Brown from Harvey County travels to Belgium for annual competition
Kansas 4-Her Hayden Brown of Valley Center spent part of his summer wearing the Team USA jersey at the Junior Open Agility World Championships in Belgium. (Photo courtesy)
VALLEY CENTER, Kansas – A trip to a glamorous European country in the middle of summer wearing a U.S. national team jersey sounds like an Olympic moment, right?
For 16-year-old Hayden Brown of Valley Center, summer vacation meant just that, but for him the big moment came in a different setting, in a city just two hours north of Paris, the site of this year’s Games of the XXXIII Olympiad.
Brown, on the other hand, represented the United States at the Junior Open Agility World Championships in Oudsbergen, Belgium, along with his dog Onyx, a six-year-old black and white sheltie. Brown and Onyx were selected by the American Kennel Club to represent the country at this year’s world championships.
“The atmosphere was electric,” said Brown, a member of the Harvey County 4-H Club who is also the junior leader for his club’s dog project. “You think of adrenaline… it’s hard to guess what it’s like. That’s probably what the Olympians are experiencing right now.”
Brown said there were 1,072 competitors, 73 dog breeds and more than 4,000 agility runs over the three days of competition. Nearly two dozen countries were represented. He was one of about 50 Americans invited to compete.
The first day featured a team competition; Brown was paired with two Americans and an Austrian. Each team member had their dog complete two rounds of jumping and agility tests – called contacts – including slalom poles, an A-frame dog run and a seesaw.
“It’s tough, believe me,” Brown said. “The agility round is no joke. Contacts are a thrill for everyone.”
The second and third days feature individual competitions. Brown said the entire competition is based on how quickly and cleanly the trainers get their dogs past and through the obstacles.
“To do well at this project, you have to work at it and understand dog behavior and then translate that behavior into a command,” Brown said.
After three days of competition, Brown finished 44th out of 77 competitors in his class. He said, “For my first year, that was a wonderful placing.”
“In a competition you try to do something perfectly and quickly. In an international competition you have to be fast to win. We weren’t fast enough, but I think we had a good run for our first time.”
Looking back, Brown adds, “It was a humbling experience. The dog project is always humbling because you’re dealing with a non-human. You can’t physically communicate with them except through training commands and body language, and you have to be able to read their body language to know what they’re going to think and do. But they’re dogs, and you never know exactly what they’re going to do on any given day.”
Anne Pitts, Harvey County’s 4-H youth development officer, said Brown’s success was due to him discovering his passion for 4-H, a central mantra of the program.
“I have seen this in many youth, but Hayden is a great example of the skills learned and results achieved in our 4-H communities,” she said.
Brown credits his 4-H experience with helping him develop humility, perseverance, patience, discipline and hard work. “To wear the Team USA jersey,” he said, “is such an honor and privilege that I will never forget.”
He said he could try out for Team USA again next year and plans to do so.
The Kansas 4-H program offers more than three dozen projects for youth across the state. More information is available online or by contacting local Kansas field offices.
— Pat Melgares, K-State Research and Extension News Service
