Jumping

Today Sarah and I taught two mini seminars- it gave our students an opportunity to train some pretty specific things. It went really well and Boone even got to play in the afternoon a bit.

This sessions focus was on jumping- we talked about everything from the mechanics of jumping, to how to modify your dogs current jumping style. We did some jump grids for collection, extension, and turning. We also talked about how to teach the dog to always take the jump. Sarah and I had learned lots of great things from Terry Simons this past year and we put it to good use for our students. We worked on making jumps more valuable too as we tend to under reward for jumping. It is pretty obvious when dogs will go out of thier way to do a contact obstacle instead of the jump in front of them. By the end of the session all of the dogs were driving towards the jumps with speed and enthusiasm. I think that we had some good pointers for everyone, and that they all had a good time.

Boone had lots of fun and I find myself really enjoying the training time with him. He was very eager and wasn't at all stressed by seeing new things (the bend grid can look a little intimidating) Overall he did great and I think I will make a point of doing that sort of thing with him more often. It was a great way to keep his confidence up and he is still learning things.

He's so cute. He has always liked to jump and he has a nice natural style of jumping so he had fun with the grids.

I remember when I took a jump clinic with Kim Collins. Wicca was exhausted and it was really, really difficult for her. She is not a good jumper at all and had to work very hard to do the exercises properly. She doesn't have much natural ability :o)

I didn't ever really "teach" Wicca how to jump- and just lured her over the jump a few times- and presto! she can jump. Too bad that doesn't really work! I won't be making that same mistake with Pixel. Jump training has really evolved these last few years and I think the it is a pretty valuable thing to teach properly right from the start!