The American Kennel Club’s National Agility Championship is not held on the West Coast very often, but it’s coming to Galway Downs March 19-22 of 2026.
In anticipation of this exciting event, we caught up with highly respected trainer and competitor Penny Scott-Fox to find out more about the sport of dog agility.
Penny is one of the nation’s most respected dog trainers, behavior specialists and K9 sports competitors. She worked for the Pasadena Humane Society for 12 years before starting Scott-Fox Pet Dog Training, based in Altadena.
Along with handling her current canine stars – Zest, aka “the Flying Banana,” and Zest’s daughter Taiba – Penny is a Fellow of the prestigious Pet Behavior Institute in England. She also developed several behavior modification programs for dogs and cats in shelter and rescue environments and continues to share her expertise in that realm.
Last but not least, she’s a big fan of Galway as a stage for sport dog training and competition.
Galway Gazette: How is Galway Downs as a facility for agility competitions?
Penny: It’s great! I come to all of the events there because the National Championships will be there and we all want to practice on that surface.
GG: The agility events take place in the Pauba ring. How does that arena work for agility exhibitors?
Penny: In Southern California we struggle to have great places for agility trials. The best surface is astroturf, inside, which we get in Florida, but the footing at Galway is really great. Especially compared to the dirt and gopher-holed grass we often run on at other Southern California venues.
My dogs, Zest and Taiba, love it. They are faster on it. The (geotextile) surface is very different and I’ve had to learn to handle them differently. They get better traction, so they can make the turns quicker and run faster. My timing has changed dramatically, and I have to get some distance to send Zest on from because she’s just faster.
And I think they feel better on it. That’s true for the dogs and for us handlers. None of us are 25 anymore! My hips hurt when I run (with my dog) on regular dirt, but I never feel any pain when we use Galway’s arenas.
GG: How does an agility competition work?
Penny: In a nutshell, agility has different levels and is divided into different categories – There are games, which I would say is like gymkhana in the horse world. These are fun games that can be good warm-ups. The jumper category is courses with jumps, tunnels and weave poles. And a standard course includes those obstacles, plus contact obstacles like A-frames, dog walks and teeter-totters. The contact obstacles have a yellow zone that the dog has to touch – often coming into it and going out.
(Read the American Kennel Club’s explanation here.)
GG: Agility is judged on speed, keeping the rails up and completing the course accurately – right? Is there any subjectivity involved in judging?
Penny: Only in the case where a judge may not see if the dog touched the yellow zone on a contact obstacle. And judges design the courses. We see the course and walk it the morning of the competition. We come to learn that some judges set courses that make more sense to our dogs than others.
GG: What kind of dogs are good for agility competition?
Penny: All kinds of breeds, and all kinds of shapes and sizes – from Chihuahuas and Basset Hounds to Great Danes. But the rock stars are Border Collies and Vizslas.
Dogs have to be athletic and obedient. And it’s a real team sport. As a handler, you have to run along with your dog, tell them to jump, do turns, and do everything that you want. It involves a lot of training. You have to remember the course – doing all the obstacles, at high speed and in the right order.
GG: What kind of dogs do you have?
Penny: I have Novia Scotia Duck Tolling Retrievers. They are not common in the States, but a lot of my students have them and they are amazing. As hunting dogs, they have a dual purpose – they “toll,” which is running up and down the shoreline splashing in the water to get the ducks excited. Then they retrieve the ducks after they’ve been shot.
They look like a small Retriever, but they are nothing like that. They are more like Border Collies because they have very high drive. My rock star is Zest, who is 9. I bred her in 2021 and kept one from her litter, Taiba. They were born during the Kentucky Derby race, and I named them all after racehorses.
GG: How did Galway come to the dog agility world’s attention?
Penny: I actually reached out to Robert Kellerhouse to organize a scent work camp last July. When I saw the facility, I thought, “Oh my god, we need to be doing agility here” and the rest kind of took off.
GG: Tell us about scent work.
Penny: It’s a completely different sport from agility. It’s training dogs to detect a target odor, and it can be used for detecting bombs and drugs. For regular American Kennel Club scent work, it’s another fun thing for amateurs to do with their dogs. We train the dogs to find lost human items – maybe car keys or sunglasses. We give them the person’s scent and tell them “to go find more of that person.”
I am a founding instructor in this sport and I teach intensive four-day camps that people from all over come to. At Galway Downs, we filled nine of the Ranch Homes and it was super fun.
The North American Sport Dog Association is a good resource for getting involved with scent games and competition.
GG: We equestrians were thrilled that Galway hosted a national championship this year – the US Eventing Association’s American Eventing Championships in late August. Is it also a big deal that your sport is having its national championships in the West?
Penny: It’s huge! We’re all delighted because we usually have to travel to the East Coast. We often hear the East Coast competitors don’t want to come West because of earthquakes and heat. To have it in our backyard and all these trials at Galway so we can practice on the surface is huge!
GG: Is it easy to enjoy dog agility as a spectator?
Penny: Yes, it’s a great spectator sport and there are usually great vendors. Come on out!
The next dog agility event at Galway Downs is December 27-28 with the Papillon Club of Southern California. Bookmark our event calendar here to keep up with the 2026 schedule.
