Agility Foundations Home work suggestions

For those of you doing the weekday foundation classes here is the recap for homework for week 1. Don’t worry if you are starting up later, you can reference this for later, or have some fun playing with it now and when we meet for class we can expand on it.

Jumping:

Remember comfort and confidence matters most at first so keep bars low as you introduce them to the idea of going over the bar. General guideline: if you have a puppy under a year, an older dog or any dog that might have a physical difficulty with jumping, keep the bar of the jump below your dog’s elbow, this way they can step over it without having to jump. If you have a dog that you want to compete with that is grown, work to getting the bar higher than elbow height as quickly as you can to get them hopping and not walking over the bar. You don’t have to immediately go to full height, just get a nice hop going. Check out the various agility organizations in your area to find out what your dog’s ultimate competition jump height will be so you know what you are working towards. To give you an idea: all of my border collies have had to jump 20” jumps and my Goldens 24”…

Jumping Drills to practice:

Call over: leave dog sitting on one side of jump, call them over the jump to you. (be sure when you set them up in front of the jump that they are further away than the jump is high- so if my jump is at 16”my dog would at absolute minimum would need to be 16” back away from the jump to set their feet and jump and clear the bar.)

Add angles: Set your dog at an angle to the jump, when you call, go to the mirror angle so the dog is actually still jumping straight to you, but they are seeing the jump at an angle.

Increasing height: Once your dog can clear the jump without knocking it at all over all the possible angles then work on increasing their height. Stop if you find your dog refusing the jump at the new height, and go back to the last successful jump and stay there until we meet next. remember as your increase height you need to move them further away from the jump to give them take off space and you need to move further back to give them landing space. Think of the jump as the middle of their air trajectory and imagine an arc that goes exactly that distance before and after the jump as where they need to take off and land. So for a 20” jump my dog would ideally take off at least 20” before it and land 20” after it to create that rounded arc. ONLY increase height if jumping on a safe surface! Grass, mats, dirt, etc. It is ok to jump low heights on sketchy surfaces but once they need to actually jump they need traction to push off and cushion to land.

Go round:

Using a cone, chair, or anything you can find that helps your dog move out away from you to go around. Once they have it, add your low jump bar. Toss the treats as they jump to help shape the bend over the bar so they are jumping curving slightly towards you. If they are uncertain or seem worried be sure to toss the treats decently away from the jump so they have a lot of landing room and return to the jump with more momentum.

Target Training:

Be sure to brush up your dog’s target touching skills!

Start Line Releases:

Practice that stay and release to play or tossed treats.

Play!

Work those play behaviors! Remember in an ideal world we have a dog that values food and toys equally for agility. They will always come with one stronger than the other. Keep working on both! Toss food containers, throw treats, play catch with treats. Revisit some of the Get Engaged Materials if you need some more help!