Why 4 To 8 Dog Agility Jumps Are Ideal
So how many jumps should you start with? Well, when practicing agility you can never have too many single jumps. But we do not recommend less than four jumps as a beginning point for good agility training.
You can teach a variety of skills, drills, and exercises with four jumps. Four jumps will allow you to work on a short jump chute or jump grid. You can setup a “box” with your jumps and practice handling, collection, and 270 degree jumps.
It is possible to teach you dog to jump right and left. You can stand outside the box and send your dog; or handle from inside the box. You can practice serpentines and treadles by setting up the jumps in a horizontal line.
Go the next step and get eight jumps. Now you can setup two boxes with one introductory jump. You’ve now multiplied your drills that you can practice with your dog. Your jump grids can be of recommended size and quantity of jumps.
Another option is to setup the jumps in circles with jump bars at a 90 degree angle to the circle or on the bounds of the circle. With this pattern you can train a lot of various skills.
Now you can think about double and triple jumps. You can choose to setup two or even three single jumps to make your extended jump, but the real value of practice comes when doubling or tripling the jumps. You see it every time; the dog runs a clean course until the last triple jump obstacle, and then the dog is not ready for it. The result: the bar comes down.
If you really want to be ahead of the pack, you should have two sets up eight jumps. Because you can keep the jump grip at all times, it is the ultimate in training. The jumps can be separated from the course work. And when you then includes your double and triple jumps, it is possible the practice all the jumping drills and skills to get the “Qs”.
Martin Elmer is the editor of Hundefan – a website about tilbehoer til hunde. Here you can also read about hundemadras.
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