Silvia Trkman’s on-line class has been on a two-week break so I decided to give Lil and Jake a break from training cip & cap. On Saturday, I attended a workshop with Terri Cesarek in CT. Lil surprised me with some great Loops during sequences and looping left used to be her more challenging side. Her Wraps were pretty good… she landed facing the right direction but didn’t always take a nice set-up step. I had asked Terri to watch Lil’s jumping since she has worked with three other Australian Terriers on a regular basis. She wasn’t sure what to make of it but said another fast AT also launches occasionally over straight jumps.
For almost two months now, I have been video taping every training session as part of Silvia’s class. After watching slo-mo videos numerous times, I noticed something surprising… that Lil appears to have a “preferred landing spot” and will land at about the same distance from a jump, regardless of her take-off spot. Jake also does this.
This awareness explained something I’ve been feeling lately when running Lil…. that she is stalling out, or losing forward momentum, when jumping in extension, which baffled me because Lil used to float over jumps so effortlessly. But as her speed increased and her stride length grew over the past year, her jumping changed. Lil rarely knocks a bar in competition, but I can see that jumping straight lines of jumps is no longer easy for her and I don’t want her to lose confidence when running agility so I am committed to doing whatever I can to help her find a way to run fast and jump in extension in a way that is easy and natural for her.
The first thing everyone thinks in terms of jumping issues is that they are caused by a vision or depth perception issue. I don’t think this is the case with Lil because she is able to hit a small mat while running full speed across my yard and the mat happens to be about the same color as grass. She is also in very good physical condition, so I don’t think the changes in her jumping are due to an injury or weakness.
I have spent a lot of time thinking about and watching videos of Lil, Jake and other Australian Terriers jumping and I believe there is a structural component to why ATs take off earlier than the norm when running fast. I recently placed a mat (used as a foot target) closer to the jump than Lil’s preferred take-off spot, and when Lil approached the mat from a distance with speed, she needed to use her neck to lift up her front end in order to clear the bar. I think the longer backs of ATs make it difficult for them to get their rear feet deep enough under their bodies to shift forward momentum to upward momentum to clear a bar if their take-off spot is too close to the jump. So it makes sense to me that when an AT is running with fully extended strides, he/she needs to take off earlier than the norm in order to jump with ease. ps– I am not referring to dramatic, early launches, but rather to an earlier than typical take-off spot. I also think because ATs have such powerful rear legs, it is fairly easy for them to launch from ridiculous distances and still clear bars… not that I want my dogs doing this but they both do it occasionally when running fast… especially if I get too far ahead.
My personal (non-professional) assessment is that Lil has developed a preferred landing spot that is closer than ideal, and closer than it used to be. She has always been an extremely precise dog and has great body awareness (lots of freestyle and advanced tricks etc) so I am fairly certain that she knows exactly where her feet and body are in relation to a jump.
This week I experimented with using a mat on the landing side of a jump to see if it will modify Lil’s preferred landing spot. Since she knows how to foot target a mat, I placed the mat a little further than her preferred landing spot and she extended her trajectory to land on the mat and her jumping looked natural. I am hopeful that with enough repetitions, Lil will remember how much easier it is to land a little further from jumps so she can keep her forward momentum strong. I’ll also be curious to see if encouraging a deeper landing spot changes Lil’s take-off spot.
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