AGILE - AGility Innovations Leveraging Electronics

04/02/2025

Please follow our new research page for updates on ALL of our research projects including AGILE!

We are excited to announce the formation of the Canine Sports Science Consortium, a culmination of 3 years of collaborative research. Our multi-disciplinary research team (Rachel Olson, Melody Moore Jackson, Arielle Pechette Markley, Abby Shoben) started with a project to develop a wearable sensor system to detect canine agility activities and a companion phone app (AGILE – AGility Innovations Leveraging Electronics). Our research expanded quickly from there to encompass many facets of sport dog research, including biomechanics, safety, equipment design, surface, and more. As our collaborations have grown, we decided that it was time to form an organization that better represented the full scope of our research endeavors. We are in the process of obtaining our non-profit status and will be pursuing funding opportunities and additional collaborations. Stay tuned for more announcements regarding our upcoming research projects!

01/30/2025

There have been a lot of recent reports, particularly on social media, about dog walk falls. These falls are often dramatic and can result in catastrophic injury. Because of the dramatic and scary nature of the falls, it is easy to assume that dog walk falls are a major contributor to injury among agility dogs and that reducing dog walk falls would improve safety. But is that true? What does the data say?

In our last blog post, we discussed three key questions around the “keep, change, or eliminate?” question. This blog focuses on what data we have around the first question: “what is the actual current risk?”

Is the dog walk the biggest risk in agility? This blog explores injury data across obstacles to assess actual risk and guide safety efforts.

01/28/2025

With all of the discussion about dog walk safety, there have been suggestions to do dog walk performance video analysis research as a foundation for evaluating different dog walk designs. Our research team has done some preliminary research in this area and the published study can be found here: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0299592

We are also analyzing A LOT of dog walk data that was collected during our AGILE study and preparing it for publication!

Stay tuned for our blog post this week analyzing the current data on obstacle incidents and injuries!

The objective of this study was to describe paw placement patterns for canine athletes completing the dog walk obstacle during canine agility trials. It was hypothesized that dogs would demonstrate defined sets of paw placement patterns as they complete the dog walk obstacle and that those could be....

01/23/2025

As most of the agility community is aware, there has been a lot of discussion about what to do about the current dog walk. Many are currently advocating for changing the dog walk to be lower and/or wider. Some advocate for keeping it as is (while more data are collected), and still others suggest eliminating it completely. Given these discussions, I wanted to share my perspective as a statistician who typically thinks about risk and benefits from a big picture, public health perspective and as an agility enthusiast not currently training or competing with a dog.

In the longer blog post, I talk through five specific scenarios and ask you to consider which option (keep, change, or eliminate) you would choose given various assumptions. Across the five scenarios, there is one where I think most people would agree to “change” the dog walk, one where most people would agree to “keep” the dog walk, and one where most people would agree to “eliminate” the dog walk. There are also two in which I think reasonable people would disagree.

Across all scenarios, the key factors are: (1) what is the actual current risk of the dog walk? (2) how much safer would a changed dog walk be? and (3) what are the costs of a change? In the absence of data, we are all internally making assumptions about these questions. Discussing all three of these questions is critical – the question is not just “would a changed dog walk be safer?”

Please read the blog post for more :)

- Dr. Abigail Shoben

Exploring safety, costs, and risks, this blog post analyzes whether to keep, change, or eliminate the agility dog walk through 5 scenarios.

01/23/2025

As most of the agility community is aware, there has been a lot of discussion about what to do about the current dog walk. Many are currently advocating for changing the dog walk to be lower and/or wider. Some advocate for keeping it as is (while more data are collected), and still others suggest eliminating it completely. Given these discussions, I wanted to share my perspective as a statistician who typically thinks about risk and benefits from a big picture, public health perspective and as an agility enthusiast not currently training or competing with a dog.

In the longer blog post, I talk through five specific scenarios and ask you to consider which option (keep, change, or eliminate) you would choose given various assumptions. Across the five scenarios, there is one where I think most people would agree to “change” the dog walk, one where most people would agree to “keep” the dog walk, and one where most people would agree to “eliminate” the dog walk. There are also two in which I think reasonable people would disagree.

Across all scenarios, the key factors are: (1) what is the actual current risk of the dog walk? (2) how much safer would a changed dog walk be? and (3) what are the costs of a change? In the absence of data, we are all internally making assumptions about these questions. Discussing all three of these questions is critical – the question is not just “would a changed dog walk be safer?”

Please read the blog post for more :)

- Dr. Abigail Shoben

https://www.redsagevets.com/post/the-dog-walk-in-agility-part-1-keep-change-or-eliminate

12/04/2024

Agility teeter performance! Another publication from our initial data collection is now available: https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/veterinary-science/articles/10.3389/fvets.2024.1492391/full

Thanks to the AKC Canine Health Foundation for funding this project!

09/01/2024

Here is our research team's most recent publication!

ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to identify the type of veterinary care sought by handlers of injured agility dogs, the types of treatments the dogs recei...

08/21/2024

There is still an hour left to sign up for the FREE webinar on agility research and the AGILE project!

There's still time to register for tomorrow's webinar on leveraging technology to study canine athletes! Dr. Markley's research on wearable tech will help optimize performance, evaluate the relationship between training and injury risk, and inform injury prevention strategies. Agility handlers and anyone who owns or trains a dog - register now at https://bit.ly/3LJrA21.

06/23/2024

We are currently setting up for a separate study to evaluate the differences in movement and forces with different obstacle spacing. We could use about 5 more dogs to participate in the afternoon tomorrow (Sunday 6/23 at 1pm or 2pm). Let us know if you'd like to participate. There are no breed or experience requirements and dogs will only have to do repetitions of jumping for this piece of the study.

06/23/2024

THANK YOU to all of our amazing agility handlers who dedicated their time today in the heat to participate in our AGILE research study! We got so much data and can't wait to share the results with you. Thank you to all of our volunteers who made the day run smoothly despite occasional technical challenges. Thank you to Bill Pinder for designing the courses and judging. Thank you to Roger Ly for donating Agility Gate for our research. Thank you to IncrediPAWS Dog Training for the use of your facility. And the biggest thank you to the AKC Canine Health Foundation for funding this study. We could not have accomplished all of this without you all.

AGILE CUP CUMULATIVE WINNERS:
4/8” class
1st – Elsa Warren and Freedom
2nd – Deirdra Long and Sharkey

12” class
1st – Jennifer Masterson and Clover
2nd – Joye Ford and Blitz

16” class
1st – Elsa Warren and Lumi
2nd – Kim Stuber and Jyn

20” class
1st – Beth Janos and Mia
2nd – Caitlin Zilla and Clue

24” class
1st – Julie Lust and Izzy
2nd – Deb Abbott and Ryker

06/17/2024

We need about 10 more participants for our AGILE research agility trial event! We are specifically in need of more 12" dogs.

All participants will receive a $25 dollar gift card. Overall winners of the 4 combined runs will receive an $100 gift card!!

Comment below if you are interested in signing up!