 550 total seniors. So kind of sharing time there at the event. Tell us a little bit about, I guess the environment, just the vibe, how did it feel to have this event where you bring together these two groups of people and really celebrate what each group uniquely is offering to the sport of agility?

Dudley: I really, really like that question because I've been on several teams. I've had the good luck to be on several teams and I've got to say, of all the teams I've been on, I enjoy this event the most because of the energy of being with the juniors. I loved it. I thought it was great. I saw lots of smiles, I saw some big feelings too, but everybody was supportive and into watching each other and I just thought it was great. Before the closing ceremonies, we were outside doing the Macarena. It was fun. I really had a great time.

Sarah: That's awesome. So congratulations on your success at the event. Tell us about how it unfolded with the four runs, the order that you went in when you knew that you were medalling in both the team and the individual. How did that play out for you personally, but also for your USA team, intermediate team?

Dudley: I just started with Jamie's Run being a somewhat technical team run for Jumping. She is a two-and-a-half-year-old Border Collie, and this is her first time ever being in an airplane, ever going anywhere. So I had no idea what to expect and she was a little bit on her tippy-toes. She loves the excitement and she was a little bit super excited. So we actually got an E on our first run of the event for the team jumping, but because you're allowed to drop a score, my other three intermediate teammates who are Bob Daigle with Blew Bayou, Anne-Marie Hopkins with Sia and Barbara Smith-Hill with Shoe Fly, they all went clear and did great. So we were able to drop my score. After that. I can't remember which run I did next as far as individual versus team, but we came back strong on the team agility to actually win that round. Jamie had started to settle a little bit, so that was great.

And with the individual jumping, we had another technical course and we hung in there, even with her, she's kind of a baby and did a great job to get forth. That was over the moon, I mean over the moon. So that was all H-Bone got more connected and she got a little bit more settled, so it was a great trend. By the time we did the last run, the individual agility, it was funny because when I started, I started at the first jump saying, "Okay, make sure that you show where everything," and then I don't know, something just went in my head and said, "The heck with that, you got to go." And I just drove her. She was a grownup and said, we are just going to go. And she was brilliant. She really was, nothing about me. She was brilliant and she won it and that's kind of how it went down.

Sarah: That is amazing. I had no idea that she was that young and this was her first big competition overseas. That is truly, truly amazing and I just love hearing how that all played out. I'm going to say something that I think that people think, but nobody says out loud, and I'm going to ask you the question and that is, when you're the teammate whose score gets dropped and you stand on that podium and get the gold medal, is there a little bit of an impostery feeling that then gets totally overturned by the fact that you turned around and got individual gold?

Dudley: Yeah.

Sarah: I think it's such an amazing story that you go there and you are the one teammate whose score gets dropped, your teammates put it all together and the whole team gets gold. But then you turn around and you have this amazing moment of the spotlight and just everything coming together and really showing what you and your dog can do that puts you as world champion. That's amazing.

Dudley: Well, and it helped that she did win the team agility, so we got to contribute a score for the agility. We E'd in the jumping, but then we won in the team agility, so we didn't E both of them. I would've felt like crap if we'd E'd both of them.

Sarah: Oh yeah, I kind of forgot. I see. I kind of forgot that they do each of those separate rather than dropping a combined score. So you drop one and you drop one instead. Got it, got it, got it. No, that win is amazing and standard.

Dudley: Well, it does make you feel better that at least I did something good for the team.

Sarah: Right, right.

Dudley: Yeah.

Sarah: That is amazing. So let's take a step backwards and I want to hear a little bit about you and your history in the sport. You're a two time national agility champion with two different dogs. You've obviously been in the sport a long time and we can say that because everybody knows now how old you are, which I think personally is a funny thing about this event. I found out that some people that I had no idea that they were in their fifties and then they show up on the USA 55 and older team, it kind of outs everybody's age, right? Everybody is outed as a senior if they want to go to this event, which I think is another kind of amusing thing about the whole thing. But anyway, that's a side note, but yeah, tell us a little bit about your history in the sport.

Dudley: Okay, let's see. First of all, it depends on what venue as far as National Champion, two time AKC. If you add in UK, we've won national championship in Canada, we've won UKI National Championships, USDAA [inaudible 00:11:15] team at Sound Sports, so if you add in the other events, then lucky me that number goes up. But we won the AKC National. I'm 60 and I think one of the things that I love about agility in general, kind of an aside from this senior open, is I was thinking about it and it is the only sport that I can think of that the age range within which you can be really competitive is so long. I think that's so cool because you can still play and be at the top of your game anywhere from 16 to 60, and I don't know another sport where you can do that over that many years.

