Jumping Thoughts

[singlepic id=342 w=320 h=240 float=left]Rewatching Dylan’s youtube videos. There aren’t very many and they aren’t his best runs, but he looks so much smoother, so much faster. His video from Lune Valley is the last one I uploaded, 18 months ago, and the difference between then and now is just crazy. Even the runs I am pleased with these days (and there are more happy runs than bad ones!) are no where near as smooth and fast as those runs from pre-2010. There is maybe something to be said for having a slower, more consistent dog in the higher grades but I’d rather have my speedy boy back.

Numerous people tell me he’s physically fine, so what else has changed? We’ve gone from G3 to G6, he was attacked at flyball last June, my handling has improved*. Aside from the handling, the other two are linked more to his mental health. I’ll admit I find it a little scary to consider how much that one moment at Swallownest may still be echoing down the line in Dylan’s confidence and mental wellbeing. It makes me so happy now when I see him play bowing at Rio and then playing chase in the garden. It seems like such a normal, cheerful, dog thing to do, and Dylan doesn’t seem to get many of those moments with other dogs. Of course, he had confidence issues before then, but the Swallownest moment tipped him from “most things are ok”, to “most things are not ok”.

The changing of Grades isn’t something I’d really considered until a few days ago, but maybe the increase in difficult courses is just another worry for Dylan. Re-reading my blog posts suggests that he tends to be more relaxed and forward going in Open classes, which could be down to me.

I know every few months I theorise on what might be going on that is causing Dylan’s jumping woes, but it’s a work in progress. Really, my action plan hasn’t changed; more jump grids and more confidence building. Whatever I’m doing it’s not working, so I need a new action plan. It’s going to be called Ignore It and Hope It Will Go Away.

That may be a slight exaggeration. But whatever I have been doing is possibly making it worse, so I’m going to stop working on this. We’ll focus instead on contact training for the next few months and let the jumping do it’s own thing, and I will focus on having a happy Dylan at competitions regardless of his actual performance. He’s going to be six in a few months time and that makes me realise that worrying about whether his jumping is perfect is maybe not the most positive way to be spending the second half of our agility career.

*This bit I’m happy about. Watching back my videos from Hare’n’Hounds, I can see how much progress I’ve made and I’m a little bit proud of that.