A sad, cautionary tale

Viva popped open the chute end by rearing up, which sometimes meant tangles. When possible, dogs should be trained to run low and straight through the chute fabric. Unfortunately Viva never learned that method, but she was never seriously tangled.

This morning I heard a very sad story on one of my agility lists about a young up and coming agility dog in the Dallas, TX area. It seems that these folks have agility equipment in their backyard, and let their two dogs out in the morning while they got ready for work. The following is reprinted with permission from the post.

"After some time, Sue went to bring the dogs in the house, but Mattie was gone. With help from neighbors, they scoured the area but couldn't find her. When they got back to the house, they noticed that the agility chute in the backyard looked funny. The fabric had been bunched up in the barrel. It was typical chute fabric, not a tarp. Sue found Mattie's body tangled up in the chute. She had gotten twisted tightly in the fabric and suffocated. They tried to do CPR, but it was too late."

What a terrible tragedy for all. And it reinforces my opinion that dogs should never, ever be allowed around or on agility equipment unsupervised. The potential for injury is very high. Not just from getting tangled in a chute, but dogs could get legs caught on teeters, have bad dogwalk falls, have a tire or fall on them. If you let two dogs out to play, what happens if one flies up the teeter to slam it down and the other one is standing underneath it? I used to be so afraid of that happening with my little dog that even when we let dogs play supervised in Kathy's agility field, I'd go tip the teeter over on its side.

In addition to accident and injury, allowing dogs to run around unsupervised doing equipment can end up really sabotaging your training. If your dog learns that running down the dogwalk and leaping to the ground from four feet up is fun, and he does it repeatedly when he's out playing, how successful are you going to be at teaching a stopped contact? If your dog's favorite place to view the world is standing dead still on the top of the aframe, how fast will his aframe be? Besides. Having unlimited access to equipment diminishes its value. Having unlimited access to equipment without the owner nearby fosters lack of respect for teamwork.

So please, please do not allow your dogs unfettered access to agility equipment. It's not a play gym. It's a game for our dogs to play with us, using teamwork and rules. Not something they should be doing by themselves. It's one of the several solid reasons we at CCSC do not allow non-agility students on agility equipment.