About Laura Hartwick
Laura Hartwick, is a true dog and pony girl. She has been a fixture in the hunter/jumper community in Santa Cruz since 1983, riding and teaching riders for nearly 40 years. Twenty-plus-ish years ago, she took up the sport of dog agility as a hobby, which quickly went completely awry, and she’s now been helping people to train their dogs for agility for almost 15 years, as well as traveling the country to compete with her own dogs. Laura is particularly grateful to spend every hour of her days with horses and dogs in such a beautiful part of the country, helping to teach others further their relationships with these animals.
Dogs
Laura Hartwick, aka, TeamSmallDog, is the full time instructor at Heart Dog Agility. She’s been competing in agility for over 20 years, and teaching agility since 2010.
Laura’s owned and competed with many breeds in those twenty-some-plus years, ranging from her border collies to her proud members of the Small Dog Mafia, weirdo little terrier-heeler-whotheheckknows rescue dogs, all of who were consistently ranked in the USDAA Top Ten. She currently competes with her two incredible border collies Banksy and Bader. Laura’s amazing Banksy won the silver medal in Medium Agility at the 2024 Purina Incredible Dog Challenge this year and the Steeplechase and Grand Prix Finals at the USDAA Western Regionals. Banksy’s illustrious agility career has put her on too many podium placements to list in the 16″ and 20″ divisions at all large West Coast UKI and USDAA events for the past 8 years. In 2023, Bader won top podium spots at the UKI West Coast Open, UKI West Coast Cup, USDAA Western Regional, and 3 different AKC ISC Cups. Bader started out 2024 by winning the Weave Challenge at the Purina Incredible Dog Challenge in Huntington Beach, the silver medal in the Inaugural UKI International ICE event, and the Grand Prix Finals at the USDAA Western Regionals, bronze medal in the UKI West Coast Open Overall Masters Series, and was invited to the Chicago UKI Invitational and Purina Incredible Dog Finals in Missouri. Both dogs finished their 2024 competition season as finalists at the USDAA World Cynosport Games Steeplechase and Grand Prix, with Banksy taking bronze in the Steeplechase finals.
Laura loves working with everyone, from brand new beginners starting foundations through masters/international level handlers, by finding a way to create clear, fun training by breaking it down into small enough components to help each individual team with what they need most to succeed. In all those years of training and competing, she’s gotten great at shaking things off when a course or skill conquers her, and then getting to work training it, she’s happy to help you learn to do the same thing! These days, independent skills are a high priority for her, to allow for less management and more precise distance on course.
Before going to the dogs full time, Laura was a long time equestrian professional in the hunter/jumper world, and also a regular columnist and illustrator for Clean Run Magazine. When she’s not too busy running around with dogs, she’s an artist, too. Watch her dogs in action on her youtube channel, or find out more on Laura at www.laurahartwick.com.
Ponies
Laura was a fixture in the Santa Cruz hunter/jumper world for well over thirty years, doing everything from starting young horses and riders to working with older ones. Laura speciality has always been starting children and adults alike with the proper foundations of hunt seat equitation that will stay with them for a lifetime. Her greatest goal was to teach her students not just how to ride well and have a great time doing so, but to also develop a relationship with their horses. Laura is currently the owner and trainer at the Lost Empire Ranch in Bonny Doon, a private facility which is not open to the public.
