AKC Agility: Border Terrier, Santa Rosa, Jan. 17-18, 2009

Post date: Jan 18, 2009 2:23:13 AM

Light and Shadow

It's finally dawning on me that as much as I love the Lyttle Cow Palace (Sonoma County Fairgrounds) as an agility location, it poses a challenge for the dogs. The dirt surface is well-maintained, but the building isn't big enough to provide a buffer between the shadowy interior and the sunny exterior. To make matters worse, the inside lights are inadequate. So you have early morning courses that look like Sunday's FAST course, below. Trevor uncharacteristically missed his weave entry even though I did extra micro-managing to make sure he got it. It's a wonder he could see anything:

To underscore this point, compare the opening video frames of these two JWW runs. Both videos were taken with my Flip Mino. The photo on the left was taken last month at Rancho Murieta, which is a covered livestock arena just like the Lyttle Cow Palace. The one on the right was taken this Saturday at the Lyttle Cow Palace:

The difference is that the arena in Rancho Murieta is bigger, so there is more of a buffer between inside and outside. They also put in new lights this year. It's just about perfect now. If the dogs and I could do agility year-round in Rancho Murieta, we'd have our MACHs in no time. Or at least we'd run out of excuses very fast. :-)

Touki has poor eyesight (she's farsighted, according to our opthamologist), and I've known for the last 3 years that her eyesight was a factor in some indoor settings. For example, I don't think we ever Qed once in the indoor arena at Pleasanton. But it's still striking to me to see the statistical evidence. In the past 2 years, she's had the same pattern--3 great trials at Rancho Murieta followed by 2 lousy trials in Santa Rosa. She was so twitchy and balky on yesterday's jumpers course that the judge came out of the ring to express concern about her gait. But it wasn't her gait that was the problem. She just can't see very well in there, and the abrupt transitions between light and shadow freaked her out (see Temple Grandin). I don't think she knocked a single bar in 10 days of Rancho Murieta, but she knocked bars on 2 out of 4 runs in Santa Rosa.

Lyttle Cow Palace + Colored Weaves = NQ

To add to the challenge, the club this weekend was using the infamous colored weave poles (one pink set, one blue set). They've been around for a while, but I didn't start noticing how much trouble dogs had with them until the Del Monte trial last October. Experienced dogs were missing their entries, popping out prematurely, or going really slow.

On Saturday, Silvina (Agility in Motion videographer) supposedly commented that 90% of the dogs were missing the weaves on Standard. You can see why--the predominantly blue weaves were sitting against the back-lit green metal fence. They could hardly have been camouflaged better if they'd tried:

Remember that dogs are coming at the equipment at full speed. They have to see the obstacle and make split-second judgments about what it is, whether they need to adjust their stride, and so on. On Saturday, most dogs blew right by the weaves without seeing them. As the day progressed, handlers watching the early classes caught on and micro-managed the weave entry. That's what I did with Touki after Trevor blew by the weaves, and that's why she Qed and he didn't. But that kind of micro-managing really slows you down. Agility is hard enough without camouflaged equipment.

This is my new pet peeve: obstacles that are colored to appeal to human design aesthetics rather than to be visible to dogs. They're sports equipment, for heavens sakes. Color them in a way that will be high contrast and visible to DOGS. Dogs see a much more limited color spectrum than humans. To a dog, pink weaves on green grass would presumably look like yellowish on yellowish. From the article How Dogs See Color:

So, to maximize an object's visibility to a dog, we should strive to combine: (1) moderate motion (when feasible); (2) maximal contrast (a dark and white pattern unlike that of the background scene); and (3) stand-out color (one that is identifiable by dogs and does not occur very often in the background scene). The best of all possible worlds for most background scenes would be boldly-patterned Bright Purple and White objects.

The AKC is soliciting input on their agility program, and this is going to be my primary piece of feedback. Oh, and FAST sucks, please fix it.

How Did They Do?

Touki:

• In spite of the patchy light, Touki Qed in Std on Saturday and got 8 points (video). That is pretty good for her, if not great. She was very slooow and deliberate in the dreaded blue weaves. She knocked a bar in JWW.
• On Sunday, she knocked a bar in Std and was over time in JWW.

Trevor:

• Trevor Qed in JWW on Saturday (video) and came in 4th out of 5 dogs that Qed. But he only got 3 points. In fact, the dogs before and after him were in the same boat--they also only got 3 points. The first place dog was only 8 seconds under time. Everyone complains about AKC judges wheeling tight, especially me. But judge Beverly Morgan Lewis REALLY wheeled tight. In Std (video), he missed his weave entry and then went off-course into the wrong end of the tunnel. Very weak RFP, Mom.
• Sunday: Trevor QQed. On Std (video) he was distracted by the noise outside the arena and I had to call him back, and he also took his time sitting on the table. Sloow, fried, distracted, barely made time. Once again, Beverly put up a technical course and then wheeled really tight. Trevor Qed on JWW (9th Exc B JWW Q) and got 4 points. By that point I was totally paranoid about the colored weaves (especially since he had missed the entry on FAST that morning), so I structured my whole run around micro-managing his entry.
• FAST: no FAST Qs this weekend. On Saturday I tried to get the send bonus, against my better judgment. On Sunday, I just used it for practice. Our plan with FAST is to use it for practice, try to finish Trevor's XF, and then stop entering FAST. I'm not going to try to get his MXF the way I did with Touki. Not unless they either make it count, impose some kind of quality control, or require that FAST courses have decent flow. Many of them have such bad flow that they're not even useful for practice. Come on, AKC, you can do better!

Next weekend we go back to Santa Rosa, but it's for one day of USDAA with Sierra and Angela. That should be a little more fun and relaxing. The weekend after that, we have our final indoor AKC trial at Santa Rosa for the season.