I will do everything I can to keep my mouth shut. There is a part called "common sense and logic". As a person from the horse jumping environment, it makes some great analogies. Every time that I ever say anything about horse jumping, the dog community jumps up and says "dogs are not horses and are built differently". It is nice to read a study that confirms that the dogs exhibit the same responses to jump heights and the distance between jumps as the horse studies have shown. The study does says that even though dogs and horses are anatomically different, they show the same results on the jumping study.
They did a nice study on the neck angles, back angles and shoulder angles on a series of jumps set at different distances.
I do love the conclusions that the shorter distances between jumps should be tested only on very experienced and qualified canines to prevent injuries, as the more novice dogs exhibited jumping forms that could cause injuries to the dogs. (which is why 11 dogs had to be removed from the study).
This study shows the same conclusions as the Lackland Air Force study did back in the 70's. The higher the jump and the closer the jumps are the more force is applied.
It was from the Lackland study (for our military dogs) that NADAC was created with lower jumps that would be set at greater distances between jumps.
Enough said and I have argued this for more than 25 years......... I will continue doing what we are doing and will continue to be happy!
Sharon