This post is about how to teach the Bernese Mountain Dog to jump for agility. We are often asked, “How many jumps is best to start with?” You can’t ever have too many solo jumps to teach agility. A good starting point is 4 jumps. This is the fewest quantity of jumps suggested.
Teaching the Bernese Mountain Dog jumping: Start with 4
You can teach the Bernese Mountain Dog a number of skills, drills, and exercises with 4 jumps. Four jumps will allow you to develop on a short jump chute or jump grid. You can practice on a “box” with your jumps and work on 270 degree jumps, collection, and handling. You can teach your Bernese Mountain Dog jumping right and left. You could be outside the box and send your Bernese Mountain Dog or you can handle from the inside of the box. Your jumps could be staged in a horizontal row, so you could practice threadles and serpentines.
Teach the Bernese Mountain Dog Eight Jumps
Go to the next logical step and get 8 jumps. Now you can setup two boxes with one starter jump. Now you’ve increased your exercises that you can try with your Bernese Mountain Dog. Your jump grids can be of recommended size and number of jumps. You can also position the jumps in a circle with the jump bars normal to the circle or on the perimeter of the circle. This pattern also enables you to develop a variety of drills.
Teach a Bernese Mountain Dog Double and Triple Jumps
Your next step is a double jump and a triple jump. You could position 2 or 3 solo jumps together to make your expanded jump, but having double and triple jumps in your course work is especially helpful to practice. We’ve seen many Bernese Mountain Dogs run a clean course and the last obstacle is a triple and the Bernese Mountain Dog is not ready for it, and bang, down goes the bar.
Don’t forget to check out these other articles about Bernese Mountain Dogs.Was this post helpful? If so, please take a minute to Tweet and Share below on Facebook. I would also love to know your thoughts so leave me a comment 🙂
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