First Jump Grids

Monster did his first jump grids today. Monster has previously been 100% successful when I had him do Susan Salo's jump grids until today. Today, he added strides in between jumps that should have only had a bounce. 

Our Session:
We started with the set point grid. The set point grid is the beginning of jump grid training. It teaches/shows/reminds the dog where the ideal takeoff point is. It is a staple. We started there with a few reps as a reminder. I am sharing a few photos with no additional information on how to train these grids. I want to share the importance of jump grids but I also want to respect Susan and her hard work. This book is awesome! No offense to Susan but her DVD's can be pretty dry and boring to watch. They are definitely informative but not the most exciting to watch. This book has EVERYTHING you could want to know about jump grids and dogs! I am only sharing grids that I have seen in multiple areas of the internet.

Set Point Grid (there are several variations- please don't try this without reading or watching)

The next grid we worked on was the ladder grid. The general idea with this grid is to have 5 jumps spaced equally (spacing is according to size of the dog) apart and to start the dog fairly close to the first jump so not to allow a running start. The dog is to bounce each jump, not putting any strides in between jumps. You can increase and decrease the jump spacing to compress and extend the dog's stride. I like this grid for that reason and also because it's good for teaching young or inexperienced dogs to start reading lines. I only had the spacing in my yard for 4 jumps. I used a food target and started with sending Monster to the target. I only released him from his stay when I saw that he was looking ahead at the jumps and the target and NOT at me. He executed this grid flawlessly as usual even when I increased the spacing to the max distance. 

Then, I increased the challenge by turning this grid into a slice. Still, I only could use 4 jumps. THIS is where I saw the problem. I started with the slice going from left to right. We had no issues. BUT, when we did the slice from right to left, he started adding in a stride towards the last 2 jumps. I wondered if it might be the flood lights that I had turned on when the sun started disappearing but he wasn't consistently doing it. I'll try again at a different time of day to see for sure but it was validation for me that grids are important. Some people don't like Susan's grids, or just don't train them. I think they feel like it's boring and easy but I've seen enough dogs knocking bars to know that grids are of importance when it comes to foundation. 

That's all I've got for now! Stay tuned for more updates!