So with the discovery that Baer had used the flyball jump as a visual to leap from 6 feet away to get over it, we're now working on training to run over the jump, versus leaping.
If I'm right, correcting this will fix two problems:
1) Her early take off at the start-line. She uses the start line as an indicator to leap, so she's flying through the air way before take off.
This photo was taken in Feb 2013. As you can see, before the start line, she's already in the air- taking off from about 10 feet from the first jump.
I always heard from people when we competed, "Wow! She takes off SO far back!". Little did I suspect this was ruining her striding and time, but, it is. So here we are.
2) Her 2 strides from the box to the fifth jump. If she can keep the short strides and run over the fifth jump, I think the 3 strides will come naturally.
Our next tournament probably won't be until spring, so I'm just going to keep up the repetitions of running over the flyball jump, making the props smaller and smaller. When I can finally do no props and have her consecutively running over the first jump versus leaping, then I will start to put the rest of the equipment into the equation. But if she starts to falter and goes back to leaping, we will go back to square one.
I guess the thing I'm most of afraid of, is doing this training by myself, getting to the point where I'm using no props to get her over the first jump, and not being able to tell if she's leaping. But I'll cross that when I get to it.
Interesting that the flyball jump seems to be a visual cue to leap. It looks like you are making good progress with the stride training, though, so hopefully it'll work like you are hoping!
ReplyDeleteLol one step forward, two steps back seems to be the pattern with Baer, but that's okay :)
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