The Michael Jordan of dogs doesn’t need you to tell him he’s a very good boy

Ares is 19 ¾ inches at the withers (top of the shoulder) and weighs 38 pounds. He is black and white, symmetrically so. His face looks like it’s covered by a modified Batman mask, but with a white streak down the middle. He is intense — that much is noticeable in competition. He doesn’t bark so much as bellow.

That’s the sound of the conqueror’s war cry, a blood curdling presage of remorseless dominance.

At 10 years old, Ares is the reigning king of dog agility. He has two USDAA National Championship titles, eight gold medals, and two silver medals in IFCS World Championship competition. He’s first in the USDAA Agility Lifetime Achievement rankings. He holds a lead of more than 2,000 points over his competition.

In victory, he certainly looks the part. Ares has a tendency to pose with a wide-open stance at the awards podium, facing down the world from his first-place pedestal with a piercing gaze. This is the Michael Jordan of dogs. You’ve likely never heard of him and likely do not care about the sport he owned.

Perhaps you’ve seen and loved Olly, though. Over 11 million YouTube views have been visited upon this wayward Jack Russell terrier deeply failing his dog agility run that he began with a face plant. Rather than receive the disaster with solemnity, the England’s Crufts Dog Agility Competition announcer betrays only amusement.

Olly’s run gets the following quotes:

“He’s all over the place (chuckles), and so he should be.”

“Ah well, it doesn’t really matter, does it?”

“He’s having a ball.”

“Oh, I love it.”

A New York Magazine recap of the blooper states, “I do not know who won the agility competition, and I also do not care. Olly, with his joyous face-plant and doofy smile, was clearly the day’s big winner.” The most popular England’s Crufts Dog Agility footage is not of the competition’s many impressive canine feats, but instead of a directionless flameout.

After the competition, his owner Karen Parker was quoted saying, “I didn’t think he could top last year’s performance, when he ran into the crowd rather than around the course. He’s like that all the time, he’s insane! One of the presenters showing the clip on TV news said, ‘We should all have a bit of Olly in us’ and I thought ‘I don’t think you need that!’”

Not only is Olly adorable, he’s a model. We could all stand to be a little like this face-planting furball. The disciplined dogs are just dogs. Olly? He’s an inspiration.

While acknowledging Olly is indeed a very good and very adorable boy, this praise is illustrative. A dog’s athletic achievement is not to be taken seriously, but his failure makes for good entertainment. As an aside, one has to wonder if dogs would be similarly amused by any person’s frail attempts at completing one of these obstacle courses. We’d stand about as much chance in these competitions as little Olly at his most hilariously distracted.

America loves sports and loves dogs. Yet, combinations of the two yield nothing more than subcultures and occasional novelty entertainment. We’re largely not interested in dog athleticism. Or rather, we’re not interested in the pinnacle of dog athleticism. Beach corgi races, with their little scrambling legs, do far better on the internet. Air Bud was a successful movie about a golden retriever who could hoop about as well as your average 7-year-old human.

What we do not want to indulge, or maybe even confront, is the kind of canine prowess that shames our best efforts. There’s so much pomp and circumstance surrounding the Olympics, an inspiring celebration of human achievement. It’s a little deflating to consider how easily a dog would win certain events, like the 100m hurdles. Not even a bred-fast greyhound. Regular dogs will do.

They can run faster and boast superior agility. Dogs can’t carry an Olympic torch, but we can’t hold a candle to them.

Obviously this is true of other animals. But those animals aren’t in our homes, farting and humping our pillows. Nobody wants to see an overfed beagle named Noodle amble up to Lane 7, and, scared by the sound of the gun, easily scamper past a bunch of sprinting sports heroes who just wept during their countries’ national anthems. Nobody wants to see Noodle scarf up her beef jerky reward, lose herself in delight, pee on the track, and slink away with a look of guilt as a confused reporter throws to Bob Costas in studio. OK, I want to see all of this, but I might be alone.

Absorbing the dog’s athletic superiority would give lie to the pretense of human specialness, the notion that a 100-meter victory is anything but success within a species of athletic mediocrity. Maybe that’s why we enjoy seeing our beloved canine companions screw up due to relative stupidity. We don’t want the Michael Jordan of dogs. We want a Sam Bowie who chases his own tail, slips, and gets his head stuck in a laundry hamper.