[inaudible 00:12:02] when I was thinking about it as I'm traveling for many hours. I've been doing this sport personally, me, myself, of course, about 30 years now I guess approximately. I started with standard poodles and they were fabulous and ran poodles for a long, long time. The first dog that I made an actual team with didn't belong to me and the dog actually taught me a ton and was a fabulous, fabulous partner and I learned as I went with him and then have had Border Collies. Now I've had some littles. I've been on teams with an eight-inch dog and was on this senior team. He's a 16-inch jumping dog. He's our sport mix also. So I've really enjoyed learning with all different types. It's not just only border collies or only big dogs because they all teach you something. So I enjoy all of them. I have things I really love about each one and things I could do without with each one.

Sarah: One thing that I was really curious about with this event, and I watched your video and I looked at some of the maps and I wondered what your thoughts were on the course design. As far as you can tell, as somebody who is deep in the sport and has been around it for a long time, do you see any particular difference in how the judges arrange their course, design their course, for juniors versus seniors versus the regular Agility World Championship? Do you see any kind of difference or did you not think that there was really any difference in the course design to account for the audience that it's being designed for?

Dudley: I'll be honest, since I was running two dogs and they had different courses, I tended to focus and try to learn the ones that I needed to run and pay more attention to them than to look at others as much because it was a lot running two different dogs with them each running different courses. So I really tried to focus on what I was doing.

What I can tell you within the experience of the courses in intermediate, what I found was differences with regard to challenge just within even that same age group and jump height. So everything wasn't all technical and everything was neither all super easy. It was a nice mix. I had a couple of courses that were, to put it in a different terminology, sort of like an A2 or a J2 type of feel, hard but not crazy hard. And then I had a couple courses and I was like, "Oh my, pretty technical." So I liked the fact that they weren't all the same. I thought that was refreshing. I liked that.

Sarah: Right. When we look at the team selection, so this is obviously the very first event of its kind. What do you know about how the AKC put their team together and what can you tell us about anything they've said about their plans for how they're going to put the team together going forward? Do you have any insight there?

Dudley: I can tell you how they did this one. This one was purely via video submission and past results because they didn't have tryouts or anything of that nature. They didn't have a qualification process, so it was a, you submitted videos and a resume so to speak, and then a selection committee reviewed it and then they chose the teams in that manner. Going forward for 2025, I don't think they've decided yet how they're going to do the selection process, so I don't have any insider information with regard to how that's going to go down.

Esteban: As an individual overall winner. Do you get a special invite back to the event next year?

Dudley: That's an excellent question and I would answer yes because they are... The answer is yes because they modeled it after the juniors and that's how they do it in the juniors.

Sarah: Yeah, I did actually, when I was preparing for this podcast, I think I explicitly found where it said that the winners are invited back the next year, so you will automatically be on the team, or actually the U.S. can have, I think, an additional person.

Esteban: It's an extra spot.

Jenn: It's an extra spot.

Sarah: Right, right. She automatically gets to come back. I think that's only for individual though, not for team.

Esteban: Are you committing to going right here on this podcast letting everyone know?

Dudley: Hell yeah. I'm going again.

Esteban: All right.

Dudley: Yes.

Jenn: Have they said where it's going to be?

Dudley: It was so fun. Portugal.

Jenn: Do you know the location? Oh, okay. It's going to Portugal. Okay, so EO.

Dudley: Yes.

Jenn: So the regular EO and then AWC senior and junior are all going to be in Portugal next year, is that correct?

Dudley: That's what I understand.

Jenn: Oh, exciting.

Dudley: I know for-

Jenn: Yeah.

Dudley: I know, it is exciting.

Esteban: With your dog being so young, I feel like there can be a little bit of so much success so quickly. Where do you kind of go from here now I think you probably know and you might have a different view on it, but I'm thinking about this question from the perspective of a beginner, or from someone who is getting their first dog that's really competitive on a national level and maybe can make a team and in their minds you're kind of at the pinnacle here, right at the start of the dog's career and they're like, "Well, where do I go from here?" So if you could speak a little bit to that and maybe your motivation for doing agility in general and kind of how you view the sport in terms of your relationships, how you relate to your dogs.

