Dogs love chasing frisbees and catching them.
But is the activity too dangerous?
The Kennel Club in the UK has now added frisbee to its list of dangerous activities for dogs. A country dog show in England banned frisbee catching on the grounds that it puts dogs in danger.
The Scruffs dog show organisers in Keswick, Cumbria, decided to scrap both the ‘highest frisbee catch’ and the ‘highest biscuit catch’ categories amid fears for the participants’ well-being.
Tony Lywood, a town councillor and one of the show’s organisers, said:
A couple of members of our organising committee, who have experience of larger scale dog shows, suggested there may be risks to dogs that jump high to catch frisbees. We did some due diligence and reluctantly agreed that we should scrap the frisbee category and amed the biscuit catching category so that the dogs are sitting down. It is a strange and bizarre decision to make, but one which I suppose we had to make if there is a risk that animals could get hurt.”
Lywood said in shows elsewhere, there have been occasions where dogs have jumped high and twisted their back, and there was one where the dog had to be put down.”
The Kennel Club, the country’s biggest charity devoted to protecting the welfare of dogs, has twice previously named Keswick as the most dog friendly town in the UK.
Extreme versions of frisbee fell by the wayside, but a total of 24 categories survived, including ‘dog with the best trick’; ‘dog looks most like its name’; ‘dog with the best howling performance’; and ‘the best six legs (dog and owner)’.
h/t: Keswick Scruffs , Daily Telegraph, Daily Mail
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