6A 6B © ALISSA BEHN/PET-PERSONALITIES.COM 7A 7B © LESLEY MATTUCHIO 8A 8B © LESLEY MATTUCHIO Turn In the turn, there is an increase in the lateral forces placed upon the dog. The front legs play a greater role in navigation than the rear legs. They produce energy lateral to the plane of movement to turn the dog right or left. See Figure 6. Movement Termination When the dog begins to terminate movement or stops, there is a braking action placed on the front end which increases the force actions placed on the front-end structures. See Figure 7. Jumping The jump is similar to straight running except there are greater forces employed by the paravertebral structures. See Figure 8. 58 Assessing Performance in Agility Knowing how the body moves and how the biomechanical forces interact, provides information that can be used to assess performance. Since these actions are utilized by all active animals it allows this information to apply to all breeds or types of dogs. Agility is a sprint sport where the dog utilizes all five of the basic movements of locomotion. The optimum performance will occur when the handler and the dog act together to create the fastest run. The information provided in this article is designed to describe optimum performance of the dog and will defer handling techniques to other information sources. The best performance by the dog will occur when the internal factors are optimized and the detractors of performance are minimized or eliminated. It is important to recognize fatigue as a negative influence on performance. There can be two types, whole-body fatigue and segmental fatigue. Both whole-body and segmental fatigue can occur during a run, but they can also accumulate over several runs. Wholebody fatigue is more of a physiological fatigue whereas segmental fatigue is typically musculature. Exercise and conditioning can help to minimize the negative effects of fatigue. To optimize the dog's body for performance, preparation of the structure is important. The agility run is made up of running, turning, and jumping actions. A transition action occurs as the dog Clean Run | April 17