Staff photo / Allie Vugrincic Buddy, a Pyrenean Shepherd rescued from the Trumbull County Dog Pound, practices jumping with handler and owner Gaynor Ibbotson of North Jackson at the Youngstown All Breed Training Club. The rescue dog has a knack for agility.

NORTH JACKSON — When Gaynor Ibbotson adopted Buddy from the Trumbull County Dog Pound in March 2019, she had no idea what she was getting.

The 35-pound shelter dog, originally believed to be a 6- to 9 -month-old terrier mix, turned out to be a whiz at agility, earning two titles in his first competition this April.

“The nice thing about Buddy is I think he’s a real Mahoning Valley success story,” Ibbotson said of the dog adopted in Trumbull County and trained at the Youngstown All Breed Training Club in North Jackson, where Ibbotson lives.

Ibbotson decided to adopt Buddy after seeing his picture online.

“He’s cute,” Ibbotson said. “He certainly looked like an enthusiastic dog.”

She brought him home as a foster-to-adopt dog to make sure he got along with her 10-pound toy poodle and her cats. Shortly after, he became part of the family.

Ibbotson took Buddy to the Youngstown All Breed Training Club for obedience classes and soon had Buddy on a waitlist for agility courses.

Agility is the fastest growing dog sport in the United States, according to the American Kennel Club, which claims over 1 million entries into the AKC’s agility program each year. The sport involves handlers leading dogs to navigate obstacles while also racing the clock.

“Agility — it’s a communication between the dog and the handler,” said Marilynn Kelly, an instructor at the Youngstown All Breed Training Club. “That’s what’s so, so fascinating about it, because you go out on the course, and the course is different every time. You don’t know what to expect. The handler gets to walk the course and gets familiar with it, but the dog is not. So the dog is totally reliant on the handler to give them the cues to make it successfully through the course.”

Buddy proved adept at agility from the start, and progressed quickly onto more daunting tasks.

“As (Buddy) got onto the larger obstacles, the a-frames, the teeter-totter, running through the tunnels — which he loves — I soon realized Buddy was fearless,” said Ibbotson.

As Ibbotson found out, Buddy was not a terrier, but a Pyrenean Shepherd, a sheep-hearding breed that traces its origins to the Pyrenees Mountains of Southern France.

“These little dogs were used as messenger dogs in the first world war in France Spain, and Germany to carry messages from the troops,” Ibbotson said. “They’re very fearless, very cunning, very intelligent.”

While Ibbotson grew up riding horses and competing at intercollegiate horse shows, she found controlling the direction of a clever 35-pound-dog “almost harder than a 1,000-pound horse.”

Still, in Buddy’s first competition, he did his first round of 10 jumps in 34 seconds. On a second attempt, where the jumps were reversed, the spunky Pyr Shep reduced his time to just over 12 seconds.

“It was so fast it was like a blur,” Ibbotson said. Buddy earned his first agility title for the performance.

In his next event on the same day, a standard agility course, Buddy earned yet another title.

Ibbotson and Buddy are excited to compete again soon in a Pyrenean Shepherd-specific event coming up in Cleveland, as well at another June event at the North Jackson club.

Ibbotson said you truly never know what you’re going to get when you adopt a shelter dog.

“Like Forrest Gump said, ‘Life is like a box of chocolates, you never know what you’re going to get.’ I never dreamt in a million years I’d be doing agility with Buddy.”

Kelly, who has worked with Ibbotson and Buddy, said it’s the team’s enthusiasm that has yielded such quick success.

“(Buddy) has the best attitude and the best drive and the best speed to do this. He is making gains, and Gaynor has the same enthusiasm that Buddy has,” Kelly said. “Most teams don’t make progress as fast as they do. It’s because of them together.”