Mailbag
A loyal reader wrote in response to our VAR episode: “I believe professional tennis has fought VAR as well and that’s where I’ll be while you’re watching [the] Final Four.”
Our reader’s timing was perfect. Just as we were discussing VAR in agility, Wimbledon announced they’re introducing video review technology for the first time at this year’s tournament. The oldest Grand Slam will have the technology available on Centre Court, No. 1 Court, and four other show courts, allowing players to review specific calls made by chair umpires, such as double bounces.
Video review made its Grand Slam debut at the 2023 US Open, and the Australian Open also uses the technology. What’s interesting is that players won’t be limited in the number of reviews they can request, which is quite different from other sports that typically give you a set number of challenges.
This is separate from electronic line-calling for in/out calls, which Wimbledon adopted last year after replacing line judges, though it wasn’t without hiccups. Sound familiar? It seems every sport goes through growing pains when adopting technology that changes how officials make calls.
You can read more about Wimbledon’s announcement on ESPN here.
Podcast: 320,000 Dogwalks
The numbers are in from the largest coordinated safety study in agility history, and they paint a detailed picture of contact obstacle incidents that challenges some assumptions while confirming others. In this week’s episode, Sarah and I welcome Dr. Arielle Pechette Markley and Dr. Abigail Shoben, the researchers behind the groundbreaking CARIS study, to discuss their findings and what they mean for our sport.
The CARIS (Coalition for Agility Reporting on Incidents and Safety) research analyzed data from 1,385 trials spanning multiple organizations between April and November 2025. With more than 300,000 observed runs on each obstacle (320,000 dogwalk, 340,000 teeter, 418,000 A-frame), this represents the most comprehensive look at contact obstacle safety we’ve ever had.
The headline findings break down by obstacle:
- Dogwalk: 2.10 incidents per 1,000 runs (roughly 1 incident every 476 runs)
- Teeter: 1.04 incidents per 1,000 runs (roughly 1 incident every 961 runs)
- A-frame: 0.40 incidents per 1,000 runs (roughly 1 incident every 2,500 runs)
But here’s what might surprise you: 91.5% of incidents resulted in no apparent injury, with the dog continuing the run. Another 7.6% showed no visible injury but the handler chose to stop. Less than 1% showed apparent injury, and zero cases required immediate veterinary transport.
When you drill down to actual injury rates, the numbers become extraordinarily small. For dogwalks, the apparent injury rate was approximately 0.03 per 1,000 runs, equivalent to 1 injury in roughly 33,300 runs. The teeter had zero observed injuries during the study period.
Perhaps the most surprising finding came from comparison data. Previous research found tunnel incidents at approximately 15 per 1,000 tunnel performances, substantially higher than any contact obstacle in this study. To my knowledge, the only death of a dog on course happened in a tunnel. If we’re serious about our dogs’ safety, we need to look into the tunnel. This may be the most surprising thing to come from this study, and if we can reduce injuries related to the tunnel, we could be doing a lot of good for a lot of dogs.
In the podcast, I shared my perspective on what these results mean for our community. The results that have been released are really just the start of understanding the relative risks of dog agility. What we decide to do with the data is up to each person who runs a dog.
This reminds me of the evolution of safety awareness in American football. For decades, concussions were either denied or dismissed as “getting your bell rung.” But as research mounted and former players began donating their brains to science, chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) emerged as a devastating reality. CTE, a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated head trauma, has been linked to severe psychological issues including depression, memory loss, aggression, and suicidal thoughts. Studies have found CTE in the brains of 99% of former NFL players examined posthumously.
The NFL was eventually forced to confront this crisis. Rules were changed to reduce helmet-to-helmet contact, helmet technology improved dramatically, and comprehensive concussion protocols were implemented. This work has trickled down to other sports, including water polo, where goalies now have the option of wearing padded caps in games. Hannah always wears a martial arts-grade helmet during practice because of what we’ve learned about head injuries and because that’s what goalies wore in practice at Brown University, where our son Isaac played water polo.
The responses among former NFL players vary widely. When interviewed, some refuse to let their children play football. Others let their kids make their own decisions. Some players say that if they could go back in time, they would never have played, while others would still choose to play despite living in daily pain and mobility issues.
As a community, we’re looking to do what we can to make dog agility safer. We don’t look at results and say, “this is too high, let’s stop agility altogether,” nor do we say, “the results seem low, no changes are necessary.” We continue to make the game as safe as possible because injuries in the sport are a fact of life, but we should do what we can to reduce them. This study and others like it are critical to understanding what’s really happening out there.
The researchers emphasize this data captures only immediate apparent injuries, not delayed or subclinical issues that might emerge later. But the consistency of patterns across different organizations strengthens confidence in the findings, and ongoing analyses will dive deeper into contributing factors and prevention strategies.
Click here to listen to our full conversation with the CARIS researchers about their groundbreaking study: https://baddogagility.com/episode-389-320000-dogwalks/
Earth Day
Sarah here! Five years ago on Earth Day, we announced that Bad Dog Agility had gone carbon neutral. We’re proud to say that’s still true today. When we first offset our carbon footprint in 2021, we worked with Carbonfund.org, a nonprofit that made the process simple for small businesses. Carbonfund.org has since been acquired by a for-profit company called ClimeCo in 2022, and the original certification program has since been phased out entirely. So this year we found a new way to offset our carbon footprint.
We made an annual donation to American Forests, one of the oldest conservation nonprofits in the United States. To size our donation, we estimated our footprint across all the things that drive our emissions: home office energy use, web hosting, domestic flights to events like AKC Nationals, road trips to trials, and our international travel. Dog agility takes us a lot of places, and we wanted the offset to reflect that.
We spend a lot of time on the road and in the air chasing this sport we love. The dog agility community is an outdoor community, and healthy forests, clean air, and open spaces are part of what makes all of it worthwhile.
Six years in, going carbon neutral on Earth Day has become a BDA tradition. Here’s to another year of great dogs, great runs, and taking care of the planet while we’re at it.
Happy Earth Day from all of us at Bad Dog Agility!
What We’re Watching: Running Point
It’s not Will Trent, which we continue to binge (now in the middle of season 4 with season 5 on the way but not yet out), but we’re looking forward to watching Season 2 of Running Point with Hannah when it drops tomorrow on Netflix! The Kate Hudson comedy about a party girl who inherits her family’s Los Angeles basketball team was a hit with our family. If that sounds familiar to you, it’s because it’s loosely based on the real life power struggle that took place within the Buss family, owners of the Los Angeles Lakers.
The series also stirred up some legal drama. Pepperdine University sued Netflix and Warner Bros., claiming the fictional “LA Waves” team misappropriated their trademarked “Waves” name, blue and orange colors, and even the number 37 (representing Pepperdine’s 1937 founding year). The Christian university was also concerned about the show’s explicit content, substance use, and profanity being associated with their brand.
Netflix won the case in February when a federal judge ruled that the fictional team’s marks weren’t used to indicate the source of the show, but merely to portray a basketball team. Netflix’s defense? The “Waves” name was actually a nod to the Lakers, and of course the show was developed with Lakers owner Jeanie Buss as both producer and inspiration (portrayed in the show by Kate Hudson).
Sometimes the best entertainment comes with a little real-world drama on the side.
Surprised by the early results from the CARIS research? Email us your thoughts at
team@baddogagility.com!
Happy Training,
