Thursday, March 11, 2010

More turning cues with Mika

I never really trained Mika to jump (the old lead-'em-over-with-a-leash "method"). She had to learn the mechanics of jumping on her own and developed her style on her own.

She definitely knows how to jump extended. Looking at pictures of her taking off from a huge distance away from a jump, it seems doubtful that she makes it, yet she very rarely knocks a bar even when she does jump enormously extended.

It's jumping collected that has been her challenge. So this winter I've been training her how to have a nice round jump. I want her to know how to jump extended when cued and how to jump collected when cued. This winter we've only worked on the jumping aspect. Only in the past couple of weeks have I added my motion.

Mika was incredible this afternoon, turning/wrapping so tightly (especially for her) over 10" jumps when I send her over at an angle and give her a lack of motion cue! I increased the starting distance today from our last session. I have yet to send her over a jump from a straight-on angle because I'm sure she'll find that a bit harder. For now, though, she's been doing amazingly and really seems to understand how to wrap the jump wings! That's something I forget to say; we were training on one of my winged jumps today for the first time. She's had trouble with wrapping winged jumps in the past, but only had one back-jump today (out of 3 reps), which of course was my fault because I was standing too much in the middle of the jump. Good girl for watching me!!

1 comment:

  1. Sounds like Mika is learning how to collect and wrap very easily! I'm sure it is because you are so good at working with her!

    Love your new blog header photo! Very cool!

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