Gillian Schuler

I was going to "jump" Howard Gaines thread about pre-agility but thought better of it.

I always taught my dogs to jump over jumps of about 50 - 60 cm when they were younger, moving up to 1 m as soon they were physically well developed. Definitely no retrieving over the jumps at this stage. My idea was to have them follow the command and not just leap after the dumbell.

The other night we had a discussion with a club member who is an international performance judge and very experienced. He teaches the dog to jump over the 1 metre jump first, also without retrieving, and, when the retrieving is 100%, he makes him retrieve over 50-60 cm jumps, stepping it up to 1 m.

This way he says, the dog will never "scrape" the jump thereby eliminating all those clever devices to make sure he doesn't. We have two kangaroos who jump higher than they have to anyway so I'm wondering what others think.

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Jerk is a noun not a verb in dog sport

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