lucyandmeg Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 Meg, my small collie is reasonable fast considering her small stature (18in at the shoulder) and has to jump full height at KC. She has won out of elementary and has a few places in kc and uka to her name. Shes being doing agility for 3 years. (as have i, shes the first dog i've trained - what a baptism of fire!) Anyway despite being perfectly capable of clear rounds she seems to have got lazy when jumping and tends to knock jumps over. THeres no particular pattern, although it is almost guarenteed that if you tell her to turn left or right after a jump she will have dropped her back feet and knocked the pole over. I've been told i need to give the command earlier, but at her spped i'm just not on the ball enough. Frustratingly we can do all sorts of tight training patterns without a problem. I go to 3 different clubs and she tends to knock loads of poles over in 2 (One outside on grass and another in a woodchip riding school), yet at another she rarely ever knocks a pole(grass again.) Also in competition, one day she may manage clears the other not. I'm not sure how i can teach her to pick her back feet up. She will even knock mini height jumps over sometimes. I thought about getting her back checked, but she seems ok in every other way and as she can manage it at one club and not the other it makes me think its not physical. (shes 5). Any ideas? Shes got good weaves and contacts now, so is pretty much on route for clears if she doesn't keep dropping poles, but its so frustrating! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crazyspaniels Posted June 21, 2007 Report Share Posted June 21, 2007 what about increasing the height she jumps in training to get her jumping higher and not skimming so close to the top pole? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paula Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 My instructor has a dog that is a bit of a demolition dog so she does lots of slow grid work with him to encourage him to pick his feet up and also started giving him a command to pick his feet up when turning tightly. If you have jumps at home or your clubs are accommadating get them to do a line of jumps with just a bounce between and try and do more box work doing pull throughs all the way round and exaggerate your body language so you really pick her up over the jumps (hope that makes sense) I would also be tempted to get her back looked at anyway. Working on the chippings could be affecting her but is the grass different lengths at the other clubs ie is one cut shorter than the other. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirisox Posted June 22, 2007 Report Share Posted June 22, 2007 Definitely grids as suggested by Paula, 3 jumps start at about 4 paces apart and move in gradually, only do a few times each session - we have had fantastic results with all dogs who have been introduced to grids Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leonak Posted June 24, 2007 Report Share Posted June 24, 2007 my gwp started doing that last year. he had to retire a couple of months after because it turned out he has arthritus in his spine and compression on his sciatic nerve. not saying your dog is neccesarily that bad but worth getting her back checked for definite. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirisox Posted June 24, 2007 Report Share Posted June 24, 2007 Just as a testimony for the grid work, my friends dog who was a terrible pole knocker has been using grids for about 5 weeks now and this weekend won grade 6 agility and came 3rd in 6/7 agility Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanishPastry Posted June 24, 2007 Report Share Posted June 24, 2007 what is grids? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paula Posted June 25, 2007 Report Share Posted June 25, 2007 Basically it's something stolen from the horse world where you work on lots of slow jumping over various heights with differing distances between the jumps so the dog gets used to shortening/lengthening it's stride which hopefully then encourages him/her to pick his feet up too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanishPastry Posted June 25, 2007 Report Share Posted June 25, 2007 thanks for that Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirisox Posted June 25, 2007 Report Share Posted June 25, 2007 Anne, I've just done a quck vid for you of our dogs doing some basic grid work VID Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanishPastry Posted June 25, 2007 Report Share Posted June 25, 2007 oooh looking good! thanks for that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leonak Posted June 27, 2007 Report Share Posted June 27, 2007 one thing tho, if you do grids where the dogs bounce (some people call it pounce) ie they dont take a full stride between jumps, you mustnt do too much of it because its very hard work for them. whenever we do it in training we might do that kind of thing 3 or 4 times and thats it. if you have full strides between it wouldnt be such hard work. actually...how do you walk the distance for a dog? bit easyer with horses.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Paula Posted June 27, 2007 Report Share Posted June 27, 2007 I find four strides for me is a stride and 2 big strides a bounce (for large dogs) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirisox Posted June 27, 2007 Report Share Posted June 27, 2007 3 jumps start at about 4 paces apart and move in gradually, only do a few times each session Leonak as I mentioned earlier Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leonak Posted June 27, 2007 Report Share Posted June 27, 2007 well..thats all well and good but whats a stride or a pace? with horses i used to have small, med and big strides depending on whether it was a pony, horse or massive horse jumping.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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