.com Forum · Real Show Dogs

Need some advice. I'm 6 months into agility training with my 2.5 year old Great Dane. He has never had an issue with jumping until about 3 weeks ago. He is only jumping at about 16 inches BTW. So 3 weeks ago it seems like he just totally forgot how to jump. He balks and ends up running around the jump. I've lowered the height with the same result. I've started using a tab to prevent him from running around the jump but I don't like the result. When he does jump he has terrible form, like straight up in the air and absurdly higher than the bar height and it usually results in him coming down on the jump resulting in knocked bars. I'm so confused about this that I took him to the vet since I was worried that maybe there was something physically wrong with him but the vet said he's perfect.

Has anyone experienced something like this and what advice do you have to fix the problem?

Sounds like a timing issue...

Do you do jumping grids? Google Susan Salo.

Good luck,
K

Funnily enough my youngest seems to have a jumping problem in that he jumps all wrong too - he is very, very hyper and hurls himself at the jump, leaping up from his back legs like a kangaroo and doing his best to land hind legs first!
Since he does everything at speed and is like a bull in a china shop at the best of times I thought it was a youth thing and he would grow out of it, nope, he just doesn't seem to know how to jump - I'm thinking I should take him to watch some horses show jumping!! LOL

I'll be interested to see if there is a way of getting them to improve their 'form'!!

With dogs, as well as horses, some dogs just aren't built to jump in good form ... straight shoulders, poor rear angulation, short pasterns, etc. You can help some of their difficulty finding by helping them find a good "distance to the fence" to maximize their conformational ability by jumping "grids" or gymnastic exercises but understand when they get into a competition ring, a lot of that is going to go the way of a lot of our training and get lost in translation to a real course. Keep your dogs at the lowest jump height to help avoid injury and always school with "bounce rails".

You are right in that often it is a distance thing, my lunatic tends to hurtle at the jump and completely disregard it until he either has to jump it or go through it, on the lead I can calm him down and try and judge the distance for him - but he never bothers by himself. He would come really unstuck on the six foot scale!
I.m amazed at the heights he gets in his haphazard fashion - I stupidly put the ball on the car roof while I sorted the tailgate, next thing I knew I had a dog on the roof too!

When my dogs start all of a sudden not being able to clear jumps or something else that is "off", I take them into the vet for a chiropractor appointment. It definitely helps. I even had my horse chiropractored multiple times when he would be uneven bending when doing dressage. You just have to be careful to choose someone knowledgeable.

Did his eyes get checked out too? Just a thought.

I second the Chiropractor. My daughter had a cardi that developed a stutter step prior to jumping and hit the bar. Vet checked and sent to chiro. helped tremendously!