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Agility Dog Health Network

Your source for accurate, fact-based information on agility dog health!

The Agility Dog Health Network is a platform to encourage collaboration among individuals engaged in evidence-based discovery and innovation to enhance the health of dogs competing in canine agility and to disseminate that information to agility participants.

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What is the relationship between the duration or intensity of your daily activities with your dog (agility training, hiking, playing, or anything else) and the risk of injury to your dog? How many A-frames or jumps are “enough” for one day or one week?

Lots of people have opinions, but there is very little information or real data to answer these important questions, in part because we have no valid way to “measure” the daily activity load for dogs. Researchers associated with the Agility Dog Health Network recently received funds from the American Kennel Club’s Canine Health Foundation to test a web-based tool in which agility dog handlers can quickly and easily report a “rating of perceived exertion” for agility-specific training activities and for all daily activities. We need your help to make this happen.

Click on this link to go directly to the Phase 1 enrollment survey. The first page of the survey includes all the project information!

Click on this link to find out more about this project and how you can participate in Phase 1!

Meet the Agility Dog Health Network Team!

This site is the result of collaboration among a small group of experienced veterinary researchers who have developed a passion for agility. We quickly recognized that there is very little evidence-based research on which we can make health decisions specific for our agility dogs. A small number of individual researchers, scattered around the globe, are making valiant contributions to the effort as they work independently on specific projects but they are often limited by lack of access to information. Our goal is to develop a network of researchers, competitors, veterinary professionals, and others who will collaborate in the discovery dissemination of new information for the advancement of canine agility dog health.