As an AKC Agility Judge, I put a lot of thought, time and care into the overall design of my agility courses.

I diligently work to create universally dog-friendly challenges and especially to maintain safe angles and approaches to the various obstacles on my courses.

If I didn’t, I can guarantee that I would receive quite the earful from unhappy & concerned exhibitors, the club(s) who hired me would have a few comments and lastly, I would more than likely receive a note and/or a call from the AKC inquiring about my course(s) and the ‘feedback’ they had received on them.

In contrast, I’m always confused and baffled when I watch handler after handler encourage and create blatantly unsafe approaches to obstacles on a FAST course.

Simply put, why am I held to a high set of safety standards while handlers create, maintain and provide a much lower and far more dangerous path for their dogs in the FAST class?

More importantly, are these handlers aware of what they are doing?

Case in point, today I judged the above course. I was shocked when over 60% of the handlers, started with the #3 Double jump and immediately put their dog on the right side of the #8 a-frame. The path in red represents the dog’s angle and clearly indicates the lack of room, momentum and notice each dog had before they were expected to ‘climb Mt. Rainier!’

Worse yet, it didn’t appear that handlers were aware of the physical struggle their dog had to endure in order to complete their request. Don’t get me wrong, MANY folks did this sequence and did put the time and effort into shaping the dog’s path, but unfortunately, the majority did not.

The result was that I had to watch dog after dog physically STRUGGLE in order to please their handler and get up the a-frame. Some would say that I should have somehow prevented or discouraged handlers from being able to do this. Believe me, had I known handlers would take such a huge risk with their dog’s, I would have!

However, handlers have to face the facts and realize that most of our dogs would do ANYTHING to please us…including physically sacrificing their well-being in order to complete any task that we request of them. So when handlers fail to oversee to the safety of our dog(s), it makes me cringe!

Did anyone get hurt today? No, thank goodness. However, it does not negate the lessons everyone should live by, which is that:

1. Every agility handler is responsible for the safety of their dog. Period.
2. The FAST Class is not an invitation or an acceptance of sloppy handling.
3. Handlers are ultimately in charge of creating a safe agility path for their dog. Period.

So forget the accumulation of points and remember, your dog’s safety is far more important than collecting a bunch of numbers.