On Early Takeoffs

am reposting current definition of ETS
Below is current definition of ETS, mind you ONLY group 5 is considered to be valid ETS candidates.
1. Dogs who take off early/stutter but are 'cured' with training or handling
2. Dogs who stutter due to injury, but jumping resolves when injury does
3. Dogs who take off early/stutter, but do not significantly improve/are 'cured' by training and have an abnormal CERF.
4. Dogs who take off early/stutter, but do not significantly improve/are 'cured' by training and have an abnormal retinoscopy.
and the key group:
5. Dogs who take off early/stutter, but do not significantly improve/are 'cured' by training and have a normal CERF and retinoscopy.

I believe LM is the originator and main judge of the syndrome. There are supporters. There is another large group of talented dog trainers who do not support this notion.
If you go down this link and find PDF file it shows that main concern is with dog not having perfect round arch over the jump and taking off early either stutter stepping or leaving out the stride.
http://www.awesomepaws.us/early-takeoff-syndrome/
Here is MY reasoning why going this route is poor science.
Dogs that lets say got torn ligament and got it repaired and changed their jumping pattern are not ETS dogs
Dogs that had some crashes and multi dropped bars but redid foundation jump training etc and improved are not ETS dogs
Dogs that have diagnosed abnormality to their vision are not ETS dogs
Dogs that usually fit the ETS patterns are dogs that started well, got few titles, then somehow changed their jumping pattern to either stutter or leave out stride creating imbalanced jumping arch.
So handler takes that dog to vet, everything checks ok, eyesight might check ok with some minor stuff but nothing to hang your coat on, trains/retrains jumping grids etc but things are just not improving... so the questions start... why?
or the handler of small dog is told by well wishers... ¨your puppy takes off so early... are you sure it is not ETS?¨:rolleyes2:
Anyway, in order to say that it must be currently ¨mysterious¨ eyesight problem you have to eliminate all other factors that might have influenced that change and in order to do it scientifically it either has to be ¨found¨or other factors have to be eliminated based on research, statistical evidence , objective evaluations etc.
For example - good jumper is confident jumper. Do we have objective way to measure dog´s confidence? When dog does fly off teeter and does not come near teeter for 3 months we say dog lost confidence, when dog drops bars and we routinely ¨punish¨ by stopping the game and putting dog in down, who is to say that we did not create dog that lost confidence?
Susanne Clothier has 4 parts article on jumping including confidence issue
http://www.suzanneclothier.com/the-articles/jumping-series-part-i-why-fluffy-cant-go-hup
Do we have objective way to measure dog´s stress?
http://www.usdaa.com/article.cfm?newsID=2498
Dog´s physio still in its infancy. Even great talented chiro/ PT vets largely use subjective findings, we simply do not do MRI etc on every dog to evaluate soft tissue injuries and limitations so we can not rightly say that dog is sound and past injuries have no effect on the dog current jumping status.
Structure- some dogs are just bad jumpers. Just like with horses, you can do some training, you do do some fixin´ but in the end you still have bad jumper:sadsmile:
Another point on structure- read up on Dr Zink articles, dog that might have straight shoulders and unbalanced rear but whose handler is very active and dog goes on routine daily hikes etc... such dog might have enough great muscle tone to compensate poor structure... scroll forward and handler gets sick and dog becomes weekend agility warrior only... before you know all those ugly angles are getting totally unhinged... dog changes jumping style to compensate for lack of core strength...
Optical illusion
Small terrier will jump with exact same trajectory and have same take off and landing as larger BC but with BC it will look much more balanced than with small dog.
and we can go on why you can not exclude all other environmental factors just because...:smile2:
Here is article by my friend who happens to be talented artist who uses vision and its perceptions in her art
http://artanddogblog.wordpress.com/...-no-clothes-happens-to-be-an-agility-fanatic/
As for European agility folks I think many of them just do not care about perfectly round jumping arches, some like ST teaches collection jumping by taking off really close to the jump with her cik and cap, some teach dog to do ¨sighting¨ of the jump bar and as long as dog does it well everything is fine...
 
Thank you!
For those who have interest in jumping there is Canine Jumping Forum on FB, great source of various info and open by sending message to one of the mods, like Dev.
Because horses vision is ¨important¨it has been studied in great details but we really do not know what dog sees. We do know few facts like dog´s vision is 20/70 and larger pupils reflect brighter and blurrier images. It seems that dog´s vision is not all that fit for the agility tasks we asking them to do.
Here is what jumping grid might look to dog and you can pay attention how little depth perception comes into play and if one of the jump is double or triple how it might get covered.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DznznlnUO9s
This video clip adjusted to parallax effect and flicker fusion. You can reread Dev´s article on what parallax effect is and here is new article on what flicker fusion might mean to animals
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/...ow-motion-or-why-your-puppy-is-so-hyperactive
Again, there is great research about locomotion of horses but no $$ in dogs. Some new info is coming out though, beautiful DVD on study
http://www.vdh.de/dogs-in-motion.html
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110527080325.htm
http://www.uni-jena.de/en/News/PM110527_Hundestudie_en.html
 
Interesting thread.

First, I never thought about ETS being a possible vision issue. I guess the problem is, though, how does one truly test the vision and depth perception of a dog? It's not like they can tell us, "yeah, A is clearer than B" or "sometimes I have problems judging how far the bar is, other times, I'm fine". But, it makes sense.

A guy I know, his dog clearly had ETS (in the sense of the actual words). He got her eyes checked out thoroughly (clear), had a lot of things tested out. All clear. Because his dog loved agility though and he knew she was having issues jumping 16", he started jumping her at 12". I think he's been trying to get her down to 8" because she has some major issues with spreads and double/triples. But, at least he's done his due diligence.

Secondly, after reading everything.....the thing that kept going through my head was kids diagnosed with ADD. My thought about ADD goes like this. It exists. Period. It's not a black/white disease. Some have it mildly, some have it very very badly (seen it, kinda scary). Labeling a child with it can do good or it can do harm if misdiagnosed. And lastly, ADD comorbids with other things and can be hard to truly diagnose.

So, like the thoughts above. Is a child ADD or is he just active? Maybe he's slightly autistic or has Asberger's. Does a dog have ETS, a vision issue, or a jumping issue? If my dog showed signs of it, especially if the dog loved agility and showed a lot of greatness, I'd start doing some major diagnosing.

I do think, if a line clearly showed dogs with it, I'd think twice about getting an agility dog from them. I mean, didn't one woman's line have it and she stopped breeding them? And had all her breeding stock stop too? However, if I was going to find a pet first, then an agility dog, I wouldn't care. I think it depends on your wants.

I mean, if I wanted a child without any mental health issues or physical issues. Would I really have a kid with a man who was diagnosed bipolar, ADD, with high cholesterol, diabetes, and heart disease in his family line? Probably not. Most humans wouldn't think about that typically, but there are a lot of lovely (sarcastic) things that are hereditary that sucks.

Anyhow, that was my take. ETS is to the dogs like ADD is for kids. No one wants the label. No one wants to admit that it's hereditary. Being diagnosed really isn't easy nor black/white and neither is the actual disease. Being misdiagnosed happens a lot. And being labeled one way or the other can be harmful to them in the long run. A true diagnosis is the best way to go if you're concerned. The dog's life and safety should always come first.
 
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