I saw a tragic story come through on a number of agility email lists a couple weeks ago that I thought I should share it with those of you who don't read all the lists. A family let their dog out into their yard of agility equipment and when they checked back later it appeared that their dog had gotten out of the yard. After searching the neighborhood they ultimately found their dog had become tangled in the chute material within the chute and suffocated. I can only imagine how heart broken they must be.

So we all get the moral of the story right away: agility equipment (among other things we leave in our yards) can be potentially dangerous to our dogs if we leave them unattended. I figured that was pretty much the end of the story.

But of course, just like on every email list, someone will come along and post a reply. Many were sympathetic and even helpfully listing other dangers. But the reason I didn't post this right away was I was fuming from a couple of the replies. They were basically taking the owners to task for leaving their dog unattended, how could someone be so irresponsible, everyone knows you shouldn't do that, how could they do that, etc. Almost to the point of they deserved that to happen and don't deserve to have a dog. Don't you think these people will be remorseful for the rest of their lives? Is it really necessary to heap scorn on them publicly in a holier-than-thou manner? So I did the right thing, I didn't reply to their replies.

Anyway here are some of my thoughts on keeping agility equipment safe when not in use and some comments on other's thoughts:

• If you have the luxury of having your agility equipment in a separate yard that is inaccessible you are indeed fortunate.
• A fully enclosed dog run is often safe, be sure to check for raccoons, and other wildlife that might have created or found a way into your dog's run.
• Obviously don't leave your chute out. I stuff the material in the barrel and stand it on end up against the fence.
• A Tire can be dangerous to leave out. I put mine against the fence.
• A teeter can be especially dangerous if you have more than one dog. If left up one dog could bring it down on top of another dog. So if you have an adjustable teeter you could leave it out if you disconnect the chain so it falls down to flat on the ground. Or flip your teeter upside down.
• Other people were warning about dog's having their contact behavior degrade if they were allowed to climb on and off the A Frame or Dog Walk. I don't really see that being an issue. I trained Meeker using the Jungle Gym approach where I want him comfortable jumping on and off the contacts at any time in a controlled manner. If he looses his footing on the Dog Walk and chooses to jump off I'll praise him for making the safe choice. I also don't think allowing a dog to stand on the DW or AF and survey the surroundings will have any impact on their actual performance. Dogs know the difference between different situations/environments.
• I'm not seeing the danger of a tunnel being left out as long as you have the ends held in position by sandbags/snuggers. Otherwise the ends might flop closed against the ground (like a Slinky when "walking down stairs") and you could have a dog overheat within the confined space.
• Wading pools, fish ponds, swimming pools. Empty them or restrict access. These are dangerous to children too and most towns have legal requirements about access to large swimming pools.
• Usual caveats about fire pits, grills, thunder, lightning, fireworks, lawn care products, fertilizers, tools, shovels, rakes and other implements of destruction.

Some folks were warning about the dangers of leaving bars up on jumps. I guess if you have multiple dogs rocketing around your yard they could get injured by chasing one another and colliding with a jump. But I'd think running into a contact would be more dangerous.

I think an important issue in multiple dog homes is how the dogs interact with one another. Obviously if they don't get along it would be dumb to leave them outside together unattended. Dogs that chase one another without regard for themselves or their environment are also a disaster waiting to happen, more so when there are literally obstacles in their way. Our dogs pretty much only interact with us, every now and then Petey and Meeker will chase each other but they stay cognizant of their surroundings.

So do I follow my own advice? Sort of. I have left Meeker unattended in the backyard for as long as 10 minutes. But that is quite rare. I often have agility equipment set up in the yard, but with the caveats I listed above. But he will never interact with it without me being present. The army of squirrels in the trees surrounding my yard is much more interesting.

Milo is perfectly safe unattended. He will just chew on his tennis ball while watching the door for you to come out again. But I still don't leave him out unattended for long. Petey is just too likely to "get into something" to be left unattended for longer than tens of seconds at a time.

So did I miss anything? Is it really never safe to leave your dogs unattended?

Nancy told me about her very scary and bizarre experience walking the dogs tonight. It happened when she was walking Milo and Petey around the block in Chicago just before she came to a corner. At that moment a guy walking his Wheaton Terrier came around the corner. So she led Petey and Milo off the sidewalk and over to the curb. Most of the time in the city if you move your dogs off the sidewalk you expect the other dog walker to keep an eye on their dogs and just go past. The really smart people, or those with reactive dogs, will proactively cross to the other side of the street when they see other dogs coming toward them.

