I'm probably going to the bad place, but I would do pretty much anything to get Gusto in the height class I want. I've had a few Names tell me "Oh, I could get him in 16", and I've been tempted to say "then you please go hold him for the judge".
We'll see. He's so hard to measure, but he's pretty close to the cut off. I'm hoping he'll squeeze under, and you can bet I'm asking around to see which judges I need to avoid (I'm not looking for someone to lie, but I want to stay away from the ones who lose their patience quickly rather than giving the dog time to settle). The world will not end if I have another performance dog. But I really don't want to run my 16.25" dog at 22".
I'm still up in the air about running my youngest dog in USDAA. He may or may not measure into the 16" class. I entered him in one USDAA trial, in performance, where he was measured by the first judge at 16.25", and by the
CMJ at 16". The CMJ really took his time to do it right. The dog then got his 2 measurements for his permanent AKC card, both at 16". But to be fair, in AKC, he's smack in the middle of the height class, so neither judge was making a huge effort out of it.
I truly believe, in my heart of hearts, that he measures 16". But I know that it won't take much for him to measure over, and that the Staffords are hard to get an accurate measurement on because of the muscling over the shoulders.
But yes, I'm not jumping my 16", 38 pound dog at 22". That is an unfair effort to ask. I also won't run him in USDAA performance, where his competition will all be significantly taller and lighter than him. We can't be competitive there, and he's a dog who can be competitive. We'll stick to AKC, where he jumps a fair 16"; and I hope to someday take him to World Team Tryouts as I did with his dam. There, he'd jump 18", which is also a fair height for him.
AKC height cutoffs are fair. It does make it a little harder for dogs at the bottom of the height vs at the top, but that's always going to be the case. That is showcased a little in the 16" class, where I am. The smaller BCs in that class tend to measure 17-18", and weigh maybe 25 pounds. Most of the dogs in the 16" class have a more square body type that when shorter, isn't competitive against the lanky body type of the BCs.
However, whatever your dog's height, the most it will have to jump over it's shoulder height is 10%. So no dog is asked for extreme effort, regardless of size.
USDAA heights are not so fair. A dog just over 12", asked to jump 16", is jumping 33% over it's shoulder. A dog just over 16", asked to jump 22", is jumping
37% over it's shoulder. A dog just over 21", jumping 26", is jumping 24% over it's shoulder. So, the little dogs are potentially being asked for a much greater effort than the taller dogs. And the BCs, which dominate those taller classes, are much better suited to the extreme jumping than most smaller dogs.
Of course, if your dog slots nicely into a jump height, it doesn't matter so much. If my Pirate manages to measure into 16" for USDAA, I'll probably go back to just thinking the USDAA heights are a bit stupid, but not concern myself about it.