Not everyone dismisses dog greatness, though. There’s a community that’s obsessed with a dog’s athletic performance. Chances are there’s an athletic dog competition near you. Dog agility (and its cousin, the more basic relay race of Flyball) is a worldwide subculture, producing many events that are free to the public. To see some dogs succeed where Olly failed, I found one.

---

Maddie and Spell

Last fall, I only had to drive a couple hours south to the little dusty town of Prunedale, California, the former hub of plum tree commerce, and now current hub of artichoke commerce. The Bay Team Western Regional takes place there, burnished with various decorations, obstacle equipment, and large food trucks doling out a mix of Filipino food and fried artichokes.

The atmosphere is something between a charity walk and the NFL Combine. It’s a mostly middle-aged fanny pack set, Bay Area professionals who fell into this obsession along the way. A few attendees tell me they travel to these competitions on a majority of their weekends.

One group invites me into the shade of their tent area, where I meet Maddie, a storied 13 year-old border collie/Aussie mix. Maddie is third all time in the USDAA Agility Lifetime Achievement rankings. Maddie’s owner, who, for the sake of my recording introduces her name as, “Katrina Parkinson, spelled like the hurricane and the disease,” rattles off a list of the dog’s impressive accomplishments before settling on, “But mostly she’s my best buddy.”

Maddie’s demeanor is a calm contrast to the other frenzied dogs here. She has a presence. She seems, well, wise. Her irises are light, reflective of whatever surrounds, and yet piercing when trained on you. This is the smartest dog I’ve ever met and while she’s providing no tangible evidence of this, I can feel it. As I pat Maddie, I’m reminded of the hunter in Jurassic Park describing a velociraptor. “When she looks at you, you can see she’s working things out.”

Maddie may be brilliant, but I doubt she knows that retirement is imminent. For over a decade she’s been an absolute machine, a historic performer, unbeknownst to people like me. Dog careers must end, though. They peak, fall, and retire just like people do. This regional is Maddie’s last, the final run of her life.

Later I ask Parkinson how the run went. “She has always put her heart into every run and I’m lucky to step to the line with her. She did very well in her last run.”

We are in the presence of literally hundreds of dogs (there’s no official estimate), at least a plurality of which are border collies. You can feel the tension. Or more specifically, you can hear it. Sharp yelps constantly poke through the muggy air, adding some percussion to the low hum of Pink Floyd on the loudspeakers.

Before us is an obstacle course fit with tubes and ramps, hurdles that could be limbo bars. It looks like a children’s birthday party in need of a bounce house. I find the rules of the course somewhat inscrutable, but most dogs seem to manage, thanks to their handlers. As the dog sprints about the course, the tired human runs to strategic locations, pointing the dog in the proper direction and giving commands. In agility, every obstacle course is different, so the handler’s directions are essential. It’s not obvious to a novice spectator, but the human is piloting the dog through this course like a remote controlled car.

Photo by Brendon Thorne/Getty Images

Many dogs bark as they run the course. They’re just so revved up and that energy spills over into vocalizations.

In the context of competition, the barking looks oddly human, like a linebacker hollering after a tackle. To carry the analogy further, dogs on the sidelines remind of bench players cheering on their teammates as they react to big plays. Quite a few border collies are held taut on their leashes, as they’re barking and tugging towards the fray. Border collies are well-behaved, but not in this situation. Not with all that stimuli, not when they see another dog doing the job they so desperately want.

I watch as Spell, a two-year-old border collie owned by Jim Basic (he owns seven total borders), blasts through a run with astounding speed and dexterity. In person, it’s a more jarring pace to take in than the YouTube experience. The eye assumes it’s watching something closer to a supersized squirrel than a dog. Like the others, Spell chirps as she jukes. Then, at the end of her run, it gets a little more surreal. Immediately after crossing the finish line, Spell does a flying leap into Jim’s arms and licks his face. They’re done, and they did it together. Human and dog united, embracing one another like celebrating World Series winners.

It hits me then that this isn’t exactly what I expected. I’ll admit I walked in assuming a certain Best In Show wackiness, perhaps people whose dogs are uncomprehending vessels for a certain quirky, narcissistic delusion. But this isn’t that. This is weird, but it’s real. This is an actual union.

Mark Spivak, who runs a dog-training company called Comprehensive Pet Therapy, says of the sport, “Agility is a competition where humans and dogs compete collaboratively.”

He adds, “The dogs that aren’t intelligent and adherent aren’t going to be effective at agility. And by the same token, the handlers that are confrontational with their dogs and don’t bond with their dogs are going to alienate their dogs.”