Every now and then Milo can get kind of weird when approached by a dog while he is on leash. He'll hit the end of the leash and bark at the dog. We think he does it because he figures a good offense is the best defense. It is pretty rare, say one in a hundred dogs, so we usually drop his leash so he knows he can get away and then he is always fine. If he is concerned he'll move away until he is comfortable and stay out of range of the other dog. If there is anything that is constant about Milo; he's never looking for trouble. So Nancy dropped Milo's leash and he just sat there next to her.

The guy with the Wheaton asks: "Are your dogs friendly?". Nancy replied: "He's leash aggressive". Then the unimaginable happened. The guy reaches down and unclips his dog's leash...!!! Nancy said she was flabbergasted. What in the world was this guy thinking? So his dog, who is pretty friendly looking, races up to Petey and Petey, being the overgrown puppy that he is, thinks "Wow Let's Play!" and hits the end of the leash and tears it out of Nancy's hand. He is one strong little guy. OK this is looking bad.

Of course Nancy was standing by the curb to get out of the guy's way. To make matters worse, Petey and the Wheaton tear off across the street! Fortunately, fortunately, fortunately there was no traffic. Nancy immediately tells Milo to stay and takes off across the street (she said she didn't look either...). She is calling Petey to come but he and the Wheaton are having a good time and the Wheaton keeps positioning himself between Petey and her. Which just incites Petey to play more. The Wheaton's owner is futilely calling his dog, who ignores him. Nancy finally gets Petey's attention and he comes to her. He gets a big hug and a huge jackpot of salmon treats.

Meanwhile, Milo, remember Milo? (sorry a little Alice's Restaurant moment there). Well Milo was just being Milo. He was just noodling around sniffing the grass on his side of the street. Nancy said a lady jogger had stopped and was calling him to her. He was completely unconcerned by the heart stopping, adrenaline rush producing, blind panic, terrifying event that his Mother had just been through. Nancy hustled Milo and Petey off and came back home.

So I might have some of this a little wrong, because I got it over the phone, but I think the essence of the story is correct. As we discussed it we came to the conclusion that when the guy heard "He is leash aggressive" he could only have thought... "Oh I should take my dog's leash off so that dog doesn't attack when he sees the leash"... I still can't believe it, but it is the only explanation.

Now we mostly hang out with other Dog People or at least people who humor Dog People. So had we heard someone say their dog was leash aggressive in a similar situation we would have given them a wide berth and kept a close eye on our dogs, gotten them to focus on us, and moved quickly out of there. Now apparently, saying that isn't a clear enough signal to your average person.

Which reminds me of another incident, many years ago, when I was walking Mr. Peabody and Milo. A lady is pushing her small daughter in a stroller and I see them as we come out of the alley. She asks if they are friendly and I say "Mr. Peabody doesn't like children". So what does she do? She starts coming directly toward us leading with her child in the stroller. I pulled in their leashes and she keeps coming. Finally Mr. P let out a couple big dog barks and she stopped.

As she was telling me this story, Nancy, being the articulate and intelligent one, was trying to come up with reasonable things to tell people in situations like this and I just didn't like any of them. Especially since people don't seem to register what you are saying if they have a plan of action already formulated.

So I think the best solution, other than walking your dogs where you won't run into people with their dogs (which is getting increasingly difficult in the city), is being almost rudely direct. If asked "Is your dog friendly?" my plan is to always reply in an unequivocal manner with "No". If they insist on coming toward us (assuming I can't retreat) I will say "Stop!" and keep repeating "Stop!" and/or "Go away!" with increasing emphasis. Yep it might brand me as the weird or rude guy with the Border Collies, but it might be the only thing that protects us from cluelessness.

Now that won't protect me from the knuckle heads who insist on walking their dogs off leash in the city (they usually have dogs that don't listen to them and have no recall at all) but that is a whole different rant...

Do you have any better ideas for stopping or redirecting the clueless?

I was at a Suzanne Clothier seminar in CT this last weekend and was speaking about agility with dog behaviorist and researcher Dr. Rudy de Meester from Belgium. He mentioned that he was concerned that people who compete in agility can push dogs harder than is good for the dog's health. He told me about one dog sport and one type of agility competition that were new to me.

