Rocky wrote:
"sionnach" said in
rec.pets.dogs.activities:


I've judged tens of thousands of dogs on the teeter and have
never seen a problem with properly-trained small or large dogs
when the teeter meets the minor specs I mentioned. Of course,
AAC trials are not held on hard surfaces.


It could also be that the teeters usually seen at your trials are
heavier than those seen at our trials. I'd be fairly surprised to hear
the teeter performances substantially differ, but maybe so.

And to be clear, very few agility trials in the U.S. are held on hard
surfaces. I'm not sure what you mean by hard surface, but to me it would
mean concrete or concrete with thin mats, or something like hotel
carpeting over concrete. We do hold trials on field turf, cushioned
soccer turf (which is where Zipper was in those videos), and on surfaces
like our facility, which is 3/4" recycled rubber matting over 6' of
crushed lime. All of which can be excellent surfaces for the dogs but
are not dirt or grass, which a teeter could actually be staked down into.

On surfaces where the teeter cannot actually be staked, it will often
buck if not balanced properly. If you have never seen a dog thrown off a
teeter as a judge my hat is off to you, I've seen it happen in grass,
dirt, and on the surfaces I described above. Worst teeter I ever saw was
on grass, a late pivot with a very fast drop and a lot of board whip
meant dogs were spinning off like crazy.

It's enough of an issue that Monica Percival has been advocating through
Clean Run for a standardization of teeters for quite some time. As it is
now, at least in the U.S., there's huge variability in rate of drop and
amount of board whip as well as overall stability of the obstacle, both
with shimmying from side to side and bucking. A dog literally never
knows what he's going to encounter when he gets on one, except that it
will be different.