This past weekend I was at an ASCA trial competing with Ace, one of my border collies at Purina Farms.
Friday we made it through our first standard run and got ready to run the second. In ASCA, your second run is typically the first course, only backwards.
Walking the course, I didn't see anything as much of an issue, I felt confident in where I was going and how I was going to handle things. The teeter did feel awkward to me, as it's entry was on a 90° turn from a jump, it just sat back further from the jump. I just thought, "oh, I can just push him out".
The run was going great... Until the teeter, the third to last obstacle. I pushed him out as far as I could before I had to run ahead (I was going to front cross after the teeter), until I looked back as Ace was getting onto the teeter. The extreme angle for his size made it difficult for him to get the right side of his body onto the obstacle.
He started to fall at the pivot point, but somehow grabbed the pivot bar and was trying to hang on to pull himself up (yes, he was upside down!), I start to run back to him, but by that time he let go and fell onto his back and laid there for a second.
Terrified of injury I quickly sat him up and had him walk a few steps to see if he hurt anything. He appeared fine, the judge came over to pet him (Ace loved that), and we had him go back over the teeter, which he luckily had no fear of. Needless to say he got a very long message and stretching after that along with Traumeel.
So I got to thinking and looking at course maps. This was not the first time a weird entry was placed, it was only the first that actually got to us.
The judge seemed concerned and looked back at the angle and luckily the rest of the weekend was friendly with entries.
Today I was watching Youtube videos of friends running agility and I noticed awkward dogwalk entries. (please see drawings below to see what I'm talking about, as I do not have a copy of course maps).
There are a lot of ways of making courses challenging, but perhaps entries to contacts should remain in a definite safe zone, especially for those like me who have large but fast dogs.
Although the dogwalk and teeters' 12" wide planks are obviously more at risk for entries, the aframe can still have risky entries. For example, over my years of trialing I have seen aframes on strange angles. The dogs run to it and have to scramble to the center after almost flying off the other side due to the approach.
Thank God Ace's incident didn't happen on the dogwalk. The pivot point on the teeter is no where near as high as the top of the dogwalk. However, I've sadly seen dogs fall off the side of the top of the up ramp on the dogwalk and land on their backs or side. Yes, these were a result of bad approaches to the entry of the obstacle!
I'm not a judge, I do not know the regulations for how entries to contacts should be set (if there are any), all I know is that giving an usafe approach can and will result in an unsafe performance and may cause injury.
