This is a photo of my dog Byrdie at champs. It makes me cringe.
Ever since I got this photo, I've been meaning to post about the safety of these metal jumps. I know a number of people whose dogs have been injured on them, including my own. Fortunately, my procrastination has been rewarded, as just in the past few weeks, several prominent agility handlers/bloggers have posted on the same subject much more eloquently than I could have.
Steve Schwarz of Agility Nerd is trying to raise awareness of the dangers of this type of jump. His
blog post discusses the dangers of this design and links to several sources of safer equipment.
Linda Mecklenburg also believes this type of metal jump is dangerous and discusses why on
her blog.
Daisy Peel has posted
a podcast on the subject of equipment safety focusing on metal jumps. It's a bit long, but has a lot of thoughtful observations about jump design that I haven't heard elsewhere. (She also enthuses about our wonderful conveyor belting contact matting, even if she doesn't mention NADAC by name
).
I know that some will say they have never seen an injury caused by this type of jump. Here is a sampling of the kind of injuries that are occurring, from posts to another list (copied with permission). Steve Schwarz's post also contains several photos of dogs injured by these jumps.
My Josie has slit her eye open twice on metal jump cups. Once was about 4
years ago in training, and she was only turning tightly as she's been
taught to do. The second time was just this past September at one of the
only clubs I know of that still uses metal jumps (half are metal, half are
PVC). I see dogs crashing jumps a lot, and it makes me cringe. I have
been lucky that the cuts on Josie's eye haven't been a few cm one way or
the other, as the result could have been permanent damage.
At the Dallas USDAA Regional in 2008 or 2009, I met Liz McGuire from
Florida for the first time. I have a red BC, she was running a shockingly
speedy red Aussie, and unfortunately our paths crossed when her smokin'
fast red Aussie crashed into one of the metal jump cups and he wound up
needing something like 18 stitches on the inside and 25 on the outside to
put him back together. I'd say that's cause enough right there.
***
My dog caught his lip on a metal jump cup, it was not pretty. He came out of the ring, licking and rubbing the whole side of his muzzle, his gums were bleeding as the metal tore the inside of his mouth. They should be outlawed.
***
A little over a month ago, my 6 1/2 yo bc Bliss either slipped or miscalculated the takeoff or turn and hit a metal jump with her face. At first it looked like she was simply lame on her left front but I noticed blood in the corner of her left eye. A closer look revealed a laceration to the lateral corner of her eye with a puncture wound that opened up to the cavity behind the eyeball.
The vet who treated her immediately and the Ophthalmologist both claimed they could not measure how close Bliss had come to filleting her eye and the Ophthalmologist said he would not have been able to save it. A fraction more force, a tiny shift in timing or take off would have been disastrous . . . .
There has been much speculation regarding the safety of plastic jump cups. In the past few years alone I have personally witnessed an Aussie requiring multiple stitches in the knee from hitting metal cups, a bc with a hematoma on his chest the size of a nerf ball and multiple facial lacerations. Since the plastic strips have come along I have yet to see injuries like this. I remember in a seminar I was hosting a Malinois took off late for a double jump and landed straight down on it. She sheared off four jump heights on both sides of the jump! I had never seen anything like it and I shudder to think of the injury she would have sustained had the cups been metal.
***
Two years ago, my young BC crashed into a one piece metal jump in class and he came up very lame. I usually don't worry about his face or eyes since he jumps 24/26 so his eyes are above the cups. . . . Anyway, after looking him over, I found that he had a clean cut about 1/2 inch long completely through the skin on the back of his leg, right above his left rear foot. I'm not sure how he managed to do that but it was a clean cut so I assumed he somehow caught it on a metal jump cup when the whole jump swung into him when he crashed. There was nothing else for him to get cut on. The cut ended up severing the distal flexor tendon of one of his toes so that toe is now permanently flat. How many more dogs need to be hurt before agility organizations mandate safer equipment?
The jump should break before the dog does. In my view, the problems with metal jumps are twofold: 1) the unused metal jump cups pose an unreasonable risk of eye injury or puncture to the dog, and 2) the heavy steel construction, especially when combined with a fixed connecting bar at the bottom, makes the jump nearly immovable when a dog collides with it, and if the dog does succeed in taking it down, it poses a further risk when falling.
What are the solutions?
This is a simple, inexpensive jump available from Launch the Dog. This style of single-cup jump is nearly ubiquitous in Europe. I think it would be pretty easy for clubs to make a homemade version of it, too:
Even the simple PVC jumps with Clip and Go strips that most of us use in training would be much safer. The plastic is softer, the edges are rounded, and because it's on a PVC jump, if the dog hits it, it should fall away.
I don't believe this is a training issue, or an issue related to the tight turns seen in other venues. My dog shows only in NADAC, but took a metal jump cup to the ribs and came up lame. Dogs will look for the most efficient path, and sometimes they will misjudge. Handlers will mistime cues. Knowing that mistakes will be made, and knowing the dangers of this type of jump, is it fair of us to continue to use them?
To put this in a different context, imagine if this were a piece of playground equipment, meant to be used by a child in the same way that a dog uses it, and a child lost an eye, cut its face, or severed a tendon. What if that happened when several other kids had already been injured in the same fashion? Would we expect the equipment to be changed?
If you've read this far in my long post, I know you care about dog safety, too. I choose to show in NADAC largely because of this venue's willingness to put the dog's well-being above all other considerations. I realize that this isn't something that can happen overnight--there are economic realities--but I'm hopeful that we can discuss this issue and start to think about how we might make some changes. Of course, we should always not only point out problems but also be part of the solution, so I stand ready to help with fundraising for safer jumps at any of the clubs whose trials I attend. I even have a couple of ideas for fundraisers.
Thanks for your consideration of this issue.
Diane Whitney