The new (to me) dog sport is canine cross country or CaniX. It is basically skijoring without skis. The human and dog are connected by harnesses and run together over a course. Since it involves running with your dog it requires the human to be as fit as the dog. I wish I was in shape enough to consider it.

The other interesting thing he mentioned was an agility game played in Belgium (and maybe elsewhere in Europe) where the object of the game is not to beat the clock but to match the clock. The team that comes closest to matching the course time wins. The thing I love about this game is it can be played by all ages of dogs and competitors. Dr. de Meester liked it because it didn't encourage handlers to push their teammates past their abilities. Unfortunately, I didn't get the name of the organization or this game. So if any of my European readers could give me some more information I'd love to learn more about this game.

The more I do agility the more I enjoy the games. At first I was intimidated by the rules. But now I'm older and not afraid to screw up on course and get disqualified. It doesn't take long to develop some simple strategies and the planning of your run can be fun. Running the courses can also challenge how flexible you can be when things go wrong.

Also the local availability of CPE and, lately more, USDAA trials makes it easy and inexpensive to play more games and earn titles in the games. Some parts of the US also have a lot of NADAC which also features games. I think Bud Houston is bringing back JFF which will feature a lot of games too.

Are there any unusual agility games that you enjoy playing?

Well Meeker and I put on our "big boy pants" and tried his first USDAA agility trial this past weekend (only my second USDAA trial). Contact Sports Agility hosted the trial at a nice indoor soccer facility in Crystal Lake, IL. Our judge all weekend was Becky Dean who was very nice, fair, had nice courses and was in surprisingly good spirits throughout the long days.

It was also nice to see so many of the folks we train with at a trial. The Starters group for 22" jump height had over 30 dogs in most classes. It was a very supportive group, there was a lot of cheering going on and everyone helped each other out. A big thanks to Mary, Jeanette, and Whitney for videotaping our runs! I can't recall a more fun group at a trial.

Random thoughts: I built courses all weekend and a lot of folks pitched in to help things move along. This was a big trial, almost 900 runs in two rings on Saturday. There was good catered food for the workers. I finally met Linda Mecklenburg. A couple times nice people stopped me and mentioned they enjoyed my blog, thank you! I met Maven, a sweet BC who might be related to Meeker.

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Here's my interpretation of the Contact Cozies Steve Stochaj wrote about in his comment on my article about the dangers of frost on contacts. I got the dog footprint fleece on sale at a local fabric store and after many fits and starts got my Mom to cut and stitch them. I think they look pretty good:

A Frame Contact Cozy

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Nancy recounts her experience with Petey at the vet's office.

Back when Petey was just a pup we started clicker training him. It was a great way to get him to offer different behaviors and be able to mark interesting behaviors without having to think of a verbal command right away. One of the first things he leaned was 'paw' which can best be described as a poker 'hit me' gesture.

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Happy Birthday Meeker! Today Meeker turned three years old. He's been with us just under two years (one more month until his adoption day) and has turned out to be a sweet little guy. I took some photos today, I raced outside when the sun shone through the clouds. The photos aren't terrible but Meeker didn't seem too happy having his picture taken today:

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I received very sad news this past week and it has been hard for me to try to capture the right words. Our long time Flyball and Agility friends lost their heart dog, their once in a lifetime, special dog, Zamboni. He is to Tony, Kris and Anthony what our Mr Peabody was (and still is) to us. He is one of those dogs that always has a place in your heart.

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The USDAA just posted its course design guidelines document on its website. The news post is here. The PDF of the guidelines is available here.

I just took a quick scan through the document and it should be required reading for all of us who design courses for training purposes. Even if practice courses don't have to be "judgeable" they can at least be setup to have similar levels of challenges and provide safe approaches to obstacles.

I hadn't heard the terms divergence and convergence with respect to dog and handler paths before and I think they represent interesting concepts to consider. I usually think of pushing, pulling and crossing a dog's path.

My first thought is convergence/divergence subsume those concepts. But you might converge on a dog's path and Rear Cross [RearCross, LearningRearCross] which turns the dog but doesn't necessarily push on the dog's line (if the side change is what turns the dog). On the other hand you might converge on a dog's path to push them to another obstacle. So maybe convergence and divergence are really just related concepts.

Well it was bound to happen at some point. But it didn't happen in agility. I hurt my knee at a Flyball tournament! Flyball, derogatorily refered to as the "bowling of dog sports", typically doesn't result in handler injuries (other than twisted ankles from stepping on tennis balls and running into each other or our dogs).

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