Samurai Stucture Study Complete

With all the lines in place,

he looks pretty good.

Here is the grand finale of our work with Samurai in our structure class. He looks pretty good. Actually, as I understand it, he's not too different from a Border Collie. He has a 37 degree angle to his shoulder and 39 degrees to his pelvis. Both exceed the 30 degree slope which is recommended for performance dogs. He has a wide thigh with plenty of room for muscle and power for acceleration and jumping. He's got a little less angle in his upper arm, but it's sufficient for good extension.

He's pretty well balanced front to back, which you can see in the fairly balanced angle of the diamond that is made by extending the lines made by his angles. 

I'm especially happy to see the nice angulation in his front, since many Papillons are pretty straight in front.

Samurai's nice rear angulation helps him get his hindquarters up underneath him easily for jumping and turning. The angulation in the front helps him engage his front for acceleration and tight turns.

In reality, he runs fast, turns tightly and jumps with a light grace. 

I could see this part before I started structure class. Now I see the reasons why.

As the level of competition is demanding a higher level of training of agility dogs -- which means a greater investment of time and stress on the dog's structure -- it is more important than ever to have a soundly built dog that is also able to excel at performance.