Not only is it fun for people to watch as dogs leap through tire jumps and soar across panel jumps, agility jumps tend to be a favorite obstacle for the canine set as well. Dogs love jumps, and it’s a good thing as most dog agility courses contain many different types of jumps as well as a variety of other pieces of dog agility equipment.
What You Find On An Agility Course
If you are just starting out, it can help to understand a little bit about what types of dog agility equipment you will find on an obstacle course. The type of obstacles varies by organization, and the amount of obstacles varies by class within that organization.
Let’s take the United States Dog Agility Association as an example. The USDAA has five main classes: Starters, Novices, Veterans, Advanced & Masters. The first three classes usually have about 15 obstacles on the course, while the latter two classes can feature up to 20 pieces of dog agility equipment. Each course will include an A-frame, a teeter, a dog walk, a tunnel, a collapsible chute, a pause table, a tire jump and at least three winged jumps or hurdles.
Understanding The Different Jumps
The tire jump is fairly self explanatory, and we sell full-size tire jumps as well as mini tire jumps on our website. A winged jump is simply a jump that has wings on either side of the jump. In USDAA competitions as well as many other organizations’ competitions, at least one of these winged jumps will be a spread hurdle. This is basically two jump poles that are placed together in order to make the dog jump a further distance. Sometimes it’s a double jump, and in some cases, you will see a triple jump.
A panel jump is another type of jump commonly seen on agility courses. This is simply a jump that uses panels instead of poles or bars. A broad jump also might be on the course, and this is a jump that features graduated raised platforms which a dog must leap over without touching any of the boards. Several organizations, such as the United Kennel Club, have a few quirky novelty jumps such as the picket fence hurdle or the window jump.
As we stated before, there is a wide variety of dog agility equipment on a course but jumps usually make up at least half of the obstacles and usually the majority of the obstacles are jumps, so you can see why jump training is so important. If you plan to compete, it also will be important to understand the official dimensions set by your agility organization for each piece of dog agility equipment. For jumps, the heights and long jump spans vary by dog height.
Getting Down To Business
When you first begin training, you will simply work with a basic single jump. Each of our starter kits contains at least two jumps, so you can begin practicing with a couple of single jumps and then begin to work on the broad jump skills by placing two jumps together. You can adjust our agility jumps, which makes training much easier. Simply start out at a lower height and gradually work up to the height that your dog will encounter during an agility contest.
In the early stages, the most important aspect of training is just getting the dog used to jumping and teaching them to obey your jump command or signal. After you progress, you can work on accuracy and speed. Once your dog has mastered single and double jumps, you can add a triple jump or try out a broad jump or perhaps the tire jump. We recommend that you have at least four jumps in your collection of dog agility equipment, as well as a tire jump. This allows you to create quite a few different jumping combinations.
Owning eight jumps, including a double and a triple jump, is the ideal amount, especially if you are really serious about competition. Being able to set up a course and including the double and triple jumps can go a long way to ensuring that you are truly prepared for an agility contest. The good news is that you don’t need all of this equipment at once. You can gradually add to your collection until you have all of the pieces of dog agility equipment that you’ll need.
At Carlson Agility, we sell a huge variety of agility jumps. Many of our jumps were designed with specific organizations in mind. We have jumps compatible with USDAA, the American Kennel Club and the United Kennel Club.
In addition, we also have mini agility jumps and mini dog agility equipment for smaller dogs and puppies. Take a look at our selection of jumps or perhaps select a starter kit which will include two to four jumps as well as a few other pieces of agility equipment.
Brad Carlson enjoys dog agility training. To find agility equipment or to find more about training equipment for dog agility equipment, please check out the Carlson-Agility.com website today.
