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.

Dogs' Perspective Part 2

Just realised after a comment left on my last post that I didn't finish the photo below, I left the other end of the seesaw contact uncoloured and therefore not a true representation of the seesaw. So here is the photo version 2. Is this picture different enough? Maybe I should have another play with this photo and paint some yellow slats onto the dogwalk...it will be interesting if a couple of clubs in WA have a trial of the painted slats solution to see if that works.

Dogs' Perspective

The photo below was taken this morning of a friend's backyard equipment. It is the seesaw and dogwalk side by side taken from the angle of the dog's eye level as it comes out of a tunnel. Now my friend wisely elected to have her dogwalk and seesaw contact areas painted in different colours (the dogwalk has a blue contact area and the seesaw has a yellow contact area). However I have altered this photo so that it looks like what dogs see in trials where both the dogwalk and the seesaw are painted in identical colours. If you took away all the background info you have (seesaw legs don't usually protrude to the side on our trialling seesaws, you can see the dark underside of the dogwalk down ramp etc) as these are details that dogs would not see due to the fact that they are (or should be!) focusing on the up plank; and just tried to really picture it at a dog's view not even going terribly fast; say 2 to 3 meters per second I think you can imagine why some dogs are going up planks thinking they are seesaws when they are dogwalks and vice versa.

The Dog Walk Debacle

It really is tedious sometimes, attempting to elicit a straight answer from debates on email lists. When the issue of the slats being removed came up at the last ANKC rules review I really had no feelings one way or the other. I figured if they were off or on, it really didn't matter to me. In 12 years of agility I had only heard of one toe injury that could be proved beyond doubt, that it was caused by hitting a slat in an ugly way. Needless to say none of us here in WA really had a lot of information on this, however, there was a strongly voiced minority who had heard that this rule change to remove slats in the USA had gone horribly wrong and that the slats were replaced fairly rapidly. Yet there were those that were strongly voiced to get rid of them. The travesty that is the ANKC voting system is that it does not use the 'one state one vote' system which means WA's vote counts for one whereas a state like Victoria or NSW counts for two. Seems unfair to me but that's what we've got. So the slats/cleats came off completely. A rather pain in the arse job to do but it got done. Anyway to cut a long drawn out debate short it has been noticed (and still noticed over a year on now) that dogs are mistaking the seesaw for the dog walk and vice versa. Personally I don't have an issue with it. Slats off the dog walk meant Raven sometimes 'slid' into the contact position, it didn't concern me as she quickly figured out how much braking she needed to do. What I did see and still do see is previously rock solid dogs who ran confidently up the dog walk now come to almost a complete halt as they hug the up plank virtually crawling thinking the plank is a seesaw. I also see dogs that had well trained and well proofed seesaws do hair raising fly offs off the end of the seesaw as they think they were on a dog walk. It happens fairly often, often enough for me to notice. I really think that the touch and visual picture of the slats gave some of our fast dogs a clue as to what they were climbing. I cannot find one other major agility organisation that does not have slats/cleats on their dog walks. IFCS, USDAA, AKC, KC, UKA, NZKC, FCI, CPE; they all have slats on their dogwalk. This to me says something.
So I want to train for fast dog walks. Raven has been known to do sub 1.6 second dog walks in trials, but apparently according to some suggestions from the lists I am on, to have a dog moving at that sort of speed across a dog walk is apparently unsafe and irresponsible. That I should slow my dog down. I had hoped Australia had moved on from this kind of regressive thinking but I see that it is still alive and well in some quarters. Literally hundreds of top level competitive dogs from around the world can train the dog walks to be around 1.5 to 1.6 second mark. This is unsafe according to these thinkers, they believe they see dogs coming off because handlers are pushing for speed. Handlers cannot push for that type of speed, handlers learn how to train a dog who has that innate drive to move at that speed naturally. Dogs do come off when handlers do not set the line nicely onto the up plank or when handlers have not trained their dog to independently set their own line when starting the dog walk. It's quite frustrating to read these types of statements such as "handlers do not need to have 1.4 second dog walks". Of course we don't 'need' them if we don't have any inclination to be competitive at all but then why acknowledge first, second or third place? It's called 'Let's settle for just enough to get us round a course and under time'. Agility is so much more than this. Like I've said before I have no issues at all with handlers who want to look at it like this, in fact I encourage them because we need them to keep our sport healthy, but by the same token those of that ilk should not presume to tell those of us who wish to aspire to achieve better in our chosen sport that we are being unsafe in doing so. First and foremost these dogs are our family and we take just as much care as anyone else in the sport to ensure their safety. It is a game we play; but we all know when we take up the sport that we will be exposing our dogs to more risks than your average stay at home pet dog. The enjoyment that our dogs and ourselves get out of it obviously makes it all worthwhile.