Fixing bad jumping.

Ru is basically built on a slinky chassis. He is very front-heavy and tends to overbalance and turn cartwheels, which looks as ridiculous as it sounds. He also lacks jumping power, hopping up on my lap takes a bit of effort. He's more like a hummingbird taking off and less like a jackrabbit.

When he goes over a jump he tends to kick his back end up way too high and end up with his hind feet pointing toward the sky. I imagine there's ways I could improve his jumping and general condition, but I have no idea how to go about fixing his issues.

Grid work? Susan Salo has a good system that starts with simple grids and builds up

Grid work looks interesting! I wonder if altering his form over bar jumps would translate well to jumping onto furniture and other things in regular everyday life?

At work I have so many delightful little tiny dogs that pop up so I can catch them in the air. I'd love to help Ru develop some actual rear end drive.

Proper jumping form requires a heck of a lot of core strength as well as rear strength. If you work on those muscles while doing form drills his jumping will improve much faster.

Core work sounds like a really good idea, he has really awful balance that actively drives me nuts. Last night he kept falling onto the keyboard on my lap. Fell out of his bed onto my lap, off the back of the couch onto my lap, fell over on my lap...

Grid work will build some muscle at least and make him jump in better form. I'm not sure how much it will help your specific issue though.

Oh my goodness Susan Salo stuff is expensive! I'm not sure I'm ready to drop $70 on a DVD to help fix a minor annoyance, we've done a little agility but I'm not expecting to ever compete given that he refuses to play on cold grass, cloudy days, or in less than 80 degree weather.

We have a foam roller and a small balance cushion, and I can probably get him to balance on a basketball or something. Luring and manipulation works ok with Ru, but precise foot targeting just isn't going to happen. He's never been really clear on the whole concept even after a lot of focused training, and we haven't done any targeting in a few weeks so I'm sure he's completely forgotten everything again.

I have no idea what is so awesome about standing on this thing, but Ru says it's the Best Thing Ever.

He likes it enough that I'm a little worried about overdoing it. I don't want him to end up feeling like I do after 20+ minutes of nonstop hula hooping. He's just...so happy to e bobbing around on there.