Time to buckle down

Well, that was a wonderful weekend of learning! I love being able to totally immerse myself into that other world that is the dog training world. We learned a lot this weekend at Kim Collins' Outreach and now I have a lot of homework to do before I see her again in a couple months. Having a plan with goals makes getting up and training your dog so much easier! I get so much inspiration from seminars and 7 really benefits from having a mom who actually works him on a more regular basis :-)
Here are a couple of vids from this weekend...
The first is 7 playing the teeter bang game. The teeter is the only agility obstacle that moves (and makes a pretty startling noise as well!) so a lot of work has to go into the early stages of training this obstacle to make the dog comfortable with the noise and movement of the board. The bang game teaches the dog that he is in control of the noise/movement and that he can earn reinforcement for making it bang. As he gets reward after reward for making the teeter bang he starts to see the teeter as a representation of the rewards and the obstacle becomes just as reinforcing as the rewards that follow. This makes for a driven, confident dog later when tackling this potentially scary obstacle in the middle of a course.


Another exersize focused on end of contact behaviour. Every contact obstacle in agility has a "contact zone" at the end of it. Usually painted yellow, it is a zone that the dog MUST touch with at least one paw as they run down the obstacle. This is for safety reasons as dogs are inclined to take the path of least resistance and sometimes jumping from the apex of an A-frame just seems like less work than running, safely all the way to the bottom! There are many different options for teaching your dogs to run all the way to the bottom but the one I'm teaching 7 is the "two on, two off (with nose touch)" method. He needs to run all the way to the bottom of the frame finishing with his front feet on the ground and back feet on the board. He also needs to be bopping his nose into the ground. The nose touch is to get his head facing forward so as not to twist his spine as he hits his contact position. In this video 7 is working on leaping onto the frame from the side and driving to his target plate on the ground. With time the plate gets faded and the dog will be touching the ground with his nose.


As far as homework goes, to go along with my list in my earlier post I also need to work on...
Deceleration- 7 needs to stop at my side (right or left) when I stop my body. He is starting to blow past me when I slow down or stop and I need to spend more time reinforcing him for being directly at my side, NOT in front!
More teeter- I need to start working on his teeter. More bang game, and teach him to run accross the board off the ground, balanced on two tables. After he's confident with this, start making one table smaller so that the teeter begins to tip.
Jumps- I need to play more with jumps now that he's getting close to full height. He needs more reinforcement for seeking out and taking jumps as well as the other more fun obstacles. Also, we need a LOT more Susan Sale jump grids as it's starting to become clear that 7 is not using his body as well as he could when jumping bigger heights.