By Matthew Carey Correspondent

Calling all canines!

There’s a new spot in the San Fernando Valley to put pooches through their paces.

Three agility courses — featuring hoops, jumps and other obstacles — were officially dedicated Saturday at the Sepulveda Basin Off-Leash Dog Park in Lake Balboa. At a ceremony interrupted by the occasional bark, city of Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Department officials helped honor the person most responsible for creating the courses: 17-year-old Boy Scout Conrad Rutherford of Northridge.

•RELATED STORY: Northridge Eagle Scout’s project creates canine agility courses at Sepulveda Basin dog park

The high school senior qualified for lifetime Eagle rank by negotiating several obstacles himself — raising over $3,000 to fund the project, and coordinating its construction with the help of other Scouts. He worked over the summer — doggedly, you might say — to complete the task.

“I feel as if ‘mission accomplished.’ It’s fantastic,” Rutherford told an audience of dog lovers, many of whom are members of the Friends of the Sepulveda Basin Off-Leash Dog Park.

After the dedication, dog trainer Kent Moorman led his shaggy Briard-Golden Retriever mix Buster Cornbread expertly through the course.

“He’s never done agility before,” Moorman said. “He took to it like water.”

Other dogs seemed slightly more reticent about tackling the challenge. Cecile Gutierrez brought her 6-year-old Italian Greyhound named Milan.

“She attempted to [run the course]. She needs a little more focus,” Gutierrez said while cradling the elegant dog in her arms. “She’s a beautiful girl. She knows it.”

Kevin Raya brought his two-year-old pug Chofis, who easily hopped up on a “resting table” that’s part of the course. Jeffrey Josephson was accompanied by Heidi, his 11-year-old German Shepherd-Rottweiler mix, who kept her distance from the activity.

“Heidi is not ever going to do that,” Josephson said. “Heidi is an arthritic old girl.”

Four-year-old Golden Retriever Sally, owned by Derek Wong, demonstrated all the agility necessary to handle the course. But she chose to test herself instead by scampering up a tree.

“This dog has no interest even trying to go through that hoop,” Wong said. But one member of the family previously gave the course a try.

“The first day it was there I climbed up it and my dog just looked at me like, ‘What are you doing?’ I thought it would be a ‘follow me’ kind of thing, but no, that didn’t happen at all. I just looked foolish running the course myself,” Wong said.

He added that he rewarded himself with a treat for his exertions. “I went and got myself a good lunch after successfully completing the course.”

Miriam Preissel, co-founder of the Friends of the Sepulveda Basin Off-Leash Dog Park, said there are plans to add more elements to the courses, including tunnels made from oil drums and “weave poles.”

“The weave poles are going to take some mastery,” she said. Preissel pronounced the agility courses “a big hit” with humans and their canine companions alike. One test is an A-frame-shaped structure with steps on either side.

She said, “I see the dogs run up to the top themselves like kids playing king of the hill.”

Rutherford, the soon-to-be Eagle Scout, is not only the architect of the project but a dog-lover too. He said his family has three of them — a Golden Retriever, a Shih Tzu and a Schnauzer mix. But the dogs apparently are in no hurry to take advantage of what he built.

“They don’t really like the dog park,” Rutherford said. “They’re kind of shy.”