Before one of these competitions, the humans are led out onto a new course so they can pace through it, mapping out its contours and quirks like extra prepared golf caddies. They aren’t just doing this for their own benefit, of course. All this information must be conveyed, at sprinting speed, to another species.

When I speak to handlers, this seems to be the draw. Unlike a classic dog show, where dogs are paraded around and judged subjectively on their looks, agility reflects something else entirely, something empirical. It is, in part, a real test of your bond, or at least a fun challenge for that particular bond. For these dog lovers, it’s gratifying to connect across species, in the moment, in the heat of competition. They are experiencing a level of dog/human kinship that I’m not sure we normal dog owners have access to.

Spivak, who’s worked with neuroscientist George Berns in doing MRI research on canine brains, sees agility as the continuation of a long tradition.

“Let’s talk about where they used to participate collaboratively, hunting. The team was stronger than any individual alone. The humans had weapons that could subdue the prey better than the dog’s teeth. But the dog, using its olfactory organ could detect the presence of the prey and track the prey better than the human.”

We’ve been working together for thousands of years. “Man’s best friend” might be underselling the complexity of the relationship. We didn’t just befriend dogs; we co-evolved with them. We applied selection pressures that turned dogs into, well, dogs. Domesticating the beast is often viewed as a mere act of “taming,” of simply turning the wolf weak. It goes deeper than that. This was an act of creation, of making the wolf more human.

“Over time, dogs have retained the expressive and receptive communication abilities with humans that exceeds that with chimpanzees,” Spivak says. “So if we communicate with a dog, either with hand signals, pointing, facial expressions, or words, the dog will understand it better than a chimpanzee.”

The chimpanzee shares 98 percent of our DNA but we likely couldn’t teach it to successfully do agility courses, not for all the bananas. Chimpanzees remain so mysterious to humans that Jane Goodall is a folk hero for making some of the first gains on that front. Chimps are smarter than dogs but we’ve no window into their souls. They are stuck in this uncanny valley of being like us before we defined ourselves.

The dog is so much more knowable, and that’s no accident. We bred dogs to understand us and to be understood, for thousands of years. Russian scientist Dmitry Belyayev proved the ability to domesticate a population of wild foxes over a mere few decades. Just imagine what we’ve been doing to dog brains by continuing to select more human-friendly models since way before the written word existed.

---

Otto

Spivak’s words remind me of a time when I tried to make my own dog a collaborator. Back then, I didn’t know I was joining a grand evolutionary tradition. I just needed a helper so I could get into shape for a YMCA league team. Otto, my border collie/lab mix, was obsessed with bouncing objects, so I figured I could make that work for me. It’s cumbersome to practice shooting on one’s own, and doesn’t exactly map onto game situations. I wanted Otto to pass me the ball like a human might. After a week of training, I had myself a point guard.

We’d go to the court a block from my house and shoot the lunch hour away. Eventually, I had to travel for work and the routine ended. Truthfully, I’ve squandered whatever other abilities he might have had, and I’m punished for that with the brunt of his daily energy surplus. Labs were bred to complete the climax of an arduous hunt. Border collies were bred to race about the verdant Scottish valleys, moving sheep with their minds. My dog spent a few months on an asphalt halfcourt, throwing me bounce passes sans a stipend. And then it all stopped for reasons that were never communicated.

Most days, he conveys a deep ennui, in between urgent whines for engagement. The daily trip to the field only does so much. After the field, Otto tugs in the direction of a nearby cafe, where he loves to bask at an outside table like Tony Soprano, presiding over an espresso at Satriale’s. Unlike Tony, Otto has a habit of wiggling his butt in front of strangers so as to induce a scratch session.

What’s shocking is this actually works. Passersby are drawn into his intense stare, are welcomed by the wagging tail and intuitively grasp why he’s bending himself into the shape of a U and undulating like a drunken belly dancer.

To Spivak’s point, I’m not certain how a chimpanzee would so effortlessly delineate such a request. I’d assume that, if a chimpanzee pointed his ass in your direction and shook it, you’d run from what could plausibly be a spurting asteroid field of feces.

Reflecting back, in lieu of what I know now, I’m a little unnerved by how quickly I got Otto to do my bidding. I say this not as a humble brag about my dog’s intelligence — though yes, he is a very good boy. I say it because I learned how my guy could be molded to my specifications, as we’ve been doing to dogs for multiple a millennia.

