Retrieve over a fence

I find it quite interesting how we often dissect the retrieve in the beginning but other parts we just expect the dog to grip as a whole. Like jumping a fence with a dummy or a bird in their mouth. We add weight and with that we make the dogs unbalanced, but we rarely train them either to jump, land, balance extra weight or jump with the extra weight. We just expect them to cope with the difficulties.

So with our young dog, and the others too, technique training is the basic way to begin the training towards jump a fence with a weight in the mouth.
1. Take off is the beginning and divided into
a) push-up
b) take off
So you begin with making the dog go from sit to pushing upwards. Most easily with a treat or a toy over the head.
2. Take off over something - just anything small. The point is to exercise the push off, nothing else.
3. Jump up to a new level - it’s still pushing, not height that is of interest. So use small things around you for the dog to jump up to from sit.
4. Keep balanced after pushing off - from sit, over or on to something and then into sit again. Slow movements- balance not speed!
5. Landing - sit, jump, sit is one sequence jumping down into sit is another.
6. Jumping a small fence from sit to sit.
7. Add small weight into this process.
8. Add more weight
9. Add the expected weight
10. Add a few steps - a little distance, and with that you whether you thought of it or not, you add speed.
11. Cavaletti/severs tiny obstacles in a row still trotting
12. Gymnastics jumping 2 or more fences so close together that no steps are allowed in between. Jumping into a jump
13. Jumping sequences, one or two steps are allowed in between jumps (like before but removing one fence or two in between the others in the row of jumps.
14. Sit-jump-sit-turn left or right
15. Like above but add a stop after the turn
16. Like above but add a new jump after the stop
17. Sit-jump-sit-turn-sit-jump-turn
18. Add distance and with that speed

We have a lot to work on 🤪😅🥰