That Call

I don’t follow the USA competitions too closely, but I know that the European Open Trials for the UK and USA are next month and I thought that maybe the AKC Nationals would give a good idea of which dogs we might see competing against us at the Open.

And then the agility world imploded … well, that’s a big of an exaggeration. But a dog called Split executed a perfect running contact on the dogwalk and was faulted, losing the National Championship. The following video does not show the full run, and is mostly text, but does show the contact and the call.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MGGiPw8Suo

I can watch the running contact over and over and it won’t make a difference to what I think is a bad call. However, I’m not a judge and I wasn’t stood where he’s stood, so I can’t say for definite. As a handler, I’ve had calls that I’ve questioned afterwards, either when I know Kim has hit the contact, but been faulted, or where she hasn’t hit the contact and has got away with it. But Kim has a very hit-and-miss dogwalk contact, it’s not a “proper” running contact. Basically, I’m trying to say that I don’t really have a personal bias on this one.

What I’m more interested in is the suggestions in the video. Alright, it’s America and they have different rules to us in competition, generally. But contacts are contacts wherever you are, and I think running contacts are going to be a lot more common in the future. The same difficulties will apply to judging here.

I’m going to discard the option of having 2 judges, one for up, one for down. This is because I don’t see the point in marking the up contact anyway. From what I have learnt, the fastest way to begin the dogwalk is a smooth run, and jumping onto the obstacle above the contact slows the dog down. This suggests that any trainer or handler will attempt to train their dog to get that smooth running stride. Therefore, the up contact simply discriminates against dogs with long strides. I imagine Dylan will miss many up contacts in his future on the agility circuit. But from my point of view, training him to adjust his stride to hit it will slow him down, and personally I don’t want any dog checking their stride before attempting a narrow slope whilst trying to accelerate again.

So, we’re just marking the down contact. The judge has a chance to be in a better position to see the down contact. Still room for error! The judge is only human, after all.

My favourite possible option is for the development of pressure sensitive contacts. I can’t understand why this hasn’t been done before, to be honest; it can’t only be now that it’s being considered. Something similar was used in the FCI World’s last year, on the table, so it can’t be too hard. I would suggest (for example) that a light flashes on as soon as the dog hits the contact, and remains on for 5 seconds. A noise would potentially be trained (purposefully or incidentally) as a release command, so I think a light would be better.

I can see problems with this method. Judging outdoors, particularly in bright sunlight, would mean the light could be difficult to see. But if it was placed at the sides of the contact, and was a bright LCD in an easily distinguishable colour (you don’t see much red or orange in a field) then it could be overcome. Equally, you do get a lot of rain over here (not great with electrics!) and I have not yet been to a competition where there hasn’t been some issue with the electronic timing, somewhere. Which leads to the third problem … cables! Something even I can’t offer a solution to, but then again I’m not one of these innovative equipment designers. Finally, maybe on a windy day or in heavy downpours, the sensors might get triggered accidentally. So don’t make them too sensitive, and actually, in weather that bad, I’d hope the agility would be postponed, cancelled, or halted whilst the rain passed.

Also, expense. Presumably not going to be seen on every ring, every contact, every show, for quite some time yet. But at a big Final (I’m thinking Crufts, or Olympia, for us over here — even one of the “smaller” Finals like the UKA Nationals or the BAA Finals), surely somebody somewhere can come up with something?

So, long post. Yes, it is 1:13am, that’s probably why.