Chasing The Scandal

Does your dog have a lot of energy to burn? If so, Fast CAT might be a great sport for you and your dog!

Fast CAT is a timed 100-yard sprint where your dog chases a lure. It is simple to understand and get started with. It helps your dog burn energy and direct their energy into something productive.

In this blog you will learn what it is, how it works, what you should bring and any tips in tricks that you might find helpful.

Our first time at a fast CAT was very informative. We went into it not knowing too many of the rules, but we quickly learned. Here are some tips so you hopefully do not make the same mistakes. Although mistakes are common in the dog world, you can learn from other people’s mistakes and stories!

What is Fast CAT?

Fast CAT stands for Fast Coursing Ability Test.

It is an AKC sport that is designed to test your dogs’ ability to run as quickly as possible over a 100-yard straight course while chasing a lure.

Unlike many other AKC sports, Fast Cat does not require complicated training or obedience. Your dogs are also not competing against anyone but themselves. You and your dog could go out there right now and participate and have a lovely time! Your dog sees the lure (or you at the other end of the track), they run after it and you can see how fast they go!

Who Can Participate?

One of the best things about Fast CAT is the wide variety of dogs and owners participating. Any breed or mix breed are allowed to participate. We even run our two reactive dogs with no problem. When the dogs are running, they run individually and are closed off from any other dog or person by an orange safety fence which you can see in the photos provided. Your dog does not need to be an athlete or even an athletic breed to be able to participate.

Your dog should be in good physical standing to be able to participate in the run.

Your dog must be at least one year old to participate and earn points for your titles (we talk about titles below). Your dog can still participate in fun runs which is the same run but considered a practice. The fun runs are usually free or about $5. Not all events will offer fun runs, but it will not hurt to reach out and ask! Phone numbers and emails are usually found in the premium.

At every AKC Fast CAT event, you can run up to two times a day. So, the average weekend usually has four runs. Sometimes they do more than two days, so make sure you check with each individual event.

Fast CAT Titles

Dogs can earn a few different titles in Fast Cat. Every time that your dog completes a run (makes it all the way to the other end) you get a qualifying ribbon. Each qualifying run also gets you points which are based on how fast your dog ran during each event. The number of points that you get basically equals the MPH your dog ran. So if your dog ran 20MPH you get about 20 points.

Here is the list of titles and how many points you need to archive them:

Title	Points	Approx. Runs
BCAT	150	4-5
DCAT	500	13-18
FCAT	1000	27-35
FCAT2	1500	40-55
FCAT3	2000	55-75

Your FCAT will continue getting numbers behind them with the points increasing by 500 points for as many times you want to run (FCAT4,5,6 and so on).

Let’s talk Handicaps. Here’s a chart to make it a little easier. The point of handicaps is to equal the playing field between small and large dogs.

Height	Handicap
18 inches or higher	1.0
12-18 inches	1.5
>12 inches	2.0

At every Fast CAT event there will be a photographer (usually at the end of the line). It’s a great way to get amazing, high-quality photos of your dog. Sometimes they will even get up close to the releaser so you can get pictures with your dogs as well. So, make sure to always get their information or card! Some of the best photos of your dog are not the posed candid shot but action ones!

You can also ask family or friends to take pictures of you as well.

If you are thinking about entering your first event, make sure you have the following:

Many events including Fast CAT can be found directly on the AKC website. Here’s the link . Under each event a premium (a pfd with all the information about that specific event) is included for more information.

Tips and Tricks

1. Make sure to do all the paperwork before you get there as we did not have internet to be able to finish our registration on our dog. I thought we would have plenty of time to do so but the event ended up being in the middle of nowhere with no internet access.
2. Make sure to bring cash or check if you didn’t pay online! Many dog sport event and the people operating them DO NOT take card! For our first event ever, they were lovely enough to let us pay the next day for all of our runs which we greatly appreciated!
3. You can run two runs with each dog per day. The Fast CAT events usually run multiple days though. So, if they are offering it on Saturday and Sunday then you can run up to four times, twice a day.
4. You have to check in at the tent each time you run. Females have to be wiped to make sure that they are not in heat. Unfortunately, dogs in heat CANNOT run.
5. We ended up running one dog at a time even though we had brought all three with us. Some people are able to run their dogs back-to-back, this saves time but is quite chaotic and you can’t guarantee that someone will hold your dog(s) for you while you are releasing your first one. We have car crates so it made it easy to leave the other two while working with each dog individually, you can also have them run both of their runs while they are out.
6. Make sure that the person that is going to catch your dog walks down a few minutes before it’s your turn. For the first time especially, whoever the dog likes more should be the one that catches the dog.
7. For the releaser, make sure that the line on the ground is in between the dogs’ legs so that the front legs are in front of the line and the back legs are behind. Release on “Tally Ho”!
8. For the catcher you must be ready to both call and catch your dog. The easiest way to do this is to make a slip lead with your extra leash.
9. If you have any questions at all, most people in the dog world are very nice and will answer any questions you have, so make sure to reach out!

Those are some of the things that we learned when we started our journey. Hopefully it helps you!