Dudley: The one nice thing that I have found by getting older is that I play this a whole lot more for me now and not for what I think of extrinsic measures of value. So I've had the good luck to have had some success and won some stuff that it gives you a freedom or at least it gives me a freedom, and I play this game now to get better just on a personal level.

And yes, don't get me wrong, I love staying on that box and I love hearing the national anthem, but at the end of the day I play it because it fascinates me to create a language with a different species and become fluent in how you relate and how you can do things. I find that fascinating and I adore these babies, it's my family, so I play it to see how good we can get. And depending on what dog that I am currently working with, that could be anything from you can go in the ring and not be scared to, you're standing on that big box. I want to get our personal best and however that shakes out on a scribe sheet is whatever. What I play for is our personal best.

Sarah: That's such a great perspective on the sport and on why we do it, and I love what you said about being able to communicate with another animal. I do think that there... When you step back and look at what we do in agility, it is amazing. It is phenomenal.

Dudley: It's incredible. It blows my mind.

Sarah: That this sport is even possible.

As we wrap up, I want to ask you to give some thoughts or advice to the person listening to this who is just discovering agility and they are 60, even 70. I get emails from people all the time who are just discovering the sport and are like, "I wish I discovered it earlier." They're older. Maybe they aren't as mobile as some of the competitors, but I think one of the amazing things about this event is that it gives those people heroes, like you are now a senior hero. So what advice would you give to somebody who's just discovering this sport and they feel like maybe it's too late for them?

Dudley: First of all, I'd say, "No it isn't." Second, I would say, "Lucky you, that you have found it and being older, you probably have more time to do it now than maybe you had earlier in life." I would say, "It is about the most fun you can have. You're doing something with your best friend. It's going to make you both physically and mentally sharper and it's got so many levels at which you can enjoy it." I love that about agility from when I started to now it is just, of course, exploded in popularity and there's so many ways you can play the game. So if there's one type of agility that doesn't suit your particular team, well, heck, you could try another. It's just cool that there are choices and options and I just can't even say how great I would think it is that a older person has discovered it because you are in for a great time. The beginning of learning anything, that learning curve is so steep. That's fun. You're getting lots of cookies because you're learning so much so fast.

Esteban: I love everything that you just said. This is-

Sarah: Me too, me too.

Esteban: Really fantastic. Such a great perspective, and it's no wonder that people love bringing you in to teach and work with their students and their dogs and all of that.

Dudley: Oh, nice.

Esteban: Well, so in fact, where can people find you? Are you still out there? Are you going to be doing seminars this upcoming season, this upcoming year?

Dudley: Oh, my lord. Yeah. I'm booking into June 2025 already. I have been quite busy with the seminars, trying to balance teaching with trying to have some time since I am older, but some time that I get to do what I want to do too with my babies. Honestly, the best way to find me is if someone wants to know where I'm teaching, send me a Facebook message. I don't keep up a website, I don't have time. I'm happy to direct anyone. If they give me a geographical location they're interested in. I teach in the United States all over. I teach in Canada. I can direct them to a hostess and give them contact info. I'm happy to do that.

Esteban: That's great. We will do that. We'll put that in the show notes page so people can get a hold of you. But for everyone who's listening, look for Dudley on Facebook.

Sarah: Absolutely.

Dudley: Yeah. Yeah.

Sarah: Well, we just want to thank you so much for joining us today.

Esteban: Fresh off the plane.

Sarah: Yeah, fresh off the plane. Still jet-lagged.

Dudley: Oh, seriously. Yeah, it's crazy. I drove home to Dallas today. I got home about [inaudible 00:23:26]

Sarah: Yep, absolutely. So thank you for coming and lending your perspective. I can't wait to see where this event goes over the next several years.

Dudley: Yeah, me too.

Sarah: Yeah, we'll look forward to watching you next year defend the title.

Dudley: Woohoo.

Sarah: And that's it for this week's podcast. We'd like to thank our sponsor, HitItBoard.com. Happy training.

Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to Bad Dog Agility. We hope you enjoyed today's episode. For more information, updates and links to all our socials, just check out our website, www.baddogagility.com. If you haven't already signed up for our email subscription, we would love to have you join the BDA community. Until next time, take care.