Many rural Americans know this well, as they have a working relationship with their dogs in the retrieving or herding capacities, but I’m not sure many people pause to consider where we could take these abilities. We initially bred dogs to help us with practical matters, then mostly forgot about that endeavor after they turned into our lovable scamps around the house.

One wonders what we could get dogs to do were it a bigger focus, where we could take their aptitudes for insight into what we want. We’re inundated with futurists’ concerns on artificial intelligence and for good reason. What’s seldom brought up is how this was the first conscious being we ever successfully programmed, and that there are still unplumbed possibilities there. If we could domesticate a fox over a few decades, there’s no telling what selective breeding might eventually accomplish with man’s best project.

Today, we give dogs commands. One day, those commands might be paragraphs long. Spivak calls dog breeding, “a paradigm for an accelerated model of evolution.” If we could turn a wolf into a pug, there’s no telling where we can take the brain of the dog.

---

ARES, DOG OF WAR

The Michael Jordan of dogs is now 10 years old and on the downside of a glorious career. Ares once took four golds at IFCS Agility Championships in 2012, then won gold at nationals in Colorado, the year of his life. I’m a little confused by the alphabet soup of overlapping dog competitions that reminds of Ultimate Fighting’s early days, but people in this sport assure me of this guy’s dominance.

It’s born of equal parts destiny and determination.

“We picked him up at seven weeks,” Ares’ owner Stuart Mah recalls. “The day we took him home we started teaching him little odds and ends. He learned sit and a 10-second down that day.”

Mah, a 62-year-old oral and maxillofacial surgeon by training, knew his young border collie was destined for greatness.

“We understood from the beginning he was going to be a good one,” Mah states in his gently flat cadence. Now, Ares knows more commands than Mah can list off the top of his head. “He knows quiet,” Mah says, providing an example. “‘Quiet’ does not mean to get silent. ‘Quiet’ means to quiet his body motion down and don’t run balls to the wall. It’s like turning a blinker on, back it off because you’re going to make a harder turn than you think.” Not only can Mah pilot Ares around the course, but he can adjust his speed situationally.

Mah knew what he had in Ares because he’d been doing this for a while, since 1989 to be exact. Back then the sport was in its infancy, but Mah pursued it with an uncommon zeal. He’d get up at 5 a.m. and train his dogs for hours, before driving off to run his medical practice.

“I’d get home from work after doing a surgery. Hardly anyone had equipment so I’d makeshift fashion it for myself and then train the dogs, even if it was dark at night.”

Eventually, hobby turned into something a little more consuming.

“My family and friends, guys I was in residency, thought I went off the deep end when they found out I was doing this full time. So I retired from surgery in 1998.”

After talking with Mah about his hobby-turned-life, it becomes obvious how unsustainable working as a doctor would have been. The seriousness of the dog training process cannot be overstated. Every detail is monitored. His dogs live a life that revolves around training. Even in the offseason it’s a five-day-a-week venture. Most dog owners wouldn’t want a relationship remotely this involved.

“It’s like a kid,” Mah says. “You can’t just put them in the backyard every so often.”

Mah might not be exaggerating when he compares his dogs to kids. In some instances, he might be selling his dogs short of their surreal capabilities.

For example, Ares’ sister Phoebe has a profitable addiction: She enjoys sniffing out and finding money. If instructed, she’ll tirelessly canvass an area for any loose currency, both coins and bills. “We tell her ‘go find money’ and she goes and finds money,” Mah says flatly. “We’ve been thinking of taking her to the beach, like the way you use a metal detector.”

Ares’ talents are more confined to the agility circuit. For an example of how professionalized this all is, he does not do kibble. Ares’ diet is set in consultation with Cheryl Morris, a professor in animal science, and changes according to his training schedule. Here’s a general list of the champion’s raw food diet: “Beef heart, liver, supplements, vegetables, sweet potatoes, a fine oatmeal mash specially tailored for dogs, eggs, chicken backs, chicken necks, and occasional servings of agave syrup.”

When I was at the Prunedale event, I noticed something that I figured was more novelty than functional: A dog massage station.

“Oh yeah,” Mah says. “They get worked on like anyone else, you can land funny or get sore or bruised. We have someone who massages them to make them feel great when they’re running.” He then adds, as though it’s the most normal dog owner detail, “A lot of people use laser and cold therapy on their dogs.”

As for Ares’ specific schedule, he gets a massage between runs and a little laser therapy in the evening. As one does.

Mah often makes analogies to human athletes throughout our conversation, even making the Jordan comp directly.

