Granite City Dog Agility Club 

Based in Aberdeen, hence the origin of the name, Granite City Dog Agility Club is an active registered UK Kennel Club.

Granite City is a friendly club, catering for any breed of dog and any level of handler.  We have our own dedicated training facilities situated at Denburn Livery Stud, Kingswells. The club holds weekly training sessions (Thursday evenings in the summer months and Sunday mornings over winter) at Kingswells and allows open access to the training field and equipment for members.

The Club organises a Kennel Club licensed agility competition each year, and attracts hundreds of agility competitors from throughout the Country. 

If you are interested in trying agility, please contact us by email, or use the Contact Us section of this website, and we will be in touch when we are running a new beginners class.

• Members are expected to attend training classes, and help out with the running of the club eg our KC show and fun shows. We do not offer 1:1 sessions or obedience classes. Before you join the club, you will be invited to try a taster session, and your dog must be over 9 months of age. As our classes consists of groups of dogs and handlers, sometimes with more than one group in the field at a time, dogs should be able to work off lead around other dogs and people.

Training

The address of our training field is as follows: Kingswells, Aberdeen, AB15 8SA. Group training sessions are organised on a weekly basis via Facebook. Summer training runs from Spring to Autumn on Thursday evenings, outdoors. Winter Training runs on a Sunday morning. Open Access to the outdoor training field is available for use by club members who train regularly. It is not open to members of the public, nor is it available for hire. Open access is only available for regularly attending members, who have been given approval by their trainer and the committee. This is to ensure handlers are competent to train without causing harm to their dog or training incorrectly. 

In addition to our normal weekly training sessions, we often arrange indoor training during the winter months, and we occasionally invite guest trainers along.

We are very lucky to have experienced handlers, who give up their time voluntarily to train other members of the club.

History of the Club

Established in 1999, Granite City Dog Agility Club was the first agility club in Aberdeen to be registered with the Kennel Club. 

Logo

Our logo, the Granite City badge, was selected after a few prototypes were considered. A great deal of thought and consideration went into its creation and each element has a specific purpose. 

Background - Yellow and blue are the club colours. They originated from our trainer at that time, Alan Gordon, whose previous expose’ was as an amateur boxing. His fighting colours were yellow and blue.

Club Name – An obvious inclusion Granite City Dog Agility Club, but in red to stand out on the background.

Weaves - A lot of clubs had badges containing A-frames, see-saws, dog walks or jumps, but at the design time none had weaves, so we decided upon weaves to keep it unique.

The Dog - Brewster, a Miniature Schnauzer which belonged to Rob and Linda Kerr, seemed the perfect model for the badge. Most clubs featured collies but, as a club, Granite City had a rich mix of dog breeds. That was what kicked off the Brewster image but we decided to show it as a dog with real purpose. The arrow like outline and angular shark like tufts of hair were aimed at visually creating a dog showing desire and speed.

Weaves were always seen as the make or break in a run. A dog covering 12 weaves in under 1.8 seconds was seen as world class. Founding member, Scott Troyer, had all the stats concerning equipment and dog performance times. Scott’s training plan for Flo, his Border Collie, inspired others to new levels. His wife Molly was the “Weave Queen" and was dedicated to putting all members through their paces in her weave exercises. The top weavers in the club at the time was Helen Glass’ dog Moss and Alan Gordon with his dog Misty, a combo who had competed in Scottish Dog of the Year finals. All in all we had a diverse group of individuals who all had a singular aim – putting Granite City on the agility map.

Granite City have had some of the most skilful dynamic weaving dogs in the country, Brewster, Moss, Flo, Phiz, and Manook. Just a few who could complete 12 poles in under 1.8 seconds. Another dog, Taz, completed jump-48poles-jump in under 8 electronically time seconds. That was super quick! Although Linda and her dog Jett might have told a different story.

That was the inspiration behind the badge and the passion the founding members had in setting up the first competitive Kennel Club registered agility club in Aberdeen.