Clean Run - July 2020 - 33

Teaching Your Dog to Jump

Shaping One Jump

Once you have a dog that is over a
year old (!) and is fully aware of and in
control of his feet, the next thing to do
is to teach him to jump.

I start dogs jumping by shaping. I
usually pick a small area or put some
fencing up to reduce the options for
the dog being trained, taking away the
opportunities to do anything other
than jump. The bar is set no higher
than the dog's hock height.

Note: If you have a trained dog that
still struggles with jumping, the exercises that I outline here will also be
beneficial.

I stand so that I am straddling the
jump. I have five treats in each hand
(plus my clicker), and I just wait to see
what happens, being careful to look

where I want the dog to be (jumping)
rather than staring at him. Dogs glean
a lot of information from where we are
looking. I find it easy to record-keep
in sets of ten rewards, as all you have
to do is count the incorrect responses.
Note: If I have a shy or uninterested
dog, I'll lure the jump to begin, showing
them the food in my hand on the opposite side of the jump to see if that will
prompt them to jump. I'll generally lure
three times and then see what I've got.

Shady is clearly jumping from his back to his front and being very careful with his feet. He has a lovely jump shape here.

Dexi is being very careful with his back feet.

The intent of the shaping is to produce
a dog that jumps cleanly from his front
feet to his back feet, with the rear being
used to propel the dog over the jump.
The flat trajectory, where the dog is
heavily on the forehand, is easy to teach,
but jumping with good form is more
difficult, and that's why I teach it first.
It's vital to remember that whatever
you click, the placement of your reward is crucial. Make sure to reward
close into the base of the jump, with
the aim of keeping the dog's head low
to produce a collected jumping effort.
July 20 | Clean Run

Here Dexi banks the jump, touching it with his front paws,
but I'm not worried about it. I just won't reward this attempt.

If the dog overshoots and lands way
past the jump in the beginning, continue to reward as long as they don't
touch the bar. Most dogs will shorten
their jump and collect when they realize where the reward placement is.
If they continue to throw themselves
across the jump, consider limiting the
space in which they land.
For some dogs, speed is more rewarding
than almost anything else, but asking
them to jump toward a fence or a wall,
or the side of a tunnel, will often produce what we're looking for. Be careful!

We don't want any accidents, as usual,
the rule is little by little. Allow two body
lengths to begin with, and once you have
what you're looking for, move back away
from the blocking object as quickly as
possible-we don't want to teach good
jumping form only when next to a wall!
If you're retraining a dog, people often ask how long it will take? The answer is that habits are formed through
repetition. How long has the dog been
jumping? Retraining is entirely possible; you simply need to invest a comparable amount of time.
33

Clean Run - July 2020

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