RUN YOUR TOY IN FAST CAT
by Susan Thibodeaux
A tiny white dog barrels toward me, running as fast as she can while I stand between two orange plastic fences, jumping up and down and screaming encouragement till my voice is hoarse. “RUN, PRECIOUS!” I hol- ler, “Catch that bag and kill it!” People around me laugh at the thought of the tiny dog killing a white plastic bag, but all express amazement at the zeal with which my little 5-pound Toy Fox Terrier chases the bag. We have been attending FAST CAT events for a while now and we notice that there are usually few Toy dogs participating. When Toy dogs run, it tends to get attention. Everyone expects the large dogs to race the 100 yards, but they are often captivated with the scampering tiny dogs coming down the runway. For thosenot familiarwithFASTCAT, it’sanoffshoot from the Coursing Ability Test (CAT). While the CAT is a pass/fail, within a maximum time, around a 300 or 600 yard roughly oval course, FAST CAT is a one-hundred-yard dash in a straight lane. The dogs chase a lure—the white plastic bag which is on a drag or continuous loop system. The lure operator controls the speed of the lure, working to keep it just in front of the dog as it runs. It takes two people for a dog to run—one to release the dog and one to catch it at the other end. The dog’s time to complete the 100-yard dash is then con- verted intoMiles Per Hour (MPH) using a formula provid- ed by the AKC. And because dogs come in all sizes, there are handicaps to determine the points the dog will earn using the time it ran. The handicap determines the multiplier used to determine howmany points the speed of the dog earns to- wards earning FASTCAT titles. If the dog is under 12 inches, it will get a 2.0 handicap. If it’s 12 to 18 inches, it will get a 1.5 handicap, and over that gets no handicap. The speed (MPH) is multiplied times the handicap and that’s howmany points were earned on that run.
T op N otch T oys , N ovember 2021 • 23
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