This blog is about teaching a St. John’s Water Dog jumping for agility. Often we are asked, “What number of jumps is best to start with?” You can’t ever have enough solo jumps to practice agility. A good starting point is four jumps. This is the minimum quantity of jumps that we suggest.
Teaching Your St. John’s Water Dog to jump: Begin with Four
You can teach a St. John’s Water Dog many skills, drills, and exercises with four jumps. Four jumps will let you 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 St. John’s Water Dog jumping left and right. You can be out of the box and send your St. John’s Water Dog or you can handle from within the box. Your jumps can be setup in a lateral row, so that you could practice threadles and serpentines.
Teach the St. John’s Water Dog Eight Jumps
Take the next logical step and get eight jumps. Now you can setup two boxes with 1 starter jump. You’ve now multiplied your routines that you can try with your St. John’s Water Dog. Your jump grids can be of suggested size and quantity of jumps. You can even setup your jumps in a circle with the jump bars perpendicular to the circle or on the perimeter of the circle. This setup also allows you to work on a variety of skills.
Teach Your St. John’s Water Dog Double and Triple Jumps
The next consideration is a double jump and a triple jump. You can set two or 3 solo jumps together to make your expanded jump, however having double and triple jumps in your course work is especially helpful to work on. We’ve seen several St. John’s Water Dogs run a clean course and the final obstacle is a triple and the St. John’s Water Dog is not ready for it, and bang, down comes the bar.
Don’t forget to check out these other articles about St. John’s Water 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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