Thursday, May 6, 2010

I can be agility dog plz?

(before any of my instructors get mad at me ... he does this by himself! The jump is up for practicing 2X2s with Piper, and Dexter likes to take it randomly. I swear to doG I am not jumping my 8 month old puppy regularly!!)
cinco-1

9 comments:

  1. Yah, you just happened to be standing there with your camera at your face when he took the jump. :-) It does look pretty high for him. Actually, he looks like he is about to hop over with just his hind feet. Love his expression. Since the point of Piper's training is the 2x2s, wouldn't a low jump work just as well?

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  2. Srsly? It's a 16" jump, it's not going to kill him if he periodically feels like flying over it when he's running around the yard :) I can tell when he's going to jump as he eyeballs it first, does a circle and comes in for the leap - and yeah, I happened to be waiting for him to do it with my telephoto from the porch. And no, all Piper's jumps are always 16" because I want her to find her stride for her entries in a "real world" situation.

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  3. Is he barking in joy and excitement as he sails over that jump? Smarty-pants over-achiever. Well, at least he's not scared of poles like he is of sheep!

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  4. The "no jumping" rule means no requested/required jumping. It's absurd to think an 8 month old healthy Border Collie is going to choose not to jump things on his own.

    Looks like nice jumping style -- maybe you won't have to spend a lot of time teaching him how to do it right.

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  5. Oh I DO jump him - we do One Jump exercises. At 16" and only once or twice a week. He jumps long a bit and doesn't pay so much attention to where he's going, but we do no serious training so it doesn't really matter at this point. I'm also training his 2o2o and we've started 2X2s. He's getting the benefit of foundation work that none of my other dogs ever had. I hope he turns out good!

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  6. Looks like nice form! Maybe you got lucky and got a natural jumper :)

    Why start his 2x2 weaves so young? The process goes so quickly with a toy motivated dog that you can go start to finish in less than a month, two if you're lazy and don't train every day. Nikki did 12 poles in 7 days - videos of her progress with FedX are posted on youtube.

    The beauty of the method isn't just great entries, it's how fast you progress through the various stages.

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  7. Why not? It's fun to teach him something new, like to drive forward, and I am in no rush to teach him perfect poles in a week or a month. As I've already pointed out, no bending, no weaving, just two poles dead on. The poles are out there already for daily practice with Piper, so sometimes Wootie and Dexter practice them too. Or rather, Wootie rolls, high fives and spins through them, those being his go-to behaviours for something he doesn't understand ;-)

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  8. I know nothing about collies and agility, apart from the fact that their female owners should always wear sports bras...!

    However, I do think this photograph would make for a cracking good caption competition.

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  9. I think there is more danger from racing around on the furniture than doing a few jumps every now and then. Boss went from the arm of the love seat, to the arm of a rocking recliner, jumped the dog laying in it to the next arm and off she went. To me that's way more crazy then taking some agility jumps:) Don't worry, we don't encourage that, but we do do a lot of "Sheesh! Did you see that!!".

    I did wide open channels with Beep when he was a young. This is back in the olden days before 2x2, which was four years ago:) He knew to drive through them when it came time to actually training them.

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