“He’s a little bit like MJ. When he was playing basketball he didn’t want anyone screwing off when he was trying 100 percent. I think Ares is like him in that sense. And he’ll tell ya. If I’m screwing up a little bit or if I’m not totally focused he’ll bark. Like an MJ, ‘Get your head out of your ass’ comment to a teammate.’”

If Ares is so much like a human athlete, one wonders what drives him. Humans have all sorts of worldly motivations that inform their desire to be the best. I’ve known athletes who were motivated by the money and the women, others who wanted to live on in history. So absent these incentives, what’s in it for Ares? Does he have any sense that he’s even in these competitions?

Spivak has run some testing on dog brains within competitions and has some thoughts.

“I’ve set dogs up at the end of the agility class where they race one another. And like with horse races, I believe that dogs are competitive. I believe dogs are competitive, but I don’t think the context of agility provokes that drive. It invokes mostly the innate drive to perform the activity.”

Mah hits similar notes, indicating that Ares is purely, monomaniacally focused on the task at hand. In this way, he’s the perfect athlete, free of a very human flaw. Ares is all process, no results. Whereas human athletes can get tricked by a rewards system that doesn’t always correlate with their level of performance, Ares simply focuses on the performance. As an added bonus, he doesn’t get distracted by social media insults or catfished into a public humiliation.

“He knows when he’s done a good job,” Mah says. “You can always tell when he comes off the course by the way he barks at you. When you’ve hit a really stellar run and you know you’ve done it, he knows too.”

Not only does Ares know it, he shows it with a hyped up celebratory flourish. “It was a run we did this weekend,” Mah recalls. “People were dying left and right on this course. We worked really hard on it. After he came out he started barking and grabbed his leash and threw it at me.”

Mah says, “I think that, were he a person, I don’t think he’d be the kind of one to throw it in your face. I think he’s sincere enough to say, ‘I’m number one but that was last week, let’s go on from there. It always feels like he’s looking for the next challenge.’”

If human athletes have a favorite quote, it might be Theodore Roosevelt’s, “Man in the Arena,” a cliché marker of athlete-dom as much as listening to Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” in pregame, or thanking God for the win. The quote:

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

Roosevelt’s metaphor obviously extends beyond sport, but it appeals to the sensibility of oft dissected, oft-criticized athlete (Would it be OK to concede that jocks trend toward literalism?). There’s a romance to the endeavor: striving, failing, daring greatly in this grand pursuit that advances the human race forward, regardless of outcome.

Few want to admit that the dog is capable of this. Ares strives, sometimes he fails, he certainly knows great enthusiasms. Compared to Ares, many of us are, well, dog shit. He became the best within a half decade of existence. He has a great zeal for what he does. He’s the apotheosis of his species.

Olly may not be the apotheosis, but he passes the Roosevelt test. He was in the arena, he tried, he certainly dared greatly, and his place will never be with the cold timid souls. But unlike nearly every athlete, Olly was celebrated for his grand defeat.

I ask Mah about Olly, thinking his take might be something akin to the monastic Frank Grimes’ rage at Homer Simpson’s adored blotto sloth act. Mah catches me off guard.

“I felt sorry for Olly.” He elaborates, “He was trying hard and he crashed. There was one point where he was somersaulting. Everyone thinks it’s cute, but having dealt with dogs, that’s an easy way to get hurt.”

When asked why the clip is so popular, Mah sounds wistful. “People like dogs because they’re silly. But, they aren’t silly in the end.”

Mah is talking while driving, with Ares in the car. They’re headed back from a competition in Orlando, another one where they placed quite well. The 38-lb. champion is past his prime, but still a force to be reckoned with on the course. On this drive, Ares gets excited the closer they are to their Jacksonville-area home.

“When we get near our exit, he starts screaming. He won’t do it when we’re anywhere else. He knows we’re going home,” Mah says.

Ares loves the next challenge, but also loves to be home with the pack. He’ll likely fare better in retirement than human athletic greats. We’ve born witness to the embittered sadness of post-glory Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. Ares is blessed to never know he was on top of the world, lucky to never have a broader view than the next tunnel he slinks through. To be human is to dwell, to be tortured by nostalgia in your waning moments. Our kind of consciousness is a curse.

We might not take Ares’ accomplishments seriously, but he does not care, and that just might be the biggest edge he has over us. “I think he’s got his own sense of accomplishment about what he thinks is good,” Mah says. “He knows he’s done a good job even if other people don’t say so.” Not many humans, among the driven, can credibly claim the same.