Directed Jumping

Here is a video of where Rugby is at right now. This is the full 40ft, with my exaggerated signal. I don't think he will need that for very long. He has started to anticipate a little bit, so I have been (from 40ft) dropping him, then sitting him again, THEN sending him for a jump. This is without the go outs still since we have only gotten those up to 20ft still.

Here is a quick video of him doing one of each. We only did it in the one directions since I was videoing myself and couldn't decide which way would come out better. I still managed to cut myself out when we set up for the bar jump though. Figures! :p



I changed the way we are working go outs slightly the other day. I was, if he passed a target stick, sitting him then calling him back and just before he got to the target giving him a fetch command to help him find it (which he does) and then sending again. The problem with this is that he has become tooo concerned about finding the stick, and that isn't really the purpose of this retrieve. I decided I don't want him to ever find a target between him and me since that defeats the purpose of getting him to run away from me in search of the stick. Two days ago we did them and I switch the correction to something similar to the glove "correction" (where I stop him, move closer, and send again).

Sooo, if he goes off track, I am still sitting him but on my way out I am picking up any missed targets, walking him back a bit and putting him on the same, correct track and and sending him again. If there isn't a target further than him, then I will sneakily put one out there. I decided to do this the other day when he was going out, decided he went too far (so in his mind he must have missed it) and turned back looking for the target. This is when I realized that he really wasn't getting the point of the exercise, and was just going to where it had been before to look for it. I was just talking with Margot about how likely Rugby is to become patterned trained, and that is what I had succeeded in doing!

Yesterday we did three sets of three starting at 20ft, and he got every-single-one perfectly. I took video of him the other day before the switch but I want to take another one and compare the two of them before I decide if we should continue with what I have been doing.