Naturally Jumping Method – Week 5

Week 5 is the first week with oxers. An oxer is as wide as it is tall – in Auggie’s case, since we are still using 10 inch jump heights, this means I have two 10 inch jumps that span 10 inches. The book doesn’t tell you where to put the first oxer, so I guessed and put it as the third jump. All of the jumps are still spaced 90 inches apart; in this instance, jump 2 is 90 inches to the first bar for jump 3, there’s the 10 inch spacing between jump 3’s bars, and then from the second bar of jump 3 to jump 4 it’s another 90 inches. For the oxer stage of the program, that 90 inch spacing will stay constant.

It’s a bit hard for him to nagivate that oxer at first. I started putting our broad jump/spread jump word to it (“big jump”) after the first crash into it and he did better after that. This might be cheating because it requires me to be there cueing him to adjust for a larger jump, so he’s not really learning to look at the jump and just adjust on his own. But it makes sense for agility to me – competitors I know all use a word like “big jump” or “go big” for spread jumps, doubles, and triples to cue the dog “There’s a longer than usual jump coming up – adjust!”
During the second day, he crashes into the oxer the first time, but on jumps 2-6 he doesn’t make the same mistake again.

I don’t have day 3 videos because I screwed up with the camera. As the video says, the day went pretty much the same as the other two videos here, though.