Maggie Schoolar, from Leander, Texas, first tried agility with her little Maltese, “Gus,” 20 years ago, “just for something fun to do with him.” She couldn’t have imagined how much the sport would change her life, leading to her leaving a successful corporate career, opening her own dog training facility, and competing at the 2025 AKC Agility Premier Cup with her superstar 8-year-old Miniature Poodle, “Cher”.
Going the Extra Mile for Agility
After trying agility for the first time, Schoolar was hooked. “The connection between you and your dog is so beautiful, and I just loved it so much,” she says. Her agility partnership with Gus was a great success. He was the top Maltese in the United States for five years. During this time, Schoolar began harboring distant dreams of making it onto the World Team.
Schoolar got her next dog, a Miniature Poodle named “Jagger.” She began to work seriously on her handling skills to help her dogs reach their fullest potential. “For basic agility, you can just run around with them and point at the obstacles. That’s what I did with Gus,” she says. However, to make it onto the World Team, she would have to work on guiding her dog quickly and accurately from a distance. “You have to be able to do blind crosses and all of these fancy moves that I didn’t know how to do.”
Every week, Schoolar and Jagger would make the six-hour round trip to a top agility training facility in Houston. Soon, all their hard work began to pay off. “Jagger has nine Master Agility Championship titles, he went to all the AKC finals. He’s a wonderful dog,” she says.
Jagger is 15 and a half now, and, while he’s retired from agility, Schoolar says he’s still healthy and strong. “Miniature Poodles are wonderful because they’re so structurally sound, fast, and smart — just great little partners.”
A Feisty, Barky Ball of Love
When Schoolar decided the time was right to welcome another dog into her home, she knew from the moment she saw Cher’s photo that she would be a character. “I flew up to Minnesota to meet her when she was 5 weeks old, and the minute I walked in the room, she looked me in the eye and started teasing me with toys — she was so engaging, loud, and sassy.”
However, Cher’s love for agility and strong character led to some challenges in their early competition days. “She starts screaming and barking, she’s so excited to get out there,” Schoolar says. “She’s just vibrating through her whole body.”
Schoolar, who struggles with competition nerves, initially found Cher’s energy heightened her anxiety, but she has learned how to manage this and now has a blast running her “feisty little ball of love.”
Quitting the Corporate World to Train Agility
Schoolar knew Cher had the potential to be a World Team competitor. However, she found it challenging to make the time for advanced training while juggling the demands of her work. “I was in corporate America for 32 years, with a high-profile job as an executive sales manager in a huge organization,” she says. Despite loving her job, Schoolar’s passion for dogs and agility quickly became all-consuming. “I ended up quitting my job, selling my house, buying a property, and opening a business so that we could get to the next level in agility.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Schoolar rented a backyard in her neighborhood and filled it with agility equipment. The community’s response was great, giving her the boost she needed to take things to the next level. She has now been running Happy Dog Sports dog training facility for four years. “It grew faster than my expectations, and now I’ve got five great trainers out here,” she says. “It’s a wonderful life, and I love working with other dogs.”
Conquering Competition Nerves
Schoolar has had to work hard to build her confidence and calm her competition nerves to best support Cher. “After I opened the business, I was a little more nervous when competing, because I’m training other people,” she says. “If I’m out there looking like a fool, that’s not going to work.”
Rather than sports psychology books, breathing exercises, and other oft-touted techniques, the love and support of her friends and family have helped her the most. At one of the World Team tryouts, powerful memories of her mother, who used to accompany Schoolar to agility events, washed over her as the sun was rising, and it helped to center her.
The same feeling came over Schoolar when competing at the recent Agility World Championships. Courtney Moore, Schoolar’s friend and Happy Dog Sports head trainer, shared a video of her family, friends, and students cheering her on. “I realized I had made it, and it didn’t matter. I had all this love behind me. I stepped up to those lines in Belgium, and I wasn’t even nervous,” she says. “I was just there to have fun with Cher and to showcase this amazing little dog. We did great and ended up on the podium — it was literally a dream come true.”
Cher is Still Jumping for Joy
The year before they qualified for the World Team, Cher had a serious accident. She fell off the dog-walk obstacle, and Schoolar thought their competitive partnership was over. “The orthopedist told me to give her three months off while doing rehab,” she says. “I took her off for nine months, and we did all sorts of treatments. She came back a ball of fire.”
Even though Cher still throws herself into agility with the same enthusiasm, Schoolar doesn’t feel comfortable running her on those big jumps. They will still compete together, but will run courses with 8-inch jumps rather than the 12-inch ones she did in the past.
“This year, when we went to Nationals, I knew that was the last time we were running at 12 inches. We just went to have fun and ended up doing great,” Schoolar says. “We ended up at the Premier Cup, and I was thrilled because it was the only thing left that Cher hadn’t done. She’s gone to Westminster, attended all the national events, and been on the World Team.”
“We made it to finals, which we never do, and then I made a mistake at the beginning. But Cher had a great run, and we had so much fun together.”
Running Dogs Is a Humbling Experience
As well as continuing to run with Cher, Schoolar’s also bringing on her 3-year-old Border Collie, “Elvis.” Training a driven, super-smart herding breed has been a new challenge for her. His problem-solving skills and understanding of verbal cues are impressive, as is his power. “With Cher, when I show her a line, she has a lot of time to turn and adjust herself,” she says. “Elvis is bouncing once, and then he’s gone. So, for me, it is trying to figure out how to best set his lines.”
For Schoolar, the most important thing is to have fun with her dogs. She wants to provide them with the support to enable them to do their best. “It’s a humbling experience to run dogs, because they’re your partner,” she says. “But you’ve trained them and are handling them, so if something goes wrong, that falls on you.”
Seeing Cher and Schoolar run together, it’s obvious they have a one-of-a-kind partnership, which Schoolar doesn’t take for granted. “I will never have another dog like Cher. She is so special, and I’ve been blessed to have her.”
The AKC Agility Premier Cup has crowned its winners. See the top-scoring agility teams in each division for the 2025 competition.