Although quite some way away form even contemplating agility training for Susie, i do wonder about the wisdom of training a dog to go over jumps when vets are advising that one should lift a dog into and particularly out of a car because of the stress it puts on the joints. Comments??
Hmmmm....ahhhh....a difficult one! I think hindsight is a great thing, if I had a small, lightweight agile working line labrador then I might have another go. On balance though probably not. I do have a slim, lightweight chocolate labrador who now has elbow problems, and there is not a single record of poor elbow scores going back some generations. We did agility for a year. Maybe if the course was different, or the ground was different, I dunno. We were ultra careful, or so I thought. Sorry, probably not much help, my evidence of one dog, has made me a little "jumpy" re agility, scuse the pun!
Lifting a dog in and out of a car is sensible - usually, cars are parked on hard surfaces such as concrete etc. No dog should be jumping on concrete. My dogs jump out of a low car onto grass, but I certainly lift them out of high cars parked on concrete. All dog sports put stress and strains on dogs' joints. Some are clearly worse than others. From dock diving, to disc dog to flyball... Even heel work to music puts stress on dogs, with unnatural movement held for quite long periods of time....(that also applies to any walking, including lead walking). Gundog work is quite hard on dogs, particularly their front joints because of the 'slamming' action of slowing down for a retrieve - how bad that is depends on the speed the dog is going, and their own action. So for sure, agility will put stress and strains on a dog. Whether that's ok or not depends on the quality of the dog's joints, the fitness of the dog, the care taken over training the movements and so on. It might also depend on the dog’s drive for the sport – I have a high drive dog that flings himself around like crazy in training, and injury is a constant risk. He won’t stop even if something is hurting. My lower drive dog is a great deal safer to train.
I am a retired doctor, so to some extent can apply human medicine to veterinary medicine (not that I would obviously). I recall one patient who was a Cumbrian fell runner - high impact, rough ground. I had occasion to X-Ray his ankles and they were the most flaky looking joints I have ever seen. So anything that produces high stress on a joint will eventually cause damage. If that joint is one that is genetically more prone to damage, like a Lab's elbows, then to my mind, high joint stress activity is best avoided. Hence the question - I wondered what Labrador owners views/experience on this were.
Yep - my dogs both do gundog training, and I budget for orthopaedic vet check ups for them and my vet says the same. Not a visit goes by but he tells me how much arthritis he reckons will be in Paula Radcliffe's joints. (The athlete varies, but it's often Paula Radcliffe for some reason). He also tells me though, that my 5 year old Labrador, despite some joint problems that I carefully manage and we keep stable, is the fittest dog he's seen in decades and is in tip top shape. So...you know, swings and roundabouts and all that.
I also take 2 dogs gundog training, and also onto shoots picking up. I find gun-dog training worlds apart from agility. There are similarities in terms of some of the stressors on the joint, a bit stop-start, but as mentioned by @JulieT this is in part dictated by the sort of dog you have. A very driven dog will fly after a retrieve, and the danger is the way they put the brakes on at the other end, the stopping abruptly/ twisting combined with the acceleration of some of these dogs is tough on the joints. Saying that a LOT of gundog work is about standing around, steadiness, learning to be calm around other dogs, not just about fetching a dummy When a dog nails a retrieval chain...from the throw to the delivery...then due to the more controlled nature of the process, it's probably safer than the incessant chuck-it ball throwing you see at the recreation grounds. Agility can be very fast, twisting and turning movements, whilst the trainer ramps up the ante. The more driven the dog, the faster he goes. Often the reinforcer for a run is actually throwing a tennis ball or a tuggy. The dog is already very aroused at this point, it always worried me seeing them catching/chasing the ball/item in mid-air!
Yes, @Beanwood - for sure, the turns in agility don't look good from a joint point of view, it looks pretty high risk for sure. Managing a dog with joint problems doing gundog work is a blooming nightmare though, and I’m always on the edge of quitting it because we are not scot-free in gundog training by any means - although the lower drive the dog probably the better. I don't do marks with Charlie anymore (unless I'm going to stop him or the dummy is in cover a long way away) because I imagine I can see the shock waves going up his front legs to his elbows.... and he is also a dog that overruns the retrieve and I doubt there is a turn in agility that is tighter than a high drive dog turning for that dummy. Let alone the way some dogs launch themselves into water....(dock diving? No thanks...). I also think repetitive placeboard work in gundog work needs to be watched quite carefully. As does ping pong turn whistle training, and as for whippit....
