Track results by Dog? or by Dog and Handler?

Hello all,
I'm helping Tony develop some software and a database to help track registrations and results for the events. One of the questions that has come up is if we should track results/titles by dog or by handler and dog.

Agility does things by the dog only, doesn't matter who handles the dog. I believe some of the other dock jumping organizations do things by handler and dog (so a dog could be at different levels with different handlers). What are your thoughts as far as how SplashDogs should track results? I'm creating a poll - we want to know what you think!

[Sassy Girl]

just wanted to note and ask...if you track by dog only, will the handler be noted?

If we do dog only, I can easily have an owner and a primary handler listed. Would be a bit more difficult to get into secondary handlers if we go the dog only route.

[MickeyD'sMom]

Hi Wendy:
I vote for dog and handler.

[need2getalife]

Dog and Handler as it is a team sport!!! They must work together. Different results with different handlers?????? 8)

[Sardo]

I like dog and handler, Like it says by others above different results with different handlers!!!

Few questions for all of you. Do that many people actually have multiple people handle their dog other than on an occasional basis? In the cases where this happens does the dog perform significantly different?

If we go with dog and handler as the solution it adds a few levels of complexity when you start thinking about long term implementations for results and registrations. For those of you who care about the details the first few that come to mind is that we will need to have registration ids for dogs and registration ids for handlers. Using just names won't work since we could have two Joe Smith's and two Fidos. Both Joes could in theory handle both Fidos. Also, if we are looking at yearly results and a single dog handled by multiple people is in the top results with different people we'll need to do something like take the results for the top handler for that dog (which is kind of like reverting back to dog only results in a sense).

I know it sounds simple on the surface, but as I think about writing the code and building the database I need to make sure I've worked out the details and that we end up with something that makes as many people happy as possible!

[all4sadie]

I'm going with Dog and Handler, as a team.

[need2getalife]

If you are tracking to determine which dog had the best jump all year long you need to know the handler. A 12 year old (junior handler) jumping a dog and an adult will be two different results. Dogs do not perform for a new handler the way they will for their first handler. It is a confidence game for the team.
Dogs jump different with the chase and flyball techniques.

[Docker Mom]

Hi

I vote dog and handler, also.

marilyn