Jumping

I registered for Linda Mecklenburg's online jumping skills course, as a working participant. It starts February 3. I'm looking forward to going through DJS more deeply and getting feedback on each step--plus some revised information/exercises Linda has created since the book was released in 2005. There are auditing and observing spots open, but I wanted to register Revel & myself as a working team since he is just beginning his agility career.

This morning I played around with some of the bending work found in the latest Clean Run with both dogs. Specifically, I used a single jump near a wall to restrict landing space, with the dogs parallel to the bar for take-off. It fascinated me to see how they responded. I worked Revel first, after a warm-up of asking him to offer jumps back and forth for kibble on the floor with the bar at 18" and then up to 24" (first step in DJS). I set the bar about 30 inches from the wall at a height of 18" to start the bending exercise. We worked right to left, and he did pretty well. He definitely thought about what kind of effort was needed, although he definitely could be bending more. He prefers to shape the approach a little bit. I thought he gave me some really good efforts for the very first attempt.

We then tried the other direction. This was really interesting. Without realizing it, I had started with his good direction first! When we worked on bending to the right, he wanted to jump straight over the bar! It made me chuckle. I moved the jump away from the wall a little bit, and then he was able to bend over the bar, althought he would still occasionally offer the easier jumping effort of jumping straight ahead. We have lots of room for improvement, but I was very happy with the first attempt. Revel was very willing; he did not slam into the wall, he did not give up, and I think he has an idea of what is needed. Good boy.

Emma was getting restless upstairs (jealousy), so I finally let her come down to try the same exercise. At five years old, Emma has lots of jumping experience. She's been through DJS (although I have not done grid work with her--I may play around with some simple exercises just for fun this winter). She did a great job with the exercise for her physique (she is not as long as Revel and doesn't have as much flexibility through the spine). She is better bending to the right than to the left--the opposite of Revel. (I hope I can remember who does what!) She understood the effort immediately, and I saw improvement in her form as I raised the bar. I was very pleased with her. I don't ask for much collection when I run Emma, as she turns tightly anyway and true collection slows her down too much...but asking for different kinds of jumping efforts builds confidence. I've been working her with set ups requiring extension and creating lots of drive; while that's mainly what she needs, she's physically very talented and I like to revisit technical jumping skills from time to time.