Emina & Tango, 3 years old, Croatia

“ I hope you are feeling well now ?”
Better but still not very olympic. 😀

“ For running the normal sequence, at which height should the straight jumps be? On the ground like before?”
Same as always… straight jumps on the ground, turns on the lowest height.

“ Forgot to ask you, do you think castration would help with some of these problems? What is your opinion?”
I don’t think so. I don’t know him personally, but the problems I see… I don’t think they have anything to do with hormones. 🙂

And I remembered I left out a part of answer about jumping grids – given that he generally likes grids and single jump exercises I think it might be worth a try, but with very basic stuff first, to not put additional pressure on him.

Yeah at Nina’s video he was really not in the mood. Mostly just a bit lazy I would say. So I think that you did good by correcting him when he left the sequence for no reason at all, just to go sniff something. Have you found the playroom you have access to? I would work on food throws/food pocket/food ball, so you can use food in a dynamic way as a reward, adding value to “plain food” because of all the action sorrounding it. He loves to play and it makes him really fast and furious, he is just not always in a relaxed enough/focused state of mind so I think a combination of food and playing could help him with that.
The home experiment went well! I would put it on the regular schedule now. There is some adjustments still… however I would be pretty happy if this is how we could get him to run always. So don’t always do it, sometimes still just a single jump and the grid, but sometimes also this.
And no, I did understand you correctly about jumping exercises – it is usually a different variations of grids. So given that he likes them you could try some – I just don’t think the solution is for him to think/understand more as he is overthinking it anyway. I think he just needs to feel relaxed enough and not think about jumping. So you could try some fluent grids (I am not an expert on those, Nina probably knows better) but only if they don’t require too much mental effort from him.

“ I would love it if he kept jumping like that, also at full small height. The thing is, it usually gets worse at full height. But it’s no rush, we’ll slowly get there. ?

One of my worries is that he will keep returning to the begining every time he hits a bar in the future.”

Yes, we really have to go slowly so he can build confidence without accidents. They are living creatures, so one can never be sure, but I think and hope we are on the right way.

“ So, during the break we have, at home I will do as you said. Should I raise the height?”
I would not raise bars in sequences (keep it as we had it now – low bar on turns/outs… and bar on the ground on straight aproaches). On a single jump at home and even the basic drill, you can try to make it higher (as little as possible) and follow the same guidelines as we had so far. If there is an emergency, write me an email 🙂

Hey! Loved his attitude at Željko’s training. He was focused and powerful and even the mistakes (which were yours :), you were really not helping him at all for that jump on his right and it is a tough one for a dog to just do on his own) did not bring him down too much. I feel like this kind of backchaining works great for him, as it gives him confidence to begin with. Yes I wouldn’t cheer him up toop much when he is aproaching the jump, because it can add pressure for him and we need him a relaxed and care free as possible.

The first grid training at home wasn’t best, his take offs were way off for some reason. Yes it is like Nina said – the distance between take off and bar and landing and bar are ideally the same. And on that video he was taking off way too early. I would probably bring the jumps a bit closer if I noticed that or switch to the drills Nina gave you. That last video was all good! 🙂

“ How gradually do I progress from here on? I see that he is more relaxed, but not completely. I will also try to improve his jumping technique even further.”
I would be using backchaining to build longer and longer sequences (over time). I would avoid situations that are the hardest for him (as you said tunnel + straight jump). In such situations I would leave the bar on teh ground. I would gradually add height in the jumping drills at home and as you see he not really struggling, raise bars in the sequence as well. If first the difficult one were on the ground and the easy one on let’s say 15, raise the easy ones to 20 and the difficult one with noodle on 5 (10). Always observe and if you see a negative trend make a training or two easier again.

“ At the end of this month we have CRO open. Do you think it is too early for him to run agy 1? Or should we work on him slowly and give him a few more months to improve? I didn’t run a full course for a month or so.”
Hard to say… depends on how it goes in this month and how he reacts to raising the bars. I wouldn’t hurry the process just for this comp0etition, but if he will be doing fine… than you could try it.

“ Regarding see-saw…we did it a few times with a helper. It was great. Is there a way to get him to do the see-saw the same way when there is no helper? Because then he slows down sooner and stops earlier. I can “cheat” him a few times before he notices there is no helper.”
I think he will eventually be confident enough to not make a difference. In the mean time I would continue to use the helper whenever possible. Ideally not in some pattern – like for example at home always helper, “outside” never. I would also have him jump at the end of it from the ground… not sure if you have done this game already with him?