I repainted my dogwalk with the hope that that would fix some safety issues with it. Wyatt had 2 or 3 slips, one of them rather frightening. I had also been wondering why Wyatt was reluctant to do agility at home. I had not connected it with these dogwalk issues.
I repainted it but it still seemed to be slippery and/or unstable so I was not sure what to do. I tried Patriot on it and he was had a problem so I decided to take it down rather than repaint (again) and try to make it more stable. It was the right decision.
One interested thing is that when I took the dogwalk out and replaced it with a tunnel, Wyatt still showed reluctance to go into the area the dogwalk was located. After 2-3 sessions, that seems to be abating. Dogs seem to be much more location specific in their learning. They don't generalize like we do. In this case, it worked to my favor since he did not become afraid of all dogwalks. But it has worked the other way too when we had to proof contacts at trials for years!
Since he seems OK at trials with the dogwalk (still jumps off occasionally), removing it at home seems like a good decision. I may get a new rubber one at some point. But not having it there opens up a lot possibilities for distance work and the A-Frame at a distance. That's much, much more common that the dogwalk in NADAC Chances, which is my major goal right now. 9 more for our NADAC championship.
Just goes to show you that going cheap is counterproductive in the long run. It did seem to work OK for years though.
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