Wall jump

I decided to try to make a wall jump out of some old and new interlocking foam mats.

You can tell that the pillars are faded and made of the old mats.  The wall is made of newer mats.  I also chose yellow and blue as my main colours because dogs are essentially red/green colour blind.  Everything but the curved top pieces are made from 2 foot by 2 foot mats (most recently I bought them from Walmart).  The top pieces are made from thinner 1 foot by 1 foot mats that I bought at a dollar store years ago.   I first tried duct tape and that was not holding so I switched to hot glue. 

Since I train at a place where my friends also train their 26" jumping dogs I made the maximum height 28".  I was actually aiming for 26" but to be able to get all the heights that I wanted (8" to 26" in 2" increments) I ended up with a total of 28".  In retrospect I could have made two 6" pieces instead of the 8" and 6" ones and ended up with a total of 26".  The base and curved top pieces total 8".  The additional pieces are  2", 4", 6" and 8".

A nice feature of the jump is that all the pieces fit in the pillars for easy storage and transport.  I will admit that it is a good thing that the pillars are flexible as I had to force them into the back of my CRV.  I am planning on taking it to the training facility this week and giving it a better test what I could do in my backyard in the snow.

Another very important feature to me is that this jump is less likely to cause serious injuries if a dog hits any piece of it. 

I am not sure how much wind the jump can take and it will be a while before it can be tested on grass.  It will hopefully be fine for indoors and calm days.

Here is a video of me assembling the jump.



Nessa and Taari testing it out in the backyard.






After more testing I can write out the way I would make it the next time (I learned some things along the way) and post it if there is interest. 

Donation model

Recently Matt Kruse the author of Social Fixer published a blog on why he likes the donation model for his software.  I started thinking about this again as it might apply to products that agility people provide.  If someone provided a free download I would gladly donate money to them if I liked the product.  I would do this for two reasons.  My first reason would be to compensate the person for their work in producing the product and secondly to encourage them to continue producing more products.

I think that there would still have to be some sort of copyright on the product to prevent other people from making money from it. 

In today's world it is easy for people to copy or even rent out DVDs.  The authors/producers are not being compensated.  I would like to see a world where people want to compensate the authors/producers for their work.

Some people in the music industry are providing free downloads and asking for donations.  Some are having better success than others.  I would like to think that dog trainers are different from the masses that download music.  We reward our dogs when they do something we like so that they will keep doing it so why wouldn't we reward people as well. We might even jackpot people (i.e. donate more than what the person was expecting).

New Winter Agility Jacket

Here are some pictures of my latest jacket from Discovery Trekking Outfitters (DTO) in Campbell River, B.C.  I got great service from them again.  I liked my spring jacket that was red and thought that my new winter jacket should be red too.  My old black winter jacket has held up pretty well over the past few years.  I ended up wearing it as an every day winter jacket so it got plenty of use. I will still wear it when I am in the mood for an all black jacket.

I got the same features - hood, full zipper, reflective piping (which is glowing from the flash), and back tug toy pocket.  The fabric is Polartec Power Shield.    The extra length (2") is perfect when walking the dogs.  If I need it to be shorter I found that I can just roll it under.

I should mention again that I find the back tug toy pocket quite useful for other things besides toys.

What can go wrong

Today while working on some drills Nessa hit a jump standard.   The quality of the video is a bit grainy and it is actually foggy inside the training facility.  The jump standard is PVC and has the Clip and Go Jump Cup Strips.



As far as I can tell at this point Nessa is fine but I am not sure that she would have been if the jump had been a different design. 

What might have helped even in this case would be a longer bar (I think that it is only 4 feet) and perhaps if the jump had been a winged jump.  

More on Equipment Safety

AgilityNerd's recent blog is titled Ban Metal Jumps Now!  I recommend reading it (and the other equipment safety blog posts on Steve's site).  Also check out the stories of incidents that people are writing in response to Steve's blog post and on his facebook page.  Steve said that recently a top dog in agility went to an eye specialist after hitting a jump cup.  The dog came close to losing an eye.   This is very scary.   There is a picture of an eye injury on bcagility's blog. 

As well as eye injuries I personally know of at least one dog that hit a metal jump standard which resulted in a soft tissue injury.  When Nessa was young she misjudged when going over a metal jump and I remember her crying after hitting it.  I didn't have it on video so not sure exactly what happened but I am sure that if it had been a PVC jump it would not have hurt so much.  

My friend's dog's tail got caught in a PVC jump standard that had bolts to hold up the bars.  He ended up dragged it around.  Luckily the dog was not spooked by the experience but other dogs may have been.    

I am willing to pay extra for safer equipment.  In fact if it was allowed I would bring my own safer jumps to events.  

I don't want to see any dogs injured when it could have been prevented if the equipment had been safer.  I definitely don't want to see a career ending injury occur. 

 

Equipment safety

I believe that we should do what we can to make agility safer especially when it comes to the equipment. 

Recently Daisy Peel put up a podcast on equipment safety. Linda Mecklenburg wrote a blog post as well.  Both Daisy and Linda talk about things that I hadn't considered as well as things that I had.  Guy Blancke also has some pictures of some questionable equipment on one of his webpages.  Some of the equipment is so bad that I think that I would have pulled my dog from the event.

I started out with what I now consider to be unsafe practice equipment.  My jumps were the equivalent of stick in the ground weave poles with bolts holding up the bars.  At that time though I had a steady dog and we were not doing tight turns.   We expected the dog to jump near the center of the bar.  Things have dramatically changed since then.  My dogs are running faster and they are turning tightly and slicing jumps.

This is Taari's Mom Angel posing with some of her ribbons.  Note the bolts on the vertical post as well as the horizontal bar holding the ribbons.  This bar was really one of the vertical ones for a jump. 

Nessa has received a cut under the eye from to a metal jump cup.  She was lucky.

Currently most of my jumps have the jump cup strips on them.  I am in the process of buying a couple of jumps that I think will be even safer than the ones that I have.  Once I get them I will post some pictures.

I feel that I should not have to make handling decisions based on whether or not I think that the jump is safe for a tight turn or for that matter because of any equipment safety concerns. 

Before I forget I am very happy that years ago the AAC implemented a rule that weave poll stripes were to be painted on and tape was not to be used.  Dogs were rubbing against the tape and this was also causing cuts on their faces under their eyes. Organizations are making positive changes and I hope that this continues.

I hope to find more time this winter to post more about equipment safety.

Running Contacts and Tricks

It has been months since I have posted and I thought that I would write a quick update on our running contacts training. We have enrolled in a long distance learning course with Silvia Trkman on running contacts. First todo list is on the 25th. We have been doing lots of tricks this winter as we have Silvia's first two tricks videos and I am also auditing Silvia long distance learning Puppy/Tricks class. Too many choices on what tricks to work on but I have been trying to focus on tricks that involve the rear legs (for the running contacts). Nessa is a very fast learner. I helped out Taari too much in the past so it has been more of a challenge teaching her.