Ego Vs. Safety - Kikopup Video

[YOUTUBE]0rILvuvDQuY[/YOUTUBE]

I know it's long and her voice/manner of speaking is kind of annoying but I was wondering what chazzers thought.

I just saw this, was thinking about posting it here, but didn't want to be the instigator lol. I think it is something to think about, taking calculated risks and remembering your dog is not a machine and needs to be conditioned. There are some tricks I see where I just go 'uhhh that's not safe', so I understand that POV. At the same time, you also don't want to not do any athletics because you *might* get hurt, same goes for a dog. And honestly, I'm used to here monotone, it doesn't bother me haha.

I think it is a very important message. Dogs will try pretty much anything we ask, so we have to be responsible in what we're asking.

I wasn't impressed. Sure, there are questions. I won't be parkouring Shamoo any time soon but I also won't stop things my dogs love for that millisecond chance of damage.

My opinion is more so you train appropriately, not avoid in case of that tiny chance of accident.

I saw this earlier today. I wasn't a fan. Her points are valid at the end, definitely, but she strikes me as being a worrier and almost advocating arbitrarily limiting your dog's activities based on the possibility that it might get hurt. Don't encourage your dog to jump off a roof, by all means, but not having her Chihuahua back up for fear of injury? Really? This is the same girl who advocates walking all dogs on harnesses because she fears a collar might be uncomfortable -- a valid point, but I think it's hypersensitive (my dog much prefers a collar to a harness, for example).

I think it's generally good advice, but the moments of hypersensitivity bothered me. Dogs will do anything we ask of them, and we owe it to them to be responsible. But they're also amazing athletes so let's just have some fun with them.

E: ^^^ Said it more concisely than I could. Thanks.

The overall message of ego vs safety is a good and important one but I think she, like I believe she normally does, took that past logical and into the extreme.

Exactly this. I mean, no stairs? That's not going to happen. No crawling? Logan has to crawl on a daily basis as part of his job, crawling both forwards and backwards. Agility doesn't have to be repetitive jumping. You can do stuff and not be wreckless about it.

When she said that I went "Wait, did I hear that wrong?" I mean, seriously?

But, I'm a big believer in teaching dogs to do things correctly like landing, jumping, how to use their body, building up those core muscles to work on preventing injury when they inevitably do something like that because they're DOGS and it's gonna happen if I don't wrap them in bubble wrap.

Doesn't her dog Kiko have some physical issues with her ankles? I could understand a small Chihuahua being banned from going up and down stairs if they are physically unsound.

I think she very much blew it out of proportion with the whole "no backing up, etc". I mean, it's not like the dog is going to be practicing backing up for 7 hours a day.

BUT I have thought on many occasions that people go a little overboard with their dogs, like on some YouTube videos that I have seen (probably the same ones she is talking about), and I have had the same thought process. What if you didn't catch the dog jumping from a very tall height? kind of issues.

With sports like agility and disc, as long as you condition properly and take the time to make sure you are doing things safely, then I see absolutely no reason to NOT participate.

I find things like dog parkour to be incredibly dangerous. The dogs in those videos, I'm sure they like other things just as much. It's not locking the dogs up from having any fun, it's not putting them in situations where having fun is just as likely to go horrifically wrong as it is to be fine.

I think it is fundamentally different if your dog breaks a leg jumping off a fallen tree in the forest while running off leash, than if your dog breaks a leg jumping off a retaining wall because you asked him to.

Except that they might eat the bubble wrap and get a blockage!

Life isn't safe. People and animals' lives end in the simplest, most unpredictable ways sometimes. I think that people should be reasonable about what they're doing and asking their dogs to do and realistic about their individual abilities, but they shouldn't stop living life for fear of accidental injury. Especially from every day things.

I have a feeling she'd have a heart attack just watching Savvy be Savvy.

This is mostly...just silly LOL Seriously. She has a very alarmist attitude.

"A border collie can work sheep until they pass out...and die" :yikes:

I think these Silvia Trkman's articles are a good answer to this:

http://silvia.trkman.net/agilityisgood.htm

http://silvia.trkman.net/agilityisgood2.htm

Really dogs are made for running, leaping, jumping, chasing, tugging, twisting, etc, etc.

I was watching that but Summer unplugged my computer which made my computer die and the video stopped loading.

There's a middle ground there. They're DOGS. We can't bubble wrap them. Use common sense but sheesh... Overanalyzing every movement they make or what you ask of them is going overboard.

I do think she takes it too far, but if you leave out the extremist stuff and get to the main point it's an important message. Think about your motivations for what you are asking or making your dog do. Is it for you or for them? Are the potential risks worth it? It could also be applied to some of the training methods people use to get their dogs to do something like carry a dumbbell, something with no benefit to the dog. Think about that video that was posted in the training section of the dog doing down stays in a super busy road and heeling through the traffic. Is the trainer really trying to proof his commands or just show off how strong his dogs down and heel are? Is the risk (not super high if he knows his dog, but certainly not low either) of his dog getting hit by a car worth showing off?


With things like sports it's not that straight forward because usually it's not done simply for the owner, the dogs generally love it too. I think you can say you are doing that for the dog, as well as for yourself, so weighing the risks of injury against the joy the dog gets out of, and the bond built during training for it, and the health gained by training the dog's body for it is not so clear cut and simple. It needs to be done on an individual basis. I think kikopup doesn't see all of the benefits of sports for the dog.

Don't have sex. Because you will get pregnant and die!

AND DIE!!! :yikes: :yikes: :yikes: :yikes: :yikes:

Sorry...
:rofl1:

Bubblewrap can be eaten and suffocated on. You might kill your dog.

/me duct tapes the dogs to the ceiling.

There. Safe at last.

As someone who is dealing with a dog injury caused by running in the woods, I do think the video is pretty extreme. I do wish more people would consider what they are asking their dogs to do in sports - it's lovely to say "Agility is a sport for every dog!" but, let's be honest, there are some breeds and some individuals that would really be better off finding a new activity.