Strategic Pairs fun….if you can get it!

Just recently I was made more aware of the difficulty for some dogs/handlers with regards to entering and competing in Strategic Pairs. This game started in Australia Jan 2006 and it is probably the most popular game of all three (SP, Snooker, Gamblers) available because as you know sharing the fun is twice as good as being out there by yourself! Whilst it is the most exciting and spectator friendly game I do not envy the judges’ job one iota. In fact I have said that I will do my hardest to avoid the appointments altogether if and when I ever do become an ANKC judge much further down the line. It is extremely hard to judge it with a huge amount of accuracy – being able to watch the changeovers like a hawk as the teams get more slick and proficient shaving off milliseconds by having the best changeover means that there are some very tight calls to make plus ensuring that the more complex obstacles are done correctly would be a nightmare in my book. I tip my hat to all the brave ANKC judges who take on these appointments. But I digress. What I wanted to discuss was the unintentionally self limiting rule written in black and white that states;
A dog can only be entered in one team for the competition, whereas the Handler can compete different dogs in the same competition.
Now I have no issue with this rule at all, fair’s fair we all should have the same chance to gain one qualification at one event/competition. But what about the scenario I had on the weekend at the Royal with Cypher – his entered partner could not make it. Now I had paid the $20 entry fee and I asked the organisers if I could find a dog to fill in could I have a Not For Competition run with him at the end of the class. They said yes and I asked Sue with Nifty (who had already run with Raven) if she would mind being a ‘fill in’ dog for Cy’s run. It was fine, they did great and went clear with the quickest time on the day. Thinking about it later – several people asked if that run could count for a qualification for Cypher (not for Nifty as he had already had his competition run). The answer of course is no. Then I got to wondering well why not? If I had asked Nifty to fill in then I would automatically make myself ineligible for any placings (fair enough as he had already run) but why couldn’t I pick up a qualification? An argument may be that I had an unfair advantage running with a dog who had already had a go on the same course. However Sue and I deliberately swapped our sequences, that way Nifty did the part of the course that he had never even seen before. Cypher and I did the parts that Raven and I did not do previously. So nobody could argue that Nifty had been patterned to the course so no advantage there. So what’s stopping us from allowing a dog without a partner to qualify in that respect? Why can’t we get a ‘fill in’ dog on the day? Of course the fill in dog would have to be from the same level or lower. (for example if this was at Excellent level I would not be allowed to get a Masters dog to fill in – just an Excellent or Novice level dog to fill in, this of course does not help Novice competitors but there’s more of a range of Novice dogs to partner up with). They (the fill in dog) wouldn’t necessarily have to be entered in the SP comp but probably 99% of the time they would be. Now to counteract the argument that this gives an unfair advantage to the dog trying to qualify you would have to stipulate that the fill in dog only does those sequences that they have not previously done in the competitive round. This would make it like a completely new pair on the course. By allowing this to happen this would make life much easier for those dogs who have partners who cannot compete for whatever reason (handler couldn’t get there, dog injures itself etc) and will not deny them the chance to pick up a qualification card at what appears to be a rare opportunity to qualify (14 games trials all year – not always offering all three games either - when you need to qualify 15 times to get all three titles that doesn’t leave much room for error!)

So I’m hoping even with that rule quoted above there will be flexibility to allow this to happen. Indeed a dog can only be *entered* in one team. You do not need to enter if you are a ‘fill in’ dog, so therefore we are not breaching any rules as far as I see it. Others may feel differently however this is one rule interpretation which I know will progress the sport rather than let minority height groups and limited entry numbers be disadvantaged in competing.
Thoughts? Comments? Diatribes? Feel free to respond.