Agility and Driving While Tired

First, I’ll start out by saying I am and have been treated for sleep disturbances for several years.  I’ll also state that I have been sleepy behind the wheel AND as soon as I know it, I pull over and take a nap.  I have actually called in sick on the way to work because I was falling asleep at lights.  Before treatment, I was so bad that on several occasions fell asleep while waiting for students to give answers at the board.  So I know where I speak, and I do take care of the issue.

There is nothing more important than arriving at your destination alive.  On Monday morning, an agility exhibitor killed two of her dogs and injured three others.  At least she only killed her dogs, and didn’t kill the driver of the 18-wheeler she hit.  She’s not the only exhibitor who has ended up in the hospital because he or she kept driving when they shouldn’t. 

You CAN sleep in your car, I have. 

You CAN pull over and get a hotel room, and sleep for a few hours.   I have.

If getting to an appointment is too important, skip that last class or two.  I have.

Oh, gee, I did that on Friday.  I’d been at a trial since 7:30 am, and they were building my last class at 4:30 pm, but I knew if I stayed through the whole class to run, I wouldn’t have been able to get home. 

I’ve spent the last 12 hours or so very upset, and get even more upset when I learned the cause.

Grow up, get some sleep, and stay out of the car when you are tired.  You can seriously kill someone else.  Oh, back in the day when I was doing the K9 dog thing, a couple of my police friends were almost killed by a sleepy driver.

Some other things you can do to help the rest of us:

Get and use Taggs http://www.pettracker.com/ so we can find your dog.  Keep them charged (I have a spare charger that I take with me to trials and recharge them when I’m running the dogs).

Keep your dogs in crates when you are traveling.  I don’t know about this weeks incident, but we had one several years ago in Texas where we were frantically looking for a dog for 2 weeks who wasn’t crated at the time of the accident.