teaching proper jumping technique?

[elegy]

luce can get everything up and out of the way when she wishes



freaking dog can clear the babygate to the room with the litterboxes from a seated position, leap onto counters, onto the washing machine at my old house....

mushroom is not quite so ambitious....

i'll have to try setting up some stuff that looks more solid and see if that makes any different. the jump bars i have are very very light and the jump cups pretty shallow so they do fall easily, but not *that* easily.

i wonder if working them through a "ladder" would help at all? i keep thinking of cavaletti like you use with horses.

[DanL]

Here's how I set it up for Gunnar to learn:



The pieces on the ground and lower kept him from trying to scurry underneath while he was learning.

[elegy]

so just by dumb luck, the three back issues of clean run magazines that i ordered arrived today, and one has an awesome article on foundation jumping training!

the author suggests starting with the dog in a sit at the base of the jump, you sitting next to the jump with a clicker, and rewarding the dog with a food treat on the ground near the base of the jump for a correct jump. the seated position helps the dog to jump correctly UP and from the hind end, the food treat given very low helps the dog to lower their head coming over the jump and to get that correct arch.

awesome awesome awesome!

i took some yummies and we went out and worked for a little bit on this and i can see that it's going to help a ton. it's just going to take regular drilling for a little while to start to build muscle memory for both dogs so that they'll jump correctly out of habit.

yay!

[Doberluv]

rewarding the dog with a food treat on the ground near the base of the jump for a correct jump

How does that work? You mean rewarding the dog before it jumps? Or is the dog suppose to stop on the other side of the jump in order to get it's treat? I don't get it. I wouldn't think the dog should get in the habit of pausing after the jump (on account of looking for a treat) because he needs to keep on racing to the next thing. Sounds like some good places to reward....as in when the dog's hind quarters are doing the engaging, but I don't get how you reward at the right time.

Oh...edited: I guess that means when you're first teaching the jump before you're getting the dog to fly over several of them....just one jump, reward and sit and do it again. (?)

[elegy]

at the base of the jump on the landing side.

the point is teaching the dog to jump properly, not to be racing at all. this lady advocates working a single jump. period. until the dog has a solid foundation. never running by, never calling the dog across a jump and to you, never encouraging a dog to run, because all of those things naturally encourage a dog to stretch out and jump flat or inverted instead of correctly up and over with a nice arc.

it's not teaching the dog to sequence several jumps in a row. that comes later.

it's the feb 2006 issue of clean run magazine if you're interested- there's a whole series on jumping starting with the january 2006 issue.

[Doberluv]

Sounds awesome. I was never taught that way so Lyric just learned to jump and jump and jump. LOL. He does it beautifully though but he's a big, strong dog. I might like that magazine though...sounds like some really helpful hints. Thanks! Good luck. I bet that will really help.

[elegy]

i have little strong dogs they just jump out instead of up.

[Doberluv]

Oh yeah...I can see the muscles on her in that picture. It's really beautiful. What Lyric does wrong sometimes is when he's approaching the jump, gets "off stride" and doesn't compensate very well. He occassionally is too far from the jump and tries it and lands on top of it. LOL. If he gets too near, he usually can still do it. He can take a high jump from a stand still.... (not like my horse...if he got off stride....too far or too near) we were in trouble...a rough jump if too close...not a real comfy ride. LOL. But he finally learned to fix it at the approach by taking an extra small stride somewhere before the take off.