Clean Run - January 2018 - 7

Distance Jump Training
for Any Dog, Part1
By Stacy Winkler, photos by Frank Barnhart
© DIANNE McCORMICK

Whenever I give seminars the topic
of clingy dogs always comes up. I
hear laments such as "My dog won't
work away from me, he's definitely
a Velcro dog" or "My dog is always
staring at me. He won't take his
eyes off me. He looks back over every jump and won't go on!" At which
point I pull out my standard reply,
"There is no such thing as a Velcro
dog. There are simply dogs that
haven't been taught to work at
a distance."
Absolutely any dog can be taught
to work at away from his handler! It
doesn't matter how focused the dog
is on you or how much he stares at
you over every obstacle. You can
overcome that with clear, methodical, well-rewarded behaviors.
Training always needs to be balanced. I want my dog to be extremely focused on me, stellar at
tight sequences and with me handling practically on top of him, but to
balance that he needs to be equally
confident working at a distance,
driving his lines and running boldly
forward without checking in.
The great thing about this jump
training is that it can be used with
January 18 | Clean Run

any handling system and with any
dog. Once you create basic understanding for the drills, you can
then expand on it to include specific
skills for your personal handling
preferences. And, although this is
the method I use to train my young
dogs, it can be used for older dogs
or for retraining if you want more
flexibility in your handling. Another
great aspect of this jump training is
that if you have an older dog that
is sticky, once you are progressing
on Drill 2 you should immediately
notice that your dog will more easily move away from you. Make sure
you keep that well rewarded!

Training "Musts"
To teach these skills there are a
couple of "musts:"
* You need to be able to reward
your dog at a distance; therefore,
your dog must be able to go after
some sort of thrown reinforcer.
My preference is a tug toy that
you can throw. I love the Holee Roller as is sits a bit off the
ground and also can be used
as a tug toy, but any tug will do
that is easy to throw. If your dog
doesn't tug, any sort of ball will

work as will any food-motivating
toy you can throw such as Clean
Run's Lotus Ball.
* Now that we have discussed the
need for a toy you can throw,
the second critical requirement
is that your dog must want that
toy-and not just want it, but really, really, really, really want it!
The more value your dog has
for his reinforcer, the easier he
will be to train. If your dog has a
reinforcer of very high value then
he will put forth a lot of effort to
earn that reinforcer. For example,
if that reinforcer is a 9 or 10 on a
scale of 1-10, then you will probably get this work completed very
quickly because your dog will try
very hard to get you to throw that
toy. If your reinforcer is in the 4 to
6 range then you are dealing with
a dog that will put forth a bit of
effort, but will probably get bored
easily and will not go after his reward with much enthusiasm. Any
lower than that and it will take a
very long time to make any headway at all.
If your reinforcer is less than a 7 in
value, I would work on increasing
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Clean Run - January 2018