Tuesday, May 6, 2008

World team tryout coverage & teaching collected jumping

The videos are all up and they're great. These are international style courses, not typcial AKC courses.....and boy do they look like fun to me. They're very tight, with a lot more turns in them, and if teaching a dog to jump collected was obvious before, you *really* see the value in it after watching these runs. And not just to jump collected, but to be able to accelarate out of those tight turns and wraps around jumps.

Now, Kittie never had a problem jumping collected and she generally runs pretty tight, as long as I create a nice line for her. Abby on the other hand jumps *huge*, which is great for wide open, novice level courses or the occasional straight line in AKC, but it's a problem a lot of the time. She runs so much extra yardage, and front crosses are tough, because she's always ending up behind me!

We've been practicing pretty much every day. Mainly, using Linda Mecklenburg's jumping program, and I think Abby's beginning to get it, but it seems so boring......Kittie *hated* doing this type of jumping work...so much that I almost never do it with her. It's really important to me to teach Abby correctly. She's still so young and has a lot of potential down the road....but I still really, really hate doing this type of training. I enjoy agility because it involves running with my dogs, running as fast as we can and I think that's what most dogs love most about agility. This kind of training feels like a boring drill to me, so I'm trying really hard to keep it fun for Miss Abby: lots of extra good treats. (I can't use her dinner, or her special most favorite toy ever, cow-cow, because she gets way over the top and she needs to think while doing this type of training) Regular, very short sessions and I get really excited when she does well. I'm normally very quiet with my dogs, just an occasional "yes" or click to mark something I like, with an even more rare "oops" to mark something I didn't like.

2 comments:

Margie said...

I've never heard that term before - collected jumping, what's it all about?

westoverpugs said...

They can jump either collected or extended. Extension is good for straight lines, collection is what you want when there is a turn of any kind. Collected jumping has more a rounded arc, they push from their rear legs and really round themselves over the jump and should be able to begin turning their bodies over the jump.

Do you subscribe to clean run? Linda Mecklenburg had a long series on this for a while....maybe